Detente

Wayne Pein said:

gds said:

Wayne Pein said:

gds wrote:

>Wayne Pein wrote:
>
>
>>One has to question the "friendliness" of something that is compulsory.
>>
>>Wayne
>
>
>I have to ask--what does that mean?
>
>Essentially there is an element of compulsion in all laws, rules, and
>regulations. Are speed limits intrinsically unfriendly? Are rules
>against carrying firearms into a bank unfriendly?

No, but if only bicyclists had to obey the speed limit or the firearm
ban they would be.

And it is answers like that which make me wonder about your point in
most areas. The point of the social contract is to BALANCE the needs of
the majority and those of any minority. I can't express this any better
than THE FEDERALIST PAPERS. What ever we have in practice, it is clear
that the writers of the Constitution spent a lot of time worrying about
that balance and how to achieve it. Key to the solution was that not
everything was going to seem to be equal to everyone every time. But it
seems to me that you are mainly concenred that the rights of cyclist
NEVER need to give way to the rights of motorists. The federalist
writers considered this to a a tyranny of the minority and not
acceptable.

Huh? Bicyclists, including myself, almost ALWAYS give way to the
rights/needs/concerns of motorists. Don't put words in my mouth or try
to define my position. Every time a motorist passes a bicylist using
part of the bicyclist's lane the rights/needs/concerns of motorists are
met at some small concession by the bicyclist (it would certainly be
safer/more comfortable for the bicylist if the motorist changed lanes
and the bicyclist rode down the center of it, creating lateral shy
distance and improved sight triangles.)

Freeways are all over the place that disallow bicyclists. Many statutes
actively discriminate against bicyclists.

Quoted message said:

Wayne, I've read lots of your writings and I think you make some very
good points and in general have well thought out positions that are
effective in terms of both cycling advocay and safety. However, I also
believe that your constant need to assert rights, which to me is
assertion for the simple sake of assertion, only serves to weaken your
overall argument by putting the label of zealot on your back.

Ever consider that it is you are are doing the labeling?

Quoted message said:

It is interesting that in this forum which is comprised almost wholly
of folks who are very pro cycling that you get so much argument on some
of these issues. These areguments come from folks who cycle a lot, have
lots of experience, and are mostly advocates for cycling. It just shows
that there can be disagreement in the best of families. But I think it
also shows a reaction to the way in which you occupy such extreme
positions on some issues.

My "extreme" position is this: It's the bicyclist's lane. Most of the
time bicyclists defer by letting motorists use their lane, but it's
still the bicyclist's lane to use as he wishes.

I'm sorry those of you with an inferiority complex feel the need to
characterize my position as extreme, but it will not change my position.

Wayne

Well you make your position clear. I just don't understand what it is
you want to accomplish. You seem to take no note of the fact that
bicycles are generally travelling at speeds far slower than motor
vehicles and that your sense of ownership of a traffic lane does in
fact impeed motor vehicles and prevent them from traveling at the
speeds that both they and the roads were designed to do.
I would not argue that there are not times when a cyclist must occupy a
lane in order to make travel safe. However, to me at least, your
expression of ownership and sense of being magnanamous whenever you
deign to let a car pass you is just all out of proportion to the
reality of travel. At least the reality that I have witnessed in many
years and miles of cycling and driving a car.
But you clearly state that no matter what anyone says you will not
change your position. And interestingly you suggest anyone who argues
with you is "inferior" while you occupy the clearly inferior
intellectual postion of stating that nothing can make you change your
mind.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Dennis P. Harris said:

Quoted message said:

Personally, I'm very much in favor of truly useful bike facilities.
It's just that I know, from long experience, that most dollars that go
to bike facilities are not useful for actual transportation.

which is why we should forget about greenways and bike paths and
make our roads safe for cyclists instead. bikepaths don't
usually go where folks need to go for work or shopping, so they
are useless for anything other than recreation.

Note that "not useful for actual transportation" and even "useless for
anything other than recreation" are a long way from "useless" without
any qualifiers.
If my local government decided to spend major money on "recreational
bicycle facilities" (without presenting it as transportation facilities),
I'd probably have questions about whether there might be better things
to do with the money, but I'd have no problem with it from a bike or
recreation point of view - if it gets more people riding, it will have
been successful as a recreational facility, and if more people are getting
comfortable on bikes (and in shape to ride them), more people will start
using them for transportation (getting more bikes on the road and on any
bike-specific facilities that happen to be useful for transportation),
so things end up (in theory[1]) getting better for everybody who rides
a bike, for whatever reason.

Quoted message said:

we need to make roads safe enough that parents are no longer
afraid to let their children bike to school.

Note that that's a matter of training (both the kids AND the drivers
they're sharing the roads with), not of road (re)construction.

Quoted message said:

we need national
design standards that require adequate lane width for bikes (and
striping of bike "lanes" should be optional).

"optional"? That's a strange way of saying "forbidden in most places".

'Round here, half the bike-laned roads I ride on make it look like the
people who put them there think that a bike lane is a good place to put
on-road parking (though they've finally posted the spot that I've had
the most problems with as a no-parking zone), road debris accumulators,
poorly trimmed tree branches, the door zone for beside-road parking,
right turns across the bike lane, and all sorts of other fun hazards.
If they really want to make these roads bike-friendly, they should just
remove the paint marking the bike lane and let the people on the road
decide what the most effective way to use it is. Amazingly, where they
do that, you tend to find bikes where the bike lane would have been if
and only if there's a bike on the road and it's safe and sensible to
ride the bike there, and otherwise you see the bike where it is safe and
sensible to ride, or no bikes and other road users using (or not-using)
that space as appropriate. Plus no idiots getting mad about bikes not
being in the (nonexistent) bike lane, which is Always A Nice Bonus.

(The places where they're done right I don't have any complaints about,
it's just that there's way too many where they're not.)

dave

[1] I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.

--
Dave Vandervies [email hidden]

"Everyone else" writes buffer overrun bugs. Be smarter than "everyone else".
--Chris Torek in comp.lang.c