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RIP John Forester



 
 
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  #51  
Old April 27th 20, 10:24 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
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Default RIP John Forester

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 10:16:12 PM UTC+2, Joerg wrote:



I think it's gone down a lot in the last 30 years, unfortunately. People
becoming lazier? I don't know, moved to the US, maybe Lou can tell us why..

What made me really sad was seeing that a humongous bicycle parking lot
at a large Dutch company I worked at in the early 80's was ... gone.


I don't think it has gone down. It maybe shifted from utility riding to recreational riding. The latter is way up the last 5 years because of the e bikes and more road bike riding and ATB/Gravel/Cross riding. Kids are still going to high school by bike and going to the city centers is much more convenient by bike.

Lou
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  #52  
Old April 27th 20, 11:12 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joerg[_2_]
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Posts: 6,016
Default RIP John Forester

On 2020-04-27 14:24, wrote:
On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 10:16:12 PM UTC+2, Joerg wrote:



I think it's gone down a lot in the last 30 years, unfortunately.
People becoming lazier? I don't know, moved to the US, maybe Lou
can tell us why.

What made me really sad was seeing that a humongous bicycle parking
lot at a large Dutch company I worked at in the early 80's was ...
gone.


I don't think it has gone down.



Interesting. A couple of weeks ago someone from Europe brought links
that showed it had dropped over the last 15 years but I can't find them
anymore. However, I trust people who live and ride there more than links.


... It maybe shifted from utility riding
to recreational riding. The latter is way up the last 5 years because
of the e bikes and more road bike riding and ATB/Gravel/Cross riding.
Kids are still going to high school by bike and going to the city
centers is much more convenient by bike.


I haven't been there a while but that parallels Germany some, though
over there at a much lower modal share to begin with.

Five years ago I rode a long stretch with my sister in the area near
Herborn, Germany. More than 30% were E-bikes, with ours being purely
muscle-powered. Initially I thought "How could this old fart pass me at
such high speed uphill?" when my sister said "That was another cheater
bike! Look for the hump under their bottom brackets."

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
  #53  
Old April 28th 20, 12:34 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
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Posts: 884
Default RIP John Forester

On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 2:19:29 PM UTC-7, Roger Merriman wrote:
Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/24/2020 9:12 PM, sms wrote:
On 4/24/2020 4:15 PM, Joerg wrote:

anip

No, what he didn't understand was that the vast majority of people is
not like you and I who clench their teeth and just ride. The vast
majority of potential candidates for cycle commutes will not ride on
busy narrow roads. Then they will use the car. Luckily the leaders in
Folsom, Rancho Cordova and finally even Sacramento understand this and
acted accordingly. The leaders in our town don't and, needless to say,
that clearly shows in the number of regular cyclists.

He understood it but he never was interested in increasing the number of
cyclists.


I think that's correct. And it directly rebuts the frequent criticisms
by people like Carlton Reid, John Pucher, Streetsblog and others of that
ilk. They frequently say Forester was a failure because he did not
increase the number of cyclists.

But that was not his objective. He showed those of us who choose to ride
a method that works in the real world, and allows us to ride wherever we
choose.

BTW, I think you can make a case that the Segregationists have failed by
their own standard. Yes, you can point to places like Portland that have
A) put in lots of segregated facilities and B) have increased bike mode
share.

But! There are places that experienced increased bike mode share
simultaneously with Portland, without installing segregated facilities.
San Francisco during the anti-bike-lane lawsuit is an excellent example..
It indicates a disconnect between facilities and ridership, and hints
that simple "fashion" may be as important in getting people to ride.

But more to the point, the Segregationalists cried, "Bicycling is
dangerous! We need special places to ride, for SAFETY!" They got a few
special places, on a really tiny proportion of America's 4 million road
miles. But they convinced millions of people that all the rest of those
roads were too dangerous.

There has been no big nationwide surge in bicycling in the last 15 years
that the "Paint and Path" contingent has yelled the loudest.

