Originally Posted by
Paul Barnard
The original post didn't appear to come from anyone with any experience or education in riding safely in traffic. Have you ever watched a discussion on bicycling in traffic unfold somewhere other than BF? You know that one person who starts their comment off with "I am a bicyclist too, but..." That's the OP.
Indeed - most people don't understand how cycling in traffic works, at least not without pausing to really think it through.
And many people who own 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.
the antithesis of advocacy.
Except that unfortunately, a lot of current "bike advocacy" is actually pushing the message that ordinary roads are not for bikes.
Providing alternatives to road routings can be great, especially when they can go real distance without 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 compared to what 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 advocates and road redesigners tell us same those very same drivers who can't be trusted with what is right in front 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.
I'd much rather ride through the picture in a designated bike lane - but there's now a pretty substantial voice calling for grade separation, or just being resigned to a road remaining "unusable" - which lets the ignorance of how bikes are supposed to use roads continue.
That ignorance shows up in reaction to the situation of the picture.
Even worse, it also shows up in how unaware many users of designated infrastructure are of the actual nature of the danger at each of its interactions with possible crossing traffic.