The Mad Hatter & Mr Toad Rides their bikes in Traffic: John Forrester’s World
English literature for precocious young adults is filled with wild feats of fantasy. Who could forget the boy who could fly? Or a friendly Tigger afraid of the mirror ? Rich country gentry Toad’s lunatic driving of his automobiles caused him to crash 8 cars and put him in front of a magistrate. In “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Alice meets all sorts of wild, deranged characters. A caterpillar sm/oki/ng o/pium dispensing advice and the Mad Hatter. Would you trust the Mad Hatter, driven mad by mercury, not to poison your bergamot tea? Would you trust a conceited Toad to make rules for cycling?
Yet, for older adults, there is a bicycle fantasy that is as lofty as a nanny who can fly with her umbrella. English-born Californian John Forrester stated that the safest way to ride a bike is to act exactly like a car: “take the lane” and trust in the sanctity of the individual, somehow taming the illogic kaos of traffic.
To believe that riding a bicycle as though it were a car is safe is a madcap act of delusional character insertion into a fantasy: A Bicycle Mary Sue in a weird version of Frogger, where you always win. It is to inhabit a very particular kind of imported British Upper-Class-Twit-of-the-Year madness. This is not just a quirk of policy or lifestyle; it is a symptom of a deeper ideological delusion.
Even the halfway measures are borderline delusional. The FOUR FEET law is a cheap, no-infrastructure law that treats bicyclists like cheap cars.
There is no data that says it’s safer to practice vehicular cycling, just like there is scant data stating that FOUR FEET keeps anyone safer. Of course, I know we are in the USA, and selfish, unsupported hypotheses that dovetail with your self-centered, imaginary weltanschauung are always in vogue , but there is no data to support any of that. A recent study of Maryland’s three feet law found that automobiles were not respecting the space of bicycles.
“More cops then!” You have all of these funders with law degrees, but you seem to be lacking in intellectual acuity. Since you folks LOVE using the “street violence” analogy do you know peer reviewed research also stated that more cops didn’t reduce crime in hypersegregated inner city communities. Look if you’re going to co-opt something, co-opt research based propaganda that is in the realm of truth. In 2019 Northeastern University researchers O'Brien et al debunked the broken window theory.
The bicycle, that humble, emancipatory machine, and its strange transmogrification under the doctrine of "vehicular cycling” occurred because of a cult-like figure sitting atop a mushroom dispensing car-exhaust- addled wishcraft: John Forrester.
“Just ride really fast.” At least 20 mph according to Forrester in his book, “Effective Cycling.” 20 mph is the limit for many people as above this speed you are fighting wind resistance. It’s reminiscent of the advice given by the character Charles in “Better Off Dead.” “Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way... turn.”
It is a seductive proposition for the libertarian cyclist, who imagines themself as a Nietzschean Übermensch, but it rests on epistemologically shaky ground.
According to John Pucher's 2021 article in Transportation Quarterly, Forrester’s entire framework hinges on a single piece of feigned data: one ride he took on a new bike path in Palo Alto. Pedaling at the velocity he was accustomed to from road riding, he estimated, ESTIMATED, that the “risk rate was at least 1,000 times greater on the sidepath than on the roadway.”
Unpeer-reviewed data—a biased anecdote, elevated to dogma.
This is why I say roadies are in a cult.
One solitary, unverified bullshit feeling, nothing more than … FEELINGS, became the cornerstone of the League of American Bicyclists, the training manual for every LCI instructor, and the unspoken gospel of roadies across the United States. A whole infrastructure of advocacy, EVEN TODAY, is built on a British transplant’s “truthiness” about a California bike lane.
You are not a visionary for riding your bicycle in the middle of traffic, and you’re not following any kind of rules based on any data, unless hubris male a$$hole is counted as peer-reviewed data.
What it states in peer reviewed data, rather than my “tummy thinks this”-- is that bicycle infrastructure reduced the risk of injury and death by half compared to unmodified road ways.
Lusk et al. found that the injury rate on Montreal bicycle paths was 28% less than unprotected streets.
“The RR of injury on cycle tracks was 0.72 (95% CI 0.60 to 0.85) compared with bicycling in reference streets. These data suggest that the injury risk of bicycling on cycle tracks is less than bicycling in streets.”
Lastly, Forrester’s solution to bad, aggressive, or dangerous car interactions is to act like a Hell’s Angel. 
He recommended Road Rage (WTF) so that drivers learned the consequence of poor decisions towards bicycles. And I see you folks doing this and they ask me why I don’t have a helmet, why are you following the typing of a mad man?! John Forrester was INSANE, in a bad way.
The asymmetry between the size of a racing bicycle and a modern super duty truck is enormous. You can’t road rage if you are writhing on the ground because some aggressive teen crushed you while rolling coal on your group. The Vikings Berserkers ate Amantia muscaria mushrooms before stripping naked and charging into battle unarmed. Instead of Bicycle infrastructure, Forrester is suggesting a similar course of action and it has been the death of many.
Instead of becoming a Forrestering Berserker Bicyclist, let’s build accessible, effective, non violent infrastructure that encourages the general public to ride the bicycle while humming to Freddie Mercury’s song.