This Is the Guy

Today I learned that a man named John Forester was, in many ways, responsible for what is called "vehicular cycling." He died earlier in April at the age of 90. As Dan Herriges writes for Strong Towns, Forester thought bicyclists should somehow behave just like car drivers and then they would be treated like car drivers by car drivers.

We now have 40+ years of evidence that Forester's idea does not work. I know vehicular cyclists who are perfectly capable of "taking the lane" and yet who have their lives threatened by car drivers on the regular.

As Herriges puts it,

Forester's problem was that it turns out no amount of education with regard to rules is enough to prevent all drivers, all of the time, from behaving aggressively, or from simply making deadly mistakes. And as a result, the vehicular approach to cycling only works if you're a confident cyclist who is very physically fit and comfortable going somewhat close to the speed of traffic—15 miles per hour and up—so that you can respond quickly to any risks you detect.

Vehicular cycling fails for huge numbers of other people, including children; older and less fit adults; novice cyclists; and anyone just looking to ride at a casual pace and not break a sweat. Forester was consistently dismissive of this point: citing positive safety outcomes for those already out cycling in the absence of bike lanes, his blind spot was the much larger number of people who would like to cycle but are afraid to.

The people who aren't there at all are never going to show up in the statistics. To the extent you can argue a four lane death road with no bike facilities is "safe" because few bicyclists have been hit or killed on it, it's comparable to arguing an alligator-filled moat in which people don't dare swim is "safe" for swimming because no swimmers have been eaten this year.

This guy makes me angry and I don't even know him. And I'm annoyed that he died thinking he was right.