Redesign
When I bicycle around Boston it’s mostly vehicularly. While the rules of the road generally give some order to the roads- I always need be extra vigilant and assume drivers don’t see me.
I’m experienced, follow the rules of the road, and best practices for bicycling. I can do everything in my power- but there’s no barrier if a driver is inattentive.
It is obvious that there is a better way. 
But why so much resistance to making the dream a reality?
No amount of education can fix an unequal match of people riding bikes next to cars. And only re-designing the roads will invite more people to ride a bicycle.
Hey. I just arrived from Mexico. I am writing a scientific paper on how all kinds of people preffer separated bike ways (cycletracks). I ride on week days to my university (I could say I’m a experienced cyclist), and the only time I feel safe, is on the south-west corridor…
I always enjoy your comic. You’re a very talented artist.
In this one, there seems to be an apparent disconnect between some of the drawings and the text, and I wonder if that’s intentional and I’m missing the irony or if it’s really meant to be that way.
Two examples:
1. You say that you “bicycle vehicularly” but the accompanying drawing shows you in a far-to-right position. This is obviously not where people drive their vehicles, so these send the opposite message. If it’s meant to be ironic, do you mean that you actually do drive vehicularly and are illustrating what would be expected to happen if you didn’t, or is there a misunderstanding of what it means to operate like all the other vehicles on the road?
2. In the “damn you paint” drawing, you show a motorist making a right turn across the bike lane and the obvious conflict that naturally occurs, but then in the “My dream” drawing, you show a separated facility with no ability for motorists to make any turns of any kind. Is this meant to be ironic and illustrate the obvious impossibility of complete separation of facilities, or are you truly trying to communicate that roads should be built that don’t allow motorists to enter or exit the roadway?
And adding insult to injury the Globe jerk journalist Jeff Jacoby – jacoby@globe.com – has called for bicyclists to stay off the busy streets (https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/09/01/boston-roads-aren-meant-for-bicycles/a6RRmhYUEJgHYwHnWsSJhO/story.html ). Please let the editor Brain McGrory – mcgrory@globe.com – know how wrong he is.
Helmet mirror (hubbubonline.com is the best) and a loud horn (loudbicycle.com) help a lot
If you’re busy fiddling with a horn, you’re missing a great opportunity to save your bacon by using your brakes instead. You sound like a statistic waiting to happen.
I think you could have phrased it a little more politely, but I agree. The same is also true when driving, of course. If you compare the chain of events that must go right for the horn to be effective, versus acting immediately with your own brakes, it’s pretty clear which is the better bet, and which one you should practice so that you always do it automatically. There’s a corollary to this — if you’re driving and you hear a horn, you should practice always braking. If you take time to think, you’ll take too long, so you should always hit your brakes, because that is your best bet to reduce the severity of whatever bad thing is about to happen (and it does not increase your legal exposure — if someone tailgating honks their horn and they run into you because you hit your brakes hard, the default assumption is that they are at fault, and you have a ready explanation for your actions right here. In some states honking-for-hurry is letter-of-the-law illegal, because being impatient is not a safety issue.)
Riding with a camera has been instructive; I managed to capture a panic stop and I don’t think I could have even controlled the bicycle through the stop if I took a hand off the grips to sound a horn (the winter bar mitts don’t help). It turns out yelling is also an option: https://vimeo.com/111805931
I love the politician’s backward helmet! Ha!