Today on Auto Asphyxiation, Lo and Kimberly argue that mainstream U.S. cycling advocacy, has a Forester problem.

Using published training materials, policy debates, and media narratives, we make the case that what’s often sold as “bike safety” is actually a doctrinal system that normalizes risk, individualizes responsibility, and treats injury as an acceptable cost of participation.

At the center of this system is a familiar command:
TAKE THE LANE.

This is a foundational principle.

We interrogate:

Why cycling education continues to center individual confrontation with cars rather than structural protection?

How a litigation-first safety framework prioritizes post-crash blame and lawsuits over universal insurance and prevention?

Why professional-class ecosystems — lawyers, nonprofits, advocacy media, and philanthropy — converge around the same policy logic?

How these models systematically benefit riders with access to time, documentation, and legal representation?

Why working-class, uninsured, and undocumented cyclists absorb the risk while others absorb the moral authority?

This episode is analysis and opinion grounded in publicly available materials and long-standing debates in transportation and urban policy. It does not allege personal misconduct. It questions whether a system that relies on bravery, moral discipline, and courtrooms can honestly be called safety.

If your model of justice requires someone to get hurt first —
that’s not protection.

That’s governance by aftermath.

🎙️ Disagree loudly. Bring sources.

The night before Phil Murphy leaves office, and the bike world still waits for its reckoning

“It was the night before” the last day of New Jersey Governor Murphy’s last day in office, and the emails are stirring. S4834 sits somewhere in the dark, humming quietly. People pretend they’re waiting on the governor when really, they are waiting on themselves. When Murphy signs S4834—

SprawlismL. Lo Sontag