I checked out Forester's "Effective Cycling" and found it much too dry and tedious. I hoped there was some variant out there that was easier to digest. I think "The Art of Urban Cycling" is kind of that, but not quite. Has anyone read this, who knows the ins & outs better than I do? I've had the Road I, and what I've seen on Bike Forums and another advocacy group led me to think that there is some vehement fight going on but it's not clear to me just what it is about. Something to do with Forester divorcing himself from the Bike League after they adopted his principles into the Road I course. This book seems to be part of all that.

For example this section on stop signs. Hurst starts off by saying vehicular cyclists are too inflexible about their rules and don't allow for situational variances. He basically says it's ok to run stop signs if you are really really careful about it and experienced and do it slowly. That's ridiculous. That's like telling my almost-teenage daughter, when she is learning to drive, that it's ok to run stop signs once in a while if she's really careful about it and no one is watchig.

I don't want to start a flame war here like I've seen spring up at the drop of a match on Bike Forums, but could someone enlighten me, what exactly is the controversy? I kind of get the feeling it's just a matter of semantics...