John Forester's Background Including His Stay in a Mental Institution and His Failure in Calculus

Here is some more infrmation on Forester including his stint in the mental institution

My research, much of it involving the C.S. Forester papers at the Humanities Research center at the University of Texas,shows that John Forester came from a somewhat dysfunctional household, much of it the product of his father's obsessive womanizing.

He (John) started as a physics major at UC-Berkeley about 1946. He failed a second-year calculus exam and dropped out of college and worked in a warehouse in Boston for about nine months, then returned to UC-B as an English major, graduating in August, 1951. He went into the Navy in December 1951 and received a medical discharge in August 1952 after being hospitalized for several weeks at the psychiatric unit at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Washington DC.

He married an Englishwoman, Jean Labada Clough Nicholson in September, 1953. A son, Geoffrey R. Forester, was born on 4 June 1954. He now lives in Muncy, PA. John Forester went to work in a steel fabrication factory about the time of his marriage and studied at night at UC-B for a certificate in industrial engineering. With this certificate, he received his P.E. from the State of California, probably in 1956. California no longer licenses P.E.s in industrial engineering, which is primarily a business methods discipline, but does maintain the licenses of those who received their P.E.s before they were eliminated.

In March or April, 1958 a daughter Pamela was born. She died in April (probably 11) 1962 of natural causes. Forester and his family moved from Berkeley to Fullerton in the LA metro area in late 1958. He worked at North American Aviation, and probably other places, got his master's in industrial engineering from Cal State Long Beach in 1964 and started to teach there part-time in the business school. He claims that he was an assistant professor, but his textbook, which came out in January, 1968, just before he moved back north, lists him as a "lecturer."

C.S. had a major stroke in 1965, and he and his second wife Dorothy moved to Fullerton in late 1965. C.S. died in April, 1966. In his will, he left John and his brother each $5,000. About twenty other individuals received testimonial bequeaths worth a total of $25,000. The bulk of the estate, about $700,000, went to Dorothy. John and his brother did receive all the literary properties. Dorthy soon returned to England and severed relations with the Foresters.

The will appears to have tripped him out. Within a year or two he quit his job, left his wife and family (he says because she discouraged his cycling, fearing it would bring the opprobrium of their upper-class neighbors) and moved back north to Palo Alto, where he became a bicycle racer, randonneur, and sports car enthusiast. He wrote an incredibly viscous biography of his father detailing every moral and personality shortcoming.
He could not get it published then and sat on it to 1987, when be had a brief excerpt published in American Scholar. In 2000 the whole thing was self-published in a 2-volume set limited to 250 sets. This is the last sentence in the 2000 postscript, which closes out the 800-plus pages:

"I can honestly write that I am better known in my field than my father was in his."

He worked at Xerox in 1970-71, but got fired in 1971. He was working at another high-tech firm in 1972. In 1972 he met Dorris L. Taylor, a cyclist and biochemist visiting from Minneapolis. he apparently talked her and her two daughters into moving to California. In late 1972 he became involved in cycle advocacy and in 1973 he quit work for what he says he thought would be two years full-time work in cycle advocacy while Taylor supported him.
He has, apparently, never worked as an employee since. In 1998 he and Taylor split up (she moved to Fort Collins, CO) and he moved to the San Diego suburb of Lemon Grove. He may be in financial straights; the Sunnyvale house he sold in 1998 had an assessed value of $390,000, while the sales price of the Lemon Grove house was only $143,000; it has only two bedrooms, one and a half baths, and 1043 sq. ft. and was built in 1950.

Johnson v Derby Night time visibility, bicycles and John Forestor

In this accident I represented the Cycling Company, Derby, in a lawsuit brought by an individual who was driving a bike at night dressed in black down a 15 degree slope without a light. The cyclist hit the rear of a jeep that turned in front of him and was severely disfigured after the jeep drove off and the cyclist was again struck by another vehicle. The Plaintiff claimed that the bike company should have forced him to ride with a light on his bike and that the bike company was responsible for the injuries sustained by the Plaintiff. 

The plaintiff was represented by one John Forestor a self proclaimed Bicycling Transportation Engineer. The lay jury jury bought Forestor's diatribe of junk science and awarded a Plaintiffs verdict in the action thus blaming the bike company for not forcing the cyclist to use a light at night. Forestor immediately blamed me for the verdict and launched a vicious personal attack against me that still goes on on his web site. 

Since that time I have been urged by several Engineers familiar with Forester's personal attacks to respond more forcefully to his diatribes. Since 1993 I have received numerous projects where Forester was retained and immediately the other side of the action retained me.

I have been reluctant to criticize his personal attacks because frankly they have been very good for business for my Engineering firm. So rather than personally respond to his attacks I  will open this blog for anyone who has had experience with Mr Forestor and would like to add their experiences to this post.

Reconstructing Bicycle accidents at night requires a solid knowledge of visibility and conspicuity. 

Bicycles are sold with a retroreflector system that enables a cyclist to be seen by the motorist at a distance of over 600 feet on  low beams. In the United States, the law states that Bicycles are sold without lights but with the retroreflector system.

Why Bother with Bicycle Wrecks

For close to 35 years I have spent my Professional Engineering career determining what causes bicycle accidents. Why bother you would ask? The primary reason I have devoted so much of my career to this issue is simple. The Engineering reasons for these type of accidents can then be used to make cycling safer for everyone. When I can determine that some roadway design contributes to an accident I can then get that information out to the Engineering Design community. If I determine that some type of product defect is the reason the accident has occurred than I can get that information to other engineers or industry personel.

Through the years major adjustments have been made from this work. Point of Sale instructions in the bicycle retail industry has been initiated for Independent Bicycle Dealers (IBD). While most "big box" retailers have ignored the industry standards that the IBD's have put in place it is my hope that eventually they will also initiate these necessary standards.

I have been involved in many controversial cases and projects through the years. I hope to use this forum to comment on some of these and would invite readers to add their comments as well. I will begin with my next posting on an analysis of the Johnson Vs Derby Case that was tried in 1993.