In case of a disagreement, one tries to decide which view is better supported by the facts and reasoning. One who disagrees with a stated opinion needs to present better facts or better reasoning.
Despite all the years of argument, nobody has put up either facts or reasoning to overcome the opinions that I have stated, which is why I tend to state them as facts. If anyone has facts that disprove what I have stated, then let them come forward now -- they have had twenty years to do so and haven't yet done so.
Do you know what reality is? One statement by Phillip K. Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop looking at it, doesn't go away." Why don't we agree on the actual facts and go on from there? So far as I can see, there is no scientific reason not to do that. Then we can go on to try to achieve our different aims within the context of reality, instead of asserting that reality is different from what it is, just to get the pretence of a scientific basis to justify what we want to do.
Many people want a society in which there is much more cycling transportation. As a matter of fact, so do I. I think that cycling is great sport, useful transportation, and ecologically benign, and that many people, which means society as a whole, would benefit if they did more of it. However, many of those with this aim are either convinced that the public can't stand the truth about cycling, or, themselves, cannot stand the truth about cycling, so they lie about reality in order to promote their ends. That is what I object to, both because it is a lie and because that lie has bad consequences for cyclists.
One would think that the lie that would attract more people to cycling would be that cycling is much safer than it is. But that is not the lie that is promoted. The lie that is promoted has two parts: first, that cycling is much more dangerous than it actually is, and, second, that the greatest danger is one that is actually rather minor. This seemingly paradoxical lie works only because we have the means to pretend to protect people from this largely imaginary and invented danger. That is, we can produce bikeways. This so-called solution to an imaginary danger was invented by motorists to get cyclists off the roads.
When we promote bikeways through this lie we do three bad things for cyclists.
What we need to do is to accept reality as it is and work out a program that encourages cycling in the real world that we must live in. That is the only way to long-term success. Pretending that the world is different from what it is leads to distortions and, possibly, disaster. Producing that program has been my goal for over twenty years, and, instead, I have been forced to spend most of those two decades arguing over lies.
John Forester
726 Madrone Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086-3041.
408-734-9426
E-mail: forester@ccnet.com