A SUNDAY CONVERSATION WITH JOHN FORESTER

[Serge Issakov]

Peter Flax interviews John Forester. 

Well done. 

https://medium.com/@peterflax/a-sunday-conversation-with-john-forester-f997e053d0db

Serge

[F Lehnerz]

Gary, 

Flax’s comments were about feelings, not thoughts. As was John’s “not give a damn” comment. However I don’t know if he necessarily took a position that one does not need to be cooperative. 

More than anything it’s just not letting other people’s perceived feelings and/or thoughts control you so much. Letting one’s thoughts and emotions be so dominated by this mindset is distracts one from the actual task. 

I don’t understand why/where Flax got the idea he needs to travel at 20mph on that road and why such “speed requirements” are repeated by those, especially other cyclists, who are skeptical of bicycle driving. People cycling on that road, should cycle at the speed they please provided they’re using the correct lane on the roadway but indeed if there are opportunities to use some of the methods taught in Cycling Savvy then they should be considered. 

I think some of us have acquired both the skill of not letting the apparent thoughts and emotions of others control us so much and instead spend that mental energy looking for opportunities to cooperate with other road users and for enjoying our trips. 

Preaching to the choir of course. :) 

Kudos to Flax for reaching out to John. It really says a lot about his willingness to understand the his perspective instead of repeating the same tired myths about the man. 

Frank

On Sep 30, 2019, at 10:22, Gary Cziko <gcz...@gmail.com> wrote:



Yes, very interesting. Great history of cycling in California that probably only John Forester could provide.

The following part of the conversation puts another L.A. street on my list for cycling with 360 video, as I did recently for Lincoln Boulevard (part of L.A.'s "High Injury Network") in the Venice neighborhood.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/2019/06/worst-city-to-ride-a-bike/

PF: Like there’s a stretch on Fairfax, say between Wilshire and Melrose, where it’s four tight lanes and there’s no shoulder or margin, the road is poorly paved.

 

JF: I know where you’re talking about. I used to live in West LA.

 

PF: So if there’s open space people will drive 50 miles an hour on that stretch of road; it just feels that if you want to get over to the farmer’s market area from Wilshire there’s not a good alternate, quieter road to get to, and so you feel like your choices are to ride on a horribly maintained sidewalk or to get in the center of a lane and ride 20 miles per hour and presume you’re making enough of a visual presence. I would agree that it’s statistically unlikely that someone is going to rear end me, but I still feel threatened, and it’s unpleasant enough where I don’t like to do it and I know that if I don’t like to do it that 95% of the people who ride a bike in Los Angeles aren’t going to do it. They’re going to feel like “I’m not going to ride to the farmer’s market because I don’t feel like there’s a safe way to get there.”

 

JF: Long ago I got to the point where I didn’t give a damn what ignorant motorist superiority people feel about me. I ride the way I should. And to hell with them.

Previously, Flax had complained about the left turn from Venice Boulevard to La Cienega on his commute home. I showed him how to do it savvily using an anticipatory jug-handle left turn.
https://vimeo.com/231027682

I do disagree with John's final comment above about not giving a damn about what motorists think about cyclists. Cycling is much more pleasant and fun for me when I am cooperative and mindful of the impact my presence has on motorists behind. I'm always looking for opportunities when I can facilitate motorists' movement when it is safe and convenient for me to do so using the four traffic release techniques we teach in CyclingSavvy: (1) control and release, (2) release on red, (3) release on green and (4) slow and release. These are explained and demonstrated in our online courses available at http://CyclingSavvy.org

There's also a fair amount of discussion in the interview about cycling in the the Netherlands. For a recent sampling of what that is like, check out my video of cycling in Amsterdam two weeks ago.  I have many hours of 360 video from both Amsterdam and Copenhagen that I will eventually be putting on YouTube and indexing.

Finally, a video example from L.A. of cyclist inferiority behavior, using a sidewalk in poor condition and cycling in front of a motorist at a STOP sign to get through the right-left jog across Olympic Boulevard. A savvy cyclist would simply wait for a break in traffic to make a right turn into the left lane followed by a left turn when oncoming traffic had cleared.

