#51
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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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#53
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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
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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. |
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RIP John Forester
On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 16:31:28 +1000, 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. But don't most people drive, ride, walk, defensively. Even aircraft pilots are trained to "fly defensively, keep their heads moving, to keep looking around, way up there in the sky. -- cheers, John B. |
#56
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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 |
#57
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RIP John Forester
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#58
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RIP John Forester
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#59
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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
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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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