Originally Posted by
Roughstuff
There isn’t a single issue discussed in the article that couldn’t be said about teenagers, and 2 wheeled vehicles, in general. Let’s hope safer practices become more widespread, since I notice E-bikes being used by folks for short trips to the store etc., which reduces use by of cars for this purpose.
What motorizing two wheeled platforms does is expose the raw realities of the lies society tells itself.
If we really want to replace cars, then we need to start treating bikes as practical road transport - not as a boutique novelty to be fetishized on a pedestal of impracticality, which is how planners tend to handle bike routing.
Things like routing bikes on wide sidewalks, hiding us behind parked cars, etc - these address an instinctive but statistically irrelevant fear, while making continued movement at more than walking speed extremely hazardous due to the overwhelming reality that intersection conflicts are where cyclists get hurt.
If we actually want to replace cars with lighter vehicles (be they electric or pedaled) we're going to have to resume viewing bikes traffic as traffic, and practically routing us as such, in accordance with decades of knowledge of basic facts such as that through traffic belongs only on the through side of turning traffic and not trapped inside it in an inevitable hook.
The ordinary multi-purpose lanes of ordinary roads are the only transport network which will ever effectively reach the majority of American housing, schools, shopping, and recreation, and the fact is that we prohibit young teens from operating vehicles not just because of the damage they could do to others when piloting a large metal object, but also because of the risks to self inherent in participating in an adult interaction with still undeveloped judgement and understanding.
Right now we face an extreme, and unsustainable contradiction - the very same advocates want to route bikes in ways that are absurdly deadly at more than a walking speed, but also subsidize motors to get people out of cars. That's simply not going to work.
Getting people out of cars requires treating the car replacement platforms as ordinary traffic to be routinely expected, admired, and safely accommodated on the main roadway, not rare exceptions to it routed in deadly-impractical and outrageously mistaken ways.