Originally Posted by
holytrousers
Vehicular Cycling seems to have become a much stigmatized word. ..... let's replace it with another name : my suggestion would be Common Sense Cycling (abbreviated CSC) ...Anyone suggesting a better name ?
The OP is proposing a name and I haven't seen much discussion of that in this thread so far. I am not a deep student of the subject, but a couple of notes and my thoughts (pulling details from Wikipedia article so you're entering amateur hour here..):
One of the early documentations of the general principle that bicycling safely is best achieved by following the rules of the road was the book "Effective Cycling" by John Forester, and it was widely disseminated.
Most everyone posting here will know this history, but I'll restate it briefly. John Forester became actively involved in opposing some cycling-specific infrastructure. That opposition, along with Effective Cycling, got wrapped up in the term "Vehicular Cycling". Subsequently some cyclists established the warring camps of vehicular cyclists versus non-VC, a disagreement which I doubt more than 1% of the general population has every even heard of and which resulted in artifacts like a VC subforum on BF A&S.
The term "Smart Cycling" is what the League of American Bicyclists uses for its safety training, and it is generally consistent with Effective Cycling. There is a training course available, which I have not taken, which is called "Cycling Savvy". I've seen some of their materials and it also is generally consistent with Effective Cycling. I see the same general principles in other forms, such as "How to Not Get Hit by Cars" which is a website and not a good "handle". I'm sure there are others, and in other languages besides English.
I consider "A rose is a rose" and "words matter" to both be valid statements in the messy, gray world we live in. With those seemingly inconsistent thoughts in mind, my recommendation would be to continue to use "Effective Cycling" for the general tradition of riding bicycles on roads with motor vehicles in the safest way possible for the infrastructure that is present at the time and place of a given journey. (The only drawback I see is that some people associate Effective Cycling with John Forester and then reject anything associated with him.) Since Smart Cycling and Cycling Savvy are specific, defined educational courses they should be the "handles" for those packages.
Use of the term Effective Cycling in my mind does not preclude in any way changes to adapt to new conditions and making changes to more clearly define and communicate good practices. It already exists.
However, "words matter" really means that people can communicate clearly and effectively.. if the stigma associated with VC is too much for people, then a term like CSC or other will come to the fore. Language is just what we all agree on.
(A brief aside to illustrate some of my context. In the 60's an industrial control product called a "programmable controller" was developed to, essentially, replace relay-based control systems. We all called them PC's. Along came the "personal computer" which of course was a PC, and those of us in the industrial world had to adapt.. the gorilla sat where he wanted and we now call the industrial controllers "programmable logic controllers" aka PLC.)