The image below and those that follow are screen shots from a presentation by Dr. Peter Furth of Northeastern University and his students, at the Putterham Branch Library in Brookline, Massachusetts on March 14, 2011. In this presentation, they proposed some rather radical changes to arterial streets in South Brookline. I have an introduction to this photo album on my blog. Please read it before looking through the photos.

The image below, with its caption, can fairly be described as fearmongering. It shows a location that is not typical of the project, on a street lined with apartment buildings and with parallel parking, but more than that. The cyclist is correctly riding outside the "door zone" of parked cars. A typical non-cyclist, looking at the photo, will assume that the car behind him is about to collide with him. Clearly it did not, or we would be looking at a more dramatic photo. The idea of "huge danger" appeals to a public that largely has no experience with bicycling beyond childhood, and assumes that the danger is the same for adult cyclists as for children. No crash data were cited in the Northeastern students' presentation.