-- Gary

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==================================================

Gary Cziko ("ZEE-ko"), PhD
Professor Emeritus, Educational Psychology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

CyclingSavvy Instructor (CSI)

Board of Directors, American Bicycling Education Association (ABEA.bike)

Board of Directors, California Association of Bicycle Organizations (CABO)

Expert Witness for Cyclists' Rights

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[Patricia Kovacs]

I was there. I regret not saying anything. I didn't know what to say. I was not expecting the things that Furth said.
https://figshare.com/authors/Peter_Furth/4455889
All proceedings: https://icsc2017.figshare.com/

My contribution to the conference was a 1 minute review of the Ferenchak & Marshall sharrow study and a longer presentation on our fruitless effort to influence bicycle crash reporting.
Tricia Kovacs

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[Patricia Kovacs]

Dear Bicycle Driving,
I attended the Ohio Transportation Engineering Conference this week which included several presentations on Active Transportation (bicycling, walking, transit ...) One of the presentations was by a staff member of Toole Design Group in Columbus, about the next version of the AASHTO bicycle guide. The presentation will not be posted publicly so I can't share it, but there was a discussion about John Forester and his influence on bicycling in the US. I interpreted the discussion as blaming John Forester for the low bicycling participation in the US vs European countries. So I did try to defend John to the attendees at the presentation. One of the slides stated that John's "Effective Cycling" was based on only his own experience. So this is basically what I said:

I would like to defend John Forester because I consider him a mentor. His opinions on bicycling infrastructure were not only based on his own experience, but also on the research of Cross and Kaplan. At that time, bikeways were primarily sidepaths which had all the same conflicts as sidewalks, which was pointed out by the Cross/Kaplan studies. I think we should be grateful to John because he developed the first cycling education program, for adults and children. One of the problems in the US with bicycling participation is that in European countries, if a motorist hits a cyclist, the motorist is assumed to be at fault. Here in the US, cyclists who are hit by motorists in crosswalks are sometimes found at fault because they are assumed to have been riding in the sidewalk, which is prohibited in many US cities. I hope that Toole Design and engineers in this room will help to change our legislation to give cyclists more rights.

I didn't quite explain that last statement as I should have, that if they are going to design streets which basically have the same conflicts as sidepaths, they better also advocate for legislation to give us the right of way to turning and driving out traffic.

I also spoke with the Toole representatives and shared further thoughts that we should be blaming others for the car-centricity, urban sprawl and suburbanization in the US. They said that they thought their presentation was simply sharing John Forester's opinions but they wanted to make sure engineers are considering the concerns of all cyclists. I am so torn about how we should solve the problem of cyclist and pedestrian safety. Many of my friends that took up cycling later in life found that sidepaths are unsafe and quickly moved to the roadway. But other friends have stopped cycling on the roads due to fears of distracted drivers. So, I teach cycling savvy and I also advocate for better distracted driving laws. Ohio currently has only a secondary texting law.

I regret not speaking up for John at the ICSC, but I will try to make up for that in the future.
Tricia
P.S. Soon after the ICSC, I shared the link to the presentations, but they hadn't all been posted. More are there now, including the presentation by Bill Schultheiss at Toole, if you're interested. I did think Schultheiss was more respectful of John Forester and did lay the blame for our car-centric roadways on other reasons.
https://icsc2017.figshare.com/

[John Forester]

Thank you, Patricia, for doing the best you could in trying circumstances. Those whom you confronted failed to inform you of the total circumstances, as they typically fail to do. Consider the slide they showed you "John's Effective Cycling was based on only his own experience." Emphasis corrected by me. Was that the actual text, Patricia, or just the message that they wanted the viewer to get? It matters little either way. The claim is absurd; Effective Cycling is based on a lifetime of my cycling experience plus the experiences of a great many other cyclists plus engineering and scientific analysis of those experiences. You, Patricia, attempted to praise my general work regarding cycling and bicycle transportation, but that had no effect on these people, because they don't care about cycling or bicycle transportation. All that they care about is getting some switch from motor trips to bicycle trips, and they believe that sidepaths are by far the best way to produce this effect, and, of course, to produce profits for sidepath designers. So, their one view of my work is that I demonstrated the great danger of sidepaths and thereby got them disrecomended in the official bikeway guides until about 2010. And, Patricia, there is only one way to oppose these people and their superstitions. That is the reply that Forester's test of the safety of sidepaths was so dangerous to him that none of you sidepath advocates has had the courage to repeat it. Come on, you sidepath advocates, test the safety of sidepaths in an urban grid scene, as they should be tested at a high cycling speed that is safe on the adjacent roadway, and, if you survive, come back to tell us how safe that ride was. That's the only answer to give them.

So they reply, as they have in the past, that Forester's ride was dangerously fast. Well, that proves that sidepaths are so dangerous that cyclists have to slow down, when cycling on the roadway does not require this.

US society and government are committed to a system of bicycle use in which the users are frightened of same-direction motor traffic and ignorant of the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles (RRDV). We bicycle drivers recognize that obeying the RRDV is, by far, the better way to cycle, safer and more convenient. Our task is to protect RRDV cycling against the superstitions of the cyclist inferiority advocates. We can do that because we have the advantage of scientific and engineering knowledge, while the cyclist-inferiority advocates have nothing but the fear of same-direction motor traffic.

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John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer
7585 Church St, Lemon Grove, CA 91945
619-644-5481, fore...@johnforester.com