From https://bikeleague.org/content/new-data-bike-commuting
"The 2017 1-year data shows that overall, commuters are choosing to use
a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation to work slightly less
than in recent years. Year-over-year, the rate of people biking to work
has decreased 4.7%. Among the 70 largest cities (as of 2009 when the
League began tracking), a slight majority (37) cities had a
year-over-year decrease in bike mode share."

From
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ms/2319972002/
"Fewer Americans bike to work despite new trails, lanes and bicycle
share programs."

So much public money was spent hoping to get people out of their cars
and riding in nice, "safe" bike lanes; but it may have scared more
people away from cycling. Overall, it is such a failure.

Oh, and "safe"? The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found as many
as ten times the crash rate in some "protected" bike lanes.

Then there are the national fatality counts, which have turned upward in
recent years.

Reid, Pucher and others are failures. Their programs are failures. I
think they're attacking Forester out of frustration that he was right.


Much like politics folks that are dogmatic in the ideology rather than been
pragmatic, personally my commute has a mix of parks, semi segregated and
very old segregated cycleways the latter is a boon as it has very few give
ways.

Plus a small % of back streets and some busier stuff.

Equally also depends on your speed etc, on my commute bike which is a old
heavy beast fast roads can feel uncomfortable as it lacks the pace, but on
my Gravel bike it’s generally fine as it’s a much faster machine.

Roger Merriman


I have no complaint with bike paths or trails. But Forester believed that if you have the money to either maintain roads or build bike paths you do the former. Here we have now put up bike lanes separated with tall curbs or plastic pipe towers about 2 1/2 feet high. The cars toss out bottles etc and break all over the bike lane and because they are separated cannot be swept by (what is now semi-yearly) street sweeping and these lanes soon become unusuable.

Forester had the knack of actually looking ahead which most people lack.
  #54  
Old April 28th 20, 01:47 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
jOHN b.
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Posts: 2,421
Default RIP John Forester

On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 11:07:09 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/27/2020 2:31 AM, James wrote:
On 27/4/20 7:52 am, wrote:


Huh?? Almost every car driver here also ride bicycles and have kids
that ride bicycles. Why would they drive around around riders with
extreme danger? This is extremely rare.


I believe this is part of the "safety in numbers" effect, and in
Australia I believe we suffer a considerable lack of it.

Drivers here are often impatient and ignorant of the danger they pose to
vulnerable road users.

I ride defensively.* I check and anticipate all vehicle movements in my
vicinity.* It's requires concentration.* It would be nice to be able to
ride without being on tenter hooks.


Regarding Forester and "safety in numbers" for bicycling: That's an
issue regarding which my attitude and arguments differed from
Forester's. And I took a bit of heat for it, but still don't agree with
Forester.

Peter Jacobsen wrote the article that first claimed that more cyclists
naturally generate safer cycling. He collected data in various ways, but
typically something like injuries per million cyclists vs. cyclists per
million population. Plotting those yielded curves with decreasing slopes
- IOW, more bike travel, less injury per mile.

Forester and others said the shape of the curves was an accidental
mathematical artifact - that having the cyclist count in the denominator
for the Y axis and in the numerator of the X axit, you guaranteed a
decreasing slope.

As I recall, it took a while for others on Forester's team to work out
correlation coefficients, etc. and show that Jacobsen's findings were
not just random or just mathematical artifacts. And as I recall,
Forester never admitted he might be wrong - which is typical of him.
(It's also typical of many people posting here.)

I didn't dive into the math as deeply as that. I merely said the
endpoint cases certainly justified what Jacobsen claimed. That is, if
you had just one car in a nation of millions of cyclists it would
present almost zero danger to the average cyclist, and if you had only
one cyclist in a nation with millions of cars, he'd be at unusual risk.
In general, other things being equal, I do think more bicyclists yield
better driver behavior, at least above a certain threshold.

A problem with the "safety in numbers" concept is that many bike
segregationists seized on it as justification for terrible designs. They
said it doesn't matter if a particular bike lane (say) sent bicyclists
into blind intersections in a way that surprised motorists, because
eventually there would be lots more bicyclists everywhere and motorists
would become more careful. I think that's nuts. The potential for a
small - or hypothetical - increase in the number of bicyclists does NOT
justify construction of badly designed facilities.


