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.
Thanks for keeping up the good fight for all of us. You have a compelling voice and people are listening. I see baby steps taking place in my west coast town. Our city council has compiled a Bicycle Master Plan . . . not much happening except for discussions, but everything needs a beginning.
FWIW, my kids are not ready for cycletracks with regular intersections.
DC cycletrack.
https://vimeo.com/23743067
Seems like this cycle track madness in the video could be fixed by retiming lights… giving cyclists and pedestrians a time to go straight across while no cars can turn. Just shows how you can’t simply install a great cycle track, expecting things to magically be amazing, yet not think about what people are going to do at the intersection when they all get the green light or walk signal at the same time.
Distracted drivers are a problem for everyone, not just bicyclists. Building infrastructure for bicyclists, but leaving peds and motorists to fend for themselves seems like an especially narrowsighted thing to do. Why should any city fund bicycling projects when it really out to be funding project that eliminate bad driving, bad behaviors, that kill and maim everyone – never mind damage public property?
Interestingly enough bike lanes and cycletracks have been proven to reduce pedestrian fatalities in a NYC study (Prospect Park bike lanes).
Pedestrians have protection in the form of sidewalks. Not impenetrable, but neither is the planter-protected cycletrack. As for those poor motorists tho have to “fend for themselves”… if you’ve got a clever idea to protect motorists from each other, please enlighten us.
You’re right, no amount of education can lead to safer cycling. No, wait, you’re wrong. I won’t argue that better infrastructure will go a long way to helping fix the problem, but your deliberately obtuse attitude may well get you killed.
There’s “education” and there’s education. “Education” has been the answer for bicycle safety for decades, at least as long as I’ve been paying attention. 1973-2003, pretty much all about “education”. And the result of that “education” was slowly declining safety and ride share. So Ms. Face is quite correct — we tried education, it did not fix the problem. And it turns out that your misquoting of Ms. Face is ALSO quite correct — we tried “education”, and it did not lead to safer cycling, as measured in this country with real people (who are sometimes resistant to “education” — but safety is one of those things that has to work in practice, not just in theory, and people who fail to be easy to educate is one of those messy real-world problems).
If you’re trying to make a point, it helps to not misquote people, and it also helps to not be flat wrong. Why am I so impolite? Because scaring people off of bikes kills a few of those scared people early, for lack of exercise. Individually it increases your annual mortality risk by about 25% (for “education”, see OECD, Cycling, Health, and Safety, pdf page 44, you can read it online), summed over the US population it’s a bigger public health problem than smoking. You’d think that “educated” people would already know this.
We have a segregated bike lane here in Lisbon similar to the one with planters in your comic strip, but unfortunately a speeding car can easily cross the separator and still end up in the cycle lane. This has happened here… Hopefully no one was riding at those spots of the cycle lane when the cars crashed into it…