Criticism
Forester's system of cycling has drawn criticism as being unsuitable for anyone but skilled, strong riders, with his assessment of skill being based upon speed. Forester's requirement of a sustained speed of 18 miles per hour (29 km/h) requires an energy output of 120 watts, a figure only achievable by 2-3% of the population.
The movement surrounding vehicular cycling has also been criticized for its effect on bicycle advocacy in general. In Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes states that Forester "fought bike lanes, European-style cycletracks, and just about any form of traffic calming", and "saw nothing wrong with sprawl and an auto-dependent lifestyle." Zack Furness is highly critical of vehicular cyclists in One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility, arguing that their criticism of 'political' cyclists "totally ignores all the relevant socioeconomic, physical, material, and cultural factors that influence—and in most cases dictate—everyday transportation choices." Critical Mass co-founder Chris Carlsson describes vehicular cycling as a naive, polarizing "ideology" that "essentially advocates bicyclists should strive to behave like cars on the streets of America."
Read more about this topic: Vehicular Cycling
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)