I'm a long term cyclist (> 100,000 miles) and I live in the Metro Boston area and have bike commuted into Cambridge before.

I read Effective Cycling a long time ago and took it to heart and I put a large amount of my safety over the years down to following the "Vehicular Cycling" model. Drivers are WAY less likely to honk or yell at you when you follow this model too because you are behaving in a way that is consistent with the rules of the road. In the end the law in 99% of places actually mandates you ride according to Vehicular Cycling.

I don't have a problem with bike lanes but they are all highly imperfect. Boston, MA has a very large # of very very very dangerous bike lanes because the bike lanes encourage/force the cyclist to behave inconsistently with other traffic.

A lot of the bike lane advocates appear to be from the anti-Vehicular cycling.

The problem with a lot of the bike lanes is even they are protected it is impossible for them to protect against collisions at intersections. Most of these bike lanes place the cyclist who is traveling straight off to the right side of the vehicles which are trying to take a right turn at the intersection. This is an absolute disaster in the city and we had a high profile fatality of a woman cyclist a few years ago in Boston that was directly caused by this kind of bike lane.

You can't protect straight traveling cyclists going through an intersection where the cars need to turn right and left. As soon as they get to the intersection the cyclist is placed in the most dangerous place for them.

If the lane is unprotected the cyclist can exit the bike lane and enter the "travel straight" lane of traffic and avoid this. If the bike lane is protected the cyclist might not be able to do this at all and is forced into the "travel straight to the right of the right turning traffic."

If the road designer insists on putting a protected bike lane to the right of the right turning traffic the only thing I see being safe is a stop light for both the cyclists & cars, and the cars can't take a right when the cyclists have a green light and the cyclists can't go straight when the cars have a red light. The cars would have to be given a "No Right turn on Red" as well.

Again my experience is a lot of the advocates of some of this non-vehicular cycling stuff do not have that clear of a picture of what is actually safe because:

- They don't actually ride that much

- They spend a lot of time riding on Multi-Use-Trails instead of roads.

- They use sidewalks a lot of the time and advocate use of sidewalks

- They often think the rules of the road are invalid for cyclists

- Never got a motor cycle license or learned to ride a motorcycle

- Maybe don't drive cars at all

My experience is there is a cavernous gap in behavior between these folks and long term long distance riders & racers. The long term long distance riders & racers fall into vehicular cycling and are very very safe over the years.

This same kind of thing happens with left turns. The Vehicular cycling way to do this is signal left and move across the lanes of traffic as you approach the intersection and get to the left turn lane, just like a car or a truck. I've been doing this for decades safely and without conflict on roads as busy as 8 lanes wide. It works incredibly well. The non-vehicular way (Forrester always called this the "cycling inferiority complex" way of riding) is to hug the right side of the road even if you're in a right turn lane, and then take a left across all the right turning & straight turning traffic in an incredibly dangerous way that is also illegal.

Any cycling behavior that would get you a ticket if you did it on a motorcycle or in a car should be a red flag behavior for you because the ticket would be issued because you were engaging in flagrantly dangerous behavior.

A cyclist who is experienced in Vehicular cycling can move in and out of the bike lanes when they are safe or not safe and get the best of both worlds.