Re-reading some old posts from my LiveJournal, I came across one about “cyclist’s left”, and remembered that among the things I learned in my LAB Road I class was yet another name for this type of turn (in addition to cyclist’s left and hook turn): box turn. However, the results I get on Google for “box turn” are ambiguous, with none seeming to refer to the maneuver in question, and the only “cyclist’s left” in the Google results with my meaning is my own citation, though there is an interesting Google Books result discussing bikeway hazards which uses a similar term to discuss a similar, but not identical (because it doesn’t presume the stop), maneuver.

The bikeway hazards result is gives a good illustration of why I hate bike paths and why riding on sidewalks is a bad idea. And yes, it’s by John Forester.

Speaking of which, that reminds me about something I read recently on a Portland bike blog where someone was foaming at the mouth about vehicular cycling. They raised one issue that I felt was interesting, which is that the theory behind the fact that Oregon doesn’t use the dashed stripe at intersections that CA uses is that it reduces the number of right-turn conflict points. Which is probably the only even vaguely sensible reason I’ve heard for it, though I don’t know that I buy it.

But the main thing that annoyed me was that the person was saying that you have to be “highly trained” to ride integrated with car traffic. You do need to be trained, but not “highly trained”. Ten-year-olds can do it; attentive adults can learn it in 1-2 days. Learning to drive takes longer. Anyone who can drive already knows about 75% of what they need to know to cycle. The rest of the effort is in a few cycling-specific issues and overcoming prejudices that don’t really need to ever develop (fear of traffic, inculcated by not knowing how to handle it). Saying that vehicular cycling advocates are requiring that people be “highly trained” is rhetorical trickery of the sort that attempts to conceal blatant falsehood.