Effective cycling
An updated edition of a classic handbook for cyclists from beginner to expert. Effective Cycling is an essential handbook for cyclists from beginner to expert, whether daily commuters or weekend pleasure trippers. This thoroughly updated seventh edition offers cyclists the information they need for riding a bicycle under all conditions: on congested city streets or winding mountain roads, day or night, rain or shine. It describes the sheer physical joy of cycling and provides the nuts-and-bolts details of how to choose a bicycle, maintain it, and use it in the most efficient manner. Effective Cycling covers the bicycle itself, repairs and maintenance, basic and advanced cycling skills, and how traffic is organized. It describes cycling with friends, bicycle tours, increasing physical endurance, racing, and even finding a cyclist as marriage partner. Throughout, author John Forester emphasizes that cyclists should consider themselves drivers of vehicles in traffic. That means obeying the rules of the road, because when all drivers obey the same rules, they don't have collisions. Forester explains why cyclists should not be afraid to cycle in traffic, and he urges them to resist being shunted off into government-sponsored bike paths as if they were incompetent children. Cyclists fare best, he says, when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
13mentions
10people
2009–2023years
92% recommend8% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling
John Forester's treatise "Effective Cycling" was a huge influence on me when it came to urban cycling.
- This is long term controversial issue. If you think the right answer is obvious you probably haven't dove down to the details, where it's much murkier. See in particular John Forester's _Effective_Cycling_. Forester believes that "cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles" and are not segregated from them. There are studies in this area pointing in both directions. One such concluded that putting bikes on multi-use trails makes cyclists less safe. A lot depends on the design of the bike paths, and a badly designed one can increase the risk over none at all.
- I'm a long term cyclist (> 100,000 miles) and I live in the Metro Boston area and have bike commuted into Cambridge before.
I read Effective Cycling a long time ago and took it to heart and I put a large amount of my safety over the years down to following the "Vehicular Cycling" model. Drivers are WAY less likely to honk or yell at you when you follow this model too because you are behaving in a way that is consistent with the rules of the road. In the end the law in 99% of places actually mandates you ride according to Vehicular Cycling.
I don't have a problem with bike lanes but they are all highly imperfect. Boston, MA has a very large # of very very very dangerous bike lanes because the bike lanes encourage/force the cyclist to behave inconsistently with other traffic.
A lot of the bike lane advocates appear to be from the anti-Vehicular cycling.
The problem with a lot of the bike lanes is even they are protected it is impossible for them to protect against collisions at intersections. Most of these bike lanes place the cyclist who is traveling straight off to the right side of the vehicles which are trying to take a right turn at the intersection. This is an absolute disaster in the city and we had a high profile fatality of a woman cyclist a few years ago in Boston that was directly caused by this kind of bike lane.
You can't protect straight traveling cyclists going through an intersection where the cars need to turn right and left. As soon as they get to the intersection the cyclist is placed in the most dangerous place for them.
If the lane is unprotected the cyclist can exit the bike lane and enter the "travel straight" lane of traffic and avoid this. If the bike lane is protected the cyclist might not be able to do this at all and is forced into the "travel straight to the right of the right turning traffic."
If the road designer insists on putting a protected bike lane to the right of the right turning traffic the only thing I see being safe is a stop light for both the cyclists & cars, and the cars can't take a right when the cyclists have a green light and the cyclists can't go straight when the cars have a red light. The cars would have to be given a "No Right turn on Red" as well.
Again my experience is a lot of the advocates of some of this non-vehicular cycling stuff do not have that clear of a picture of what is actually safe because:
- They don't actually ride that much
- They spend a lot of time riding on Multi-Use-Trails instead of roads.
- They use sidewalks a lot of the time and advocate use of sidewalks
- They often think the rules of the road are invalid for cyclists
- Never got a motor cycle license or learned to ride a motorcycle
- Maybe don't drive cars at all
My experience is there is a cavernous gap in behavior between these folks and long term long distance riders & racers. The long term long distance riders & racers fall into vehicular cycling and are very very safe over the years.
This same kind of thing happens with left turns. The Vehicular cycling way to do this is signal left and move across the lanes of traffic as you approach the intersection and get to the left turn lane, just like a car or a truck. I've been doing this for decades safely and without conflict on roads as busy as 8 lanes wide. It works incredibly well. The non-vehicular way (Forrester always called this the "cycling inferiority complex" way of riding) is to hug the right side of the road even if you're in a right turn lane, and then take a left across all the right turning & straight turning traffic in an incredibly dangerous way that is also illegal.
Any cycling behavior that would get you a ticket if you did it on a motorcycle or in a car should be a red flag behavior for you because the ticket would be issued because you were engaging in flagrantly dangerous behavior.
A cyclist who is experienced in Vehicular cycling can move in and out of the bike lanes when they are safe or not safe and get the best of both worlds.
- I can't speak to Detroit as a cycling venue, but I can to Buffalo. True year-round cycle commuting in a snowy region seems like an epic accomplishment, but just isn't that big a deal once you've actually done it. First, you should already be a competent urban cyclist. By competent, I mean you should have trained in the practices from Forester's Effective Cycling[1] or a similar resource. Second, prepare your bike and yourself for the climate in your area. Icebike.org[2] is a great resource for this.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Cycling-John-Forester/dp/026...
- The article says that no one is going to bother enforcing this new law.
Instead of waiting for law enforcement to care, the best thing you can do as a cyclist is give $25 to the MIT Press and read Effective Cycling. John Forester is an engineer with decades of cycling experience.
"Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles"
http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Cycling-John-Forester/dp/026...
- I wish I could downvote this more. To quote from the Effective Cycling book below:
"cyclists should consider themselves drivers of vehicles in traffic. That means obeying the rules of the road, because when all drivers obey the same rules, they don't have collisions. Forester explains why cyclists should not be afraid to cycle in traffic, and he urges them to resist being shunted off into government-sponsored bike paths as if they were incompetent children."
