I still remember feeling on that first ride as though I’d never make it, but I did.
After riding awhile and trying to make every effort possible to run like a scared rabbit trying to not get in the way of any vehicles, I started realizing that if I applied the rules of traffic and acted like I belonged there, the vast majority of drivers didn’t mind me being there at all and over the years my commute got exponentially easier.

So I’ve been there too. If I can do it, anyone can as there’s nothing special about me, or any other VCers when it comes to riding a bike. We all got here a little at a time.
If you can understand the rules well enough to maneuver a car on the streets in a safe and prudent manner, you should have no problem with a bike, either. Again, you just have to want to.

To answer your question about the 8yo, I wouldn’t let any young child ride alone across any big city, bike lanes or not. Only a fool would allow that. Ain’t no way I’m lettin’ MY 8yo out of my sight on the streets or trails of Dallas, and hopefully you wouldn’t let yours either. So to say a bike lane system needs to be designed for 8yo’s is laughable at best.
Not to mention that to design a bike lane system that’s suitable for an 8yo to traverse Dallas in a truly safe way would likely be useless to most adult riders trying to actually get somewhere in a timely manner.
Adults ride bikes with gears combos that allow for flat road travel at 20-30mph, not at the speeds an 8yo would ride, and in Copenhagen they mostly ride slow, heavy, up-right 3 speed bikes. Those are not what commuters are riding here, so why do we want a system modeled on that type of riding?

I understand what you mean about some people that are fearful of cars behind them and use it as an excuse to not ever ride, but have you attempted to show them how much less safe they’d be on a segregated bike lane while crossing our big city intersections? I will agree that the stats show a slight decrease in cyclists being struck from behind while riding between intersections in a bike lane, but that number is more than made up for AT the intersections. 30 years worth of stats from Europe confirm it.

So why can’t we cherry-pick only the best parts of their bike lane system and combine it with the best parts of VC riding and create a truly great bike transportation system that actually IS safer all the way around for everybody?
While at the same time undertaking a real driver education campaign aimed at vastly increasing driver awareness of cyclist and our Rights to the road so that people might forget the stereotype that keeps so many people too fearful to ride? Or are they just victims of their own fear and un-teachable as to what the actual threats are?

Why do we have to settle for something that caters to a generally non-riding, un-educated public? {uneducated relative to real-World bike safety, anyways}
It’s like this. There are drivers out there who are fearful of driving on the expressway too, but we don’t cater to them and design 30mph freeways to make sure they feel extra safe, do we? No, we don’t. We expect people to be smart enough to be able to use a 60+mph freeway thats designed to get adults around in an adult World at adult speeds, and adult bike commuters should expect no less from a bike transportation system, either.

Since it seems as though we will be forced to do something different whether we want to or not, can you at least agree that if people start getting hit in bike lanes at intersections that there will then be a push to have them removed?
Remember, Dallas drivers are like old dogs. They don’t learn new tricks very easily and learning not to turn across bike lanes would be a pretty big trick for them to learn.
So we should expect casualties from this experiment. Problem is, they’ll most likely be those newbie riders who are too afraid to ride as it is now, but will suddenly think they are safe when they see the stripes of paint go down.

I’m a pretty aggressive rider and I have no problem riding as a vehicle most of the time. This is not about me or my comfort level. This is about getting the other 99% of potential riders out there out of their cars and using bikes for short trips where it makes no sense to drive. Those people, which include members of my own family, flat out refuse to ride out of fear of being hit. You and all the other VCers need to realize this is not about you and your comfort level. This is about people who aren’t “cyclists”, they are people who happen to ride bikes. The roads with sharrows, bike lane, bikeways etc need to be built for them, not necessarily us. The idea that everyone has to be trained to be hard core riders before they can ride means we’ll never get there. As Enrique Peñalosa said a few weeks ago, “If an eight year old can’t safely ride on the bike route, it is not a say bikeway.” Would YOU let your eight year old ride in on Dallas streets?

In America, we build roads to with one purpose: to move cars quickly. All other purposes are secondary. This fear from the general public about riding is a response to that. Look at how countries like Holland and Denmark, with near majorities biking for transportation every day, build their bike facilities. They are safe enough for children and adults alike. America, including Dallas, have tried it your way for decades with a stagnant 1-2% bike commuter rate. I’d say the numbers speak for themselves. You approach is a failure. Let’s try something different and see what happens. It can’t be any worse.

Everyone is a beginner at one time. If I, or anyone else can ride VC, you can too.
The only thing different about any of us that are out there now, is that we were willing to try it and stick with it, and have come to learn via first hand experience that, for the most part, people like Forrester are spot-on correct.
Is there a need for bike lanes in SOME places? Sure. Of course there is.
No ones disputing that at all. We need them on all the big streets so we can get across town as directly as people in cars do, and we need sharrows at all intersections to eliminate almost all of the “right hook” type accidents that bike lane advocates seem to be so willing to accept.
We don’t need them on small streets streets like White Rock Trail {nice safe 22′ lanes}, but a quarter mile over on Skillman with 12′ lanes? You bet! Sign me up! I’ll support one there for sure. The entire right lane on both sides will do nicely, thanks.

The second is cultural. Bicycles may have a right to the road but many a cyclist will share him or her story with you about being verbally and at times physically harassed by drivers. I agree with you that the more cyclists there are on the road, the more accepted they’ll be by the general driving public. In fact, there is a correlation between the number of cyclists on the road and the number of cycling fatalities per capita. However without proper cycling infrastructure that make the average cyclist feel safe, only a hard core group will make it out on the road.

Even though it is not widely enforced or accepted, I believe that in most urban environments the right of way is ceded to to the smaller entity. Bikes yield to pedestrians cars to bikes etc. The only thing we don’t have here is lots of bikes in the street.

So, lets get out there.