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From: tsmith@laidbak.UUCP (Tim Smith)
Newsgroups: net.bicycle
Subject: Effective Cycling
Message-ID: <180@laidbak.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Oct-83 02:26:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: laidbak.180
Posted: Sun Oct 16 02:26:06 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Oct-83 23:35:11 EDT
Organization: LAI, Westmont, IL
Lines: 33


How many cyclists out there have read (or even heard of)
"Effective Cycling", by John Forester? It's a book, which
has been floating around now for a few years in a spiral-
bound offset version. I have heard that it is to be published
"officially" by MIT Press this fall. Anyone seen it yet?

Forester is a controversial guy in cycling circles. His basic
tenet is that cyclists should behave, on the road, just as
motorists do, and should have all the rights and responsibilities
of motorists. That means you don't run red lights, or *flagrantly*
run stop signs (we all do it slowly), you always ride on the
right, and you make left turns just as the cars do, unless that
is completely impossible, in which case you become a pedestrian,
and behave like a pedestrian.

This would hardly be a controversial position in Europe, or most
of the rest of the world, but in the USA, for various reasons,
most adult cyclists feel free to ride however they please. On a
typical day in Evanston, Illinois (a town with a LOT of cycles),
I will meet 10 or so wrong-way riders, see at least 15 cyclists
casually run red lights at full speed, watch 20-30 cyclists riding
on the sidewalks (these are just the ADULTS I'm counting), and
I will feel much more threatened by the other cyclists I encounter
than by automobiles.

Try to get ahold of a copy of "Effective Cycling". Some of
it is pretty esoteric, especially Forester's novel theories on the
physiology of cycling, but there is a good deal of very practical
and well-though-out advice in it too.

-Tim Smith (...!laidbak!tsmith)