Originally Posted by UniChris

Indeed - most people don't understand how cycling in traffic works, at least not without pausing to really think it through.

And many people whomown bikes don't ride them on the road enough to understand how to do so safely. One could almost observe that the more non-road options there are, the more road-ignorant bike owners one is going to find.



Except that unfortunately, a lot of current "bike advocacy" is actually pushing the message that roads are not for bikes.

Providing alternatives to road routings can be great, especially when they can go real distance with o interaction, and if they're maintained to be usable. But what tends to get lost is that any time a cyclist on a non-road path interacts with crossing or turning traffic, they do so from a drastically disadvantaged position than they'd be in if they were already on a good road.

We decide drivers can't safely maneuver around obvious, visible cyclists - but then tell ourselves those very same drivers who can't be trusted with what is right in front of the of them, are going to rember to look in an illogical direction to make sure they aren't about to be overtaken by cyclists shooting out of a hidden channel at quite possibly faster than current traffic speed.