He probably has ADHD. His thought process is, my way or the highway. He doesn’t consider any form of cycling as legitimate except road Cycling.
Doubtful_Sceptic_13 on
I find that a lot of the advice like taking the lane and riding aggressively is quite valid when you are riding in a country without dedicate bike lanes.
I rode for years in India and I learned some of these things naturally because that’s the only way I could stay safe.
humblepaul on
1h35m long? Are you kidding me!
bicyclemom on
Oh Lord. Our bike club used to have knock down drag out fights about this guy’s teachings. We had that one guy in the club who swore that Forrester was God himself while many of us sort of thought he was a bit over the top. Correct about some things, but took things to their absurd conclusions sometimes. Good times.
loozerr on
There’s a lot of his sentiment here. Not when it comes to riding bikes because that’s not that common on reddit but bike aesthetics and deciding which components and styles of bikes are worthy.
FederalDrive5330 on
Palo Alto is now extremely safe to ride in.
terdward on
His techniques for riding are valid and are how I ride every day. But the good contributions to cycling end there. It’s perfectly valid to teach pragmatic approaches to living in the current world while advocating for a better one but lobbying against safer infrastructure is insane, period.
vaticRite on
Not gonna watch the video, but no, he’s not “to blame”. Cycling is dangerous in America because we have focused on the comfort and safety of the wealthy who are using personal mobile living rooms above the safety of everyone else for nearly a century. If he hadn’t advocated so hard for vehicular cycling, that would still be true.
That said, he probably did set us back. Vehicular cycling is a legitimate response to bad or non-existent infrastructure (I use it all the time in Seattle), but it should never be a policy direction.
I feel comfortable and a thrill taking the lane downhill at 30 mph because I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but I, along with most cyclists comfortable with vehicular cycling, would be terrified by the notion of an elderly friend or relative, or a child, attempting the same thing.
kidsafe on
I consider Forester a scapegoat for a society that fully embraced car-culture overnight in the early 1900s. Especially on the west coast of the US where there was room to make huge roads and sprawling cities.
Forester’s activism began in the early 70s. He never held an official position anywhere. He simply cannot be blamed for the six decades of rising car culture. He had some bad views, but he was mostly correct about vehicular cycling under the circumstances. As cyclists we need to recognize that bad cycling infrastructure is worse than no cycling infrastructure. Almost all class 1 bike lanes fall into this category.
TL;DR the problem has been cars all along, not Forester.
9 Comments
He probably has ADHD. His thought process is, my way or the highway. He doesn’t consider any form of cycling as legitimate except road Cycling.
I find that a lot of the advice like taking the lane and riding aggressively is quite valid when you are riding in a country without dedicate bike lanes.
I rode for years in India and I learned some of these things naturally because that’s the only way I could stay safe.
1h35m long? Are you kidding me!
Oh Lord. Our bike club used to have knock down drag out fights about this guy’s teachings. We had that one guy in the club who swore that Forrester was God himself while many of us sort of thought he was a bit over the top. Correct about some things, but took things to their absurd conclusions sometimes. Good times.
There’s a lot of his sentiment here. Not when it comes to riding bikes because that’s not that common on reddit but bike aesthetics and deciding which components and styles of bikes are worthy.
Palo Alto is now extremely safe to ride in.
His techniques for riding are valid and are how I ride every day. But the good contributions to cycling end there. It’s perfectly valid to teach pragmatic approaches to living in the current world while advocating for a better one but lobbying against safer infrastructure is insane, period.
Not gonna watch the video, but no, he’s not “to blame”. Cycling is dangerous in America because we have focused on the comfort and safety of the wealthy who are using personal mobile living rooms above the safety of everyone else for nearly a century. If he hadn’t advocated so hard for vehicular cycling, that would still be true.
That said, he probably did set us back. Vehicular cycling is a legitimate response to bad or non-existent infrastructure (I use it all the time in Seattle), but it should never be a policy direction.
I feel comfortable and a thrill taking the lane downhill at 30 mph because I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but I, along with most cyclists comfortable with vehicular cycling, would be terrified by the notion of an elderly friend or relative, or a child, attempting the same thing.
I consider Forester a scapegoat for a society that fully embraced car-culture overnight in the early 1900s. Especially on the west coast of the US where there was room to make huge roads and sprawling cities.
Forester’s activism began in the early 70s. He never held an official position anywhere. He simply cannot be blamed for the six decades of rising car culture. He had some bad views, but he was mostly correct about vehicular cycling under the circumstances. As cyclists we need to recognize that bad cycling infrastructure is worse than no cycling infrastructure. Almost all class 1 bike lanes fall into this category.
TL;DR the problem has been cars all along, not Forester.
[https://youtu.be/mwPSIb3kt_4](https://youtu.be/mwPSIb3kt_4)