From: JForester@cup.portal.com (John - Forester)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc
Subject: Turning left (Denmark)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 16:40:04 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

   I do not know the history of the Danish law that forbids cyclists
from making the vehicular-style left turn, but nobody who knows seems
to have answered this question. Therefore, I submit the following
explanation that is based on the same situation as it occurred in the
U.S.A., supplemented with an anecdote about Danish traffic
researchers and that turn.

   The quick explanation of the prohibition of the vehicular-style
left turn is the cyclist-inferiority superstition: the belief that
the cyclist who operates on roads with motor traffic will either
delay the cars, which is Sin, or will be crushed, which is Death, and
the wages of Sin is Death. The merge to the center of the road that
must be part of the left-turn movement is seen as putting the cyclist
into the place of greatest danger; therefore it must be prohibited.
The idea that the curb-lane left turn is much more dangerous does not
occur to people afflicted with this superstition, because they see
the cyclist as "being in the line of fire" for a much shorter period
of time. These people see cyclists as ducks and motor vehicles as
shotgun pellets, the ones with no knowledge of their peril and unable
to evade their fate, the others mindless weapons discharged in
hostility. In other words, the idea that both cyclists and motorists
have control of their destinies and are cooperatively obeying a
single set of rules doesn't enter their minds.

   At Velo Mondiale in Montreal in September, 1992, two researchers
sponsored by the Danish traffic authorities presented reports of
their current research and activities. The first showed attempts to
rectify the troubles with bicycle sidewalks at intersections. These
attempts first lowered the sidewalk to road level as it approached
the intersection, upon which it was discovered that the motor and
bicycle traffic mixed together. Therefore, a set of raised bumps was
then installed to prevent this mixing. The researchers had no idea
that the raised bumps performed exactly the same task as the curb
that they had just removed, so they were exactly back where they
started. The second researcher showed (by slide pictures) the
facility improvements in a Danish city, including blue-painted bike
lanes that extended straight through intersections. He said that
cyclists were now learning how to ride correctly, showing a slide of
a cyclist making a curb-lane left turn, and then moving on to the
next slide and subject. I called him back, saying that that cyclist
was moving. So she was, just at the point of the left turn, leaned
over and with both feet on the pedals, while looming over her left
shoulder was a bus. Neither researcher had the slightest idea that
turning left in front of overtaking motor traffic was a dangerous
movement. 

   In the U.S. the cyclist-inferiority superstition was created by
the motoring establishment at a time when practically every adult
could drive a car and there were practically no adult cyclists.
Selfishness was the cause and ignorance allowed selfishness to win.
However, most bicycle advocates believed this superstition because
they were raised with it and taught it, and to obey it appeared to be
paying proper respect to the safety of cyclists. Only when the true
accident facts were discovered was it generally discredited.

   Holland has been the leader with this superstition in Europe, with
Denmark and Germany following. The Dutch officials deny that their
bike path program was motivated by the desire to get cyclists off the
roads, but one result of the Dutch program is to prohibit cyclists
from the top three classes of road. If that wasn't intended, then why
did it occur? So I suspect that in Denmark, as in Holland, the route
to prohibiting vehicular-style cycling (in particular the vehicular-
style left turn) occurred for the same reasons as it was tried in the
U.S., but was delayed by the time between the general adoption of
motoring in each nation, and facilitated by the much more rapid
adoption of general motoring in Holland than in the U.S. (say 50
years in the U.S., only 15 in Holland), once the movement started.
Perhaps the anti-cycling movement occurred with less push from
motorists, and it probably had more pull from cyclists. The rapid
adoption of motoring brought the problems of motoring directly to
many people who had not grown up with it and didn't understand it,
and one of those problems is the bicycle problem, for which the
cyclist-inferiority superstition is an apparent solution. 

JForester@cup.portal.com               John Forester
                                       726 Madrone Ave
408-734-9426                           Sunnyvale CA 94086 USA 
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc