> On May 10, 2012, at 2:51 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
> > This is my attitude as well. I hate nearly all bike lanes
> I quoted your comments to Charlie Komanoff (who says hi! and had many
> nice things to say about you, but didn't know you were the the critic
> I was quoting until after he wrote this), who responds:
>
> > S/he may have been ignorantly riffing off a reed-thin
> > 1970s meme that had more crashing [but far less serious-
> > injury crashing -- they never bring that up] on separated
> > bike paths, i.e., recreational paths that sent cyclists
> > tumbling over tree roots, that kind of thing. It's
> > totally obsolete.
Charlie & I have discussed the matter a good deal; probably if you had mentioned that it was me he wouldn't have barked up this particular tree. Not the one I was perched in, as it happens.
I was thinking mostly of the derisory 'bike lanes' we have in New York, which place the cyclist squarely in the door zone and leave him far less room to manoeuvre than he would have if he claimed the midline of a car lane (which is what I do). Then of course the lanes are blocked every hundred feet or so -- usually by a police car -- so you have to merge out into a car lane. You would have been safer being there in the first place.
> > Your pal probably is unaware of safety-in-numbers:
> > the more cyclists there are in a domain, the fewer
> > crashes (w/ cars) suffered per cyclist. If bike
> > lanes engender more cycling ... and they do ...
> > then s-i-n alone would make it safer.
CK and I have co-written a number of essays on this very topic, safety in numbers. Well aware of it. The effect arises precisely where drivers *do* have to share the road with cyclists, not where cyclists are cordoned off in free-biking zones. Charlie seems to be arguing here, if I read him right, that bike lanes engender more cycling in general and then as a consequence there's a spillover of more cyclists into mixed-use streets, with a consequent SIN effect. Maybe that's true to some extent.
I don't think Charlie would disagree with the fundamental point that shag & I have been arguing here, namely that car privilege and drivers' sense of entitlement lie at the heart of the problem. If drivers were as culturally conditioned to respect other road users as they are now conditioned to resent and despise them, you wouldn't *need* bike lanes, except maybe along high-speed limited-access highways.
-- --
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org
When one does a foolish thing, it is right to do it handsomely.