I would ask, how dangerous is bicycle riding in the U.S., really?
I read the fatality statistics and about 800 people die annually on
bicycles. Than I read the results of a study of bicycle accidents done
by the CHP in L.A. country where they determined that more than half
of all bicycle/auto collision were the fault of the bicycle.( There
has also been mention of bicycle fault in other studies)

If these various figures are even "in the ball park" accurate than
bicycle riding is apparently safer than a great many other activities
that an individual can undertake. Assuming that you act like a normal
sensible human being and obey the traffic laws.

As I have written, I ride in a country that has some of the most
traffic deaths in the world and, honestly, I can't remember the time
where I was in danger from other traffic.
--
cheers,

John B.

  #56  
Old April 28th 20, 03:04 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default RIP John Forester

On 4/27/2020 8:47 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 11:07:09 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/27/2020 2:31 AM, James wrote:
On 27/4/20 7:52 am, wrote:


Huh?? Almost every car driver here also ride bicycles and have kids
that ride bicycles. Why would they drive around around riders with
extreme danger? This is extremely rare.


I believe this is part of the "safety in numbers" effect, and in
Australia I believe we suffer a considerable lack of it.

Drivers here are often impatient and ignorant of the danger they pose to
vulnerable road users.

I ride defensively.Â* I check and anticipate all vehicle movements in my
vicinity.Â* It's requires concentration.Â* It would be nice to be able to
ride without being on tenter hooks.


Regarding Forester and "safety in numbers" for bicycling: That's an
issue regarding which my attitude and arguments differed from
Forester's. And I took a bit of heat for it, but still don't agree with
Forester.

Peter Jacobsen wrote the article that first claimed that more cyclists
naturally generate safer cycling. He collected data in various ways, but
typically something like injuries per million cyclists vs. cyclists per
million population. Plotting those yielded curves with decreasing slopes
- IOW, more bike travel, less injury per mile.

Forester and others said the shape of the curves was an accidental
mathematical artifact - that having the cyclist count in the denominator
for the Y axis and in the numerator of the X axit, you guaranteed a
decreasing slope.

As I recall, it took a while for others on Forester's team to work out
correlation coefficients, etc. and show that Jacobsen's findings were
not just random or just mathematical artifacts. And as I recall,
Forester never admitted he might be wrong - which is typical of him.
(It's also typical of many people posting here.)

I didn't dive into the math as deeply as that. I merely said the
endpoint cases certainly justified what Jacobsen claimed. That is, if
you had just one car in a nation of millions of cyclists it would
present almost zero danger to the average cyclist, and if you had only
one cyclist in a nation with millions of cars, he'd be at unusual risk.
In general, other things being equal, I do think more bicyclists yield
better driver behavior, at least above a certain threshold.

A problem with the "safety in numbers" concept is that many bike
segregationists seized on it as justification for terrible designs. They
said it doesn't matter if a particular bike lane (say) sent bicyclists
into blind intersections in a way that surprised motorists, because
eventually there would be lots more bicyclists everywhere and motorists
would become more careful. I think that's nuts. The potential for a
small - or hypothetical - increase in the number of bicyclists does NOT
justify construction of badly designed facilities.


I would ask, how dangerous is bicycle riding in the U.S., really?
I read the fatality statistics and about 800 people die annually on
bicycles. Than I read the results of a study of bicycle accidents done
by the CHP in L.A. country where they determined that more than half
of all bicycle/auto collision were the fault of the bicycle.


How dangerous is bicycle riding in the U.S.?

If you ask the "paint-n-path" crew, riding on any normal road is very
dangerous. If you ask the helmet promoters, riding with anything other
than a sanctified cap is very, very dangerous.

If you look at real data, riding a bike is safer than walking.

But nobody makes money by saying "Bicycling is safe."

Well, the bike companies could - but they've hitched their wagon to the
paint-n-path crew. And to mix metaphors, they've shot themselves in the
foot.


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #59  
Old April 28th 20, 03:58 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
jOHN b.
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,421
Default RIP John Forester

On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 22:04:28 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/27/2020 8:47 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 11:07:09 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/27/2020 2:31 AM, James wrote:
On 27/4/20 7:52 am, wrote:


Huh?? Almost every car driver here also ride bicycles and have kids
that ride bicycles. Why would they drive around around riders with
extreme danger? This is extremely rare.


I believe this is part of the "safety in numbers" effect, and in
Australia I believe we suffer a considerable lack of it.

Drivers here are often impatient and ignorant of the danger they pose to
vulnerable road users.

I ride defensively.* I check and anticipate all vehicle movements in my
vicinity.* It's requires concentration.* It would be nice to be able to
ride without being on tenter hooks.

Regarding Forester and "safety in numbers" for bicycling: That's an
issue regarding which my attitude and arguments differed from
Forester's. And I took a bit of heat for it, but still don't agree with
Forester.

Peter Jacobsen wrote the article that first claimed that more cyclists
naturally generate safer cycling. He collected data in various ways, but
typically something like injuries per million cyclists vs. cyclists per
million population. Plotting those yielded curves with decreasing slopes
- IOW, more bike travel, less injury per mile.

Forester and others said the shape of the curves was an accidental
mathematical artifact - that having the cyclist count in the denominator
for the Y axis and in the numerator of the X axit, you guaranteed a
decreasing slope.

As I recall, it took a while for others on Forester's team to work out
correlation coefficients, etc. and show that Jacobsen's findings were
not just random or just mathematical artifacts. And as I recall,
Forester never admitted he might be wrong - which is typical of him.
(It's also typical of many people posting here.)

I didn't dive into the math as deeply as that. I merely said the
endpoint cases certainly justified what Jacobsen claimed. That is, if
you had just one car in a nation of millions of cyclists it would
present almost zero danger to the average cyclist, and if you had only
one cyclist in a nation with millions of cars, he'd be at unusual risk.
In general, other things being equal, I do think more bicyclists yield
better driver behavior, at least above a certain threshold.

A problem with the "safety in numbers" concept is that many bike
segregationists seized on it as justification for terrible designs. They
said it doesn't matter if a particular bike lane (say) sent bicyclists
into blind intersections in a way that surprised motorists, because
eventually there would be lots more bicyclists everywhere and motorists
would become more careful. I think that's nuts. The potential for a
small - or hypothetical - increase in the number of bicyclists does NOT
justify construction of badly designed facilities.


I would ask, how dangerous is bicycle riding in the U.S., really?
I read the fatality statistics and about 800 people die annually on
bicycles. Than I read the results of a study of bicycle accidents done
by the CHP in L.A. country where they determined that more than half
of all bicycle/auto collision were the fault of the bicycle.


How dangerous is bicycle riding in the U.S.?

If you ask the "paint-n-path" crew, riding on any normal road is very
dangerous. If you ask the helmet promoters, riding with anything other
than a sanctified cap is very, very dangerous.

If you look at real data, riding a bike is safer than walking.

But nobody makes money by saying "Bicycling is safe."

Well, the bike companies could - but they've hitched their wagon to the
paint-n-path crew. And to mix metaphors, they've shot themselves in the
foot.


Well, I suppose every politician has to have a star to hitch his wagon
to and of course one has to find a new star rather then the old,
outmoded, stars. It used to be, "Vote for me and I'll get your
brother-in-law a job on the garbage truck". Now, I guess it is, "Vote
for me and I'll build you a bicycle path". :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

  #60  
Old April 28th 20, 09:31 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Rolf Mantel[_2_]
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Posts: 267
Default RIP John Forester

Am 27.04.2020 um 15:31 schrieb jbeattie:
On Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 5:51:53 PM UTC-7, Ted Heise wrote:


Did you find the wallet?


Nope. I'd already cancelled the credit card. So someone got $20 and some I.D.


That was a fairly lucky end. A few years ago, on the last day before
going on holidays, I just grabbed the wallet and biked to the superstore
to fetch a loaf a bread but lost the wallet on the way there. I noticed
5 minutes later but the wallet was gone.

The next morning, the wallet was laying on our doorstep, all cards,
passport etc included, only the €250 cache was missing. What an
expensive loaf of bread...
 




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