On 5/19/2019 6:56 AM, Duane wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 8:55:35 PM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:

I wouldn't assign ulterior motives to people who feel very uncomfortable
riding around traffic.

+1. There are some roads that are objectively dangerous to ride on. We
have several such going out of town. On the worst of these dangerous
roads, there are trucks thundering along this narrow country road in both
directions at maximum permitted speed, and a hard shoulder 12in wide at
best, disappearing totally in some places. I've been on it, and it's an
unpleasant ride with trucks thundering 18in max from your shoulders. You
can't take the lane either, because there won't be enough space for the
truck behind you to slow to your speed, and he can't pass you in the
opposite lane because trucks are thundering towards him in that lane. I
refused to ride on it with the police superintendent for this area, and a
while later he was killed cycling on that road. Think on it: who should
know the safe roads better than the police superintendent?

There are some places it simply isn't smart to ride a bicycle. Morons
like Krygowski screeching "Danger! Danger!" and "Take the lane!" don't
help; instead they leave the impression that cyclists are a bunch of
reckless idiots antisocially endangering other people's lives by their
insistence on riding where the speed differential is simply too large and
the traffic too heavy and the sightlines for drivers too short.

In any event, cyclists always have other choices, recreational cyclists
admittedly more than commuters. A bus driver spoke to me at the
supermarket about a four-seasons commuter on one of his routes, a very
narrow twisty road with many unsighted corners, asking me to speak to the
fellow about the danger. I did, and he said, "I'm on that road because
all the bus drivers and motor commuters know me and look out for me. The
only alternative is the main drag to the city--" he watched me shudder
"--and the road past the airport." That bit left me speechless, not a
common occurrence. I've been on both the roads he rejected, and the only
safe way to go on them is in huge convoys of cycles, as on for instance
charity rides, with several big SUVs spaced out behind to break the speed
of the normal motor traffic. On one such ride I joined, the organisers
thought five ambulances necessary, and I couldn't help wondering what
Franki-boy would say to them. I also heard insurance was hell to get,
with some insurers simply refusing even to quote.

The small country road the town's premier bicycle-commuter considers
"safer", we cross and recross on many small country lane rides. At one
point on an otherwise really good workout ride in pretty surroundings on
smooth roads with almost zero traffic, you need to ride for a couple of
hundred yards on it, and somebody never fails to have a tense moment with
a car or a truck on it even in those couple of hundred yards because we
enter just after a blind corner, and the cars are travelling at a speed
that makes it difficult for them to slow to our speed, and there's no
shoulder so perforce we're in the lane, or already in the middle of the
road because we want to turn across the oncoming traffic (coming around
another unsighted corner; some who're otherwise keen just won't ride with
us if the route will take us onto that road. At several times of the day,
even just crossing that road, what with its many blind hills and blind
corners, on the country lanes that cross it, can take ten minutes before
there's a break in the traffic long enough to cross.

There's another ride, on an even smaller country road, but fast and
wide-sweeping so that cars can see you a long way off and slow
appropriately, which requires one to be on the dangerous road (the one
the admirable commuter prefers to even more dangerous roads) only for
about fifty yards before one of our small lanes turns off it, but we go
there only on Sundays when everyone else is in church (this is a Catholic
country, still) because those 50 yards lie between two black spots (a
black spot is the scene of regular automobile accidents, because the road
is intrinsically dangerous, and the road authorities put up warning
boards with a black spot on them).

It may sound like I'd better ride intervals around my orchard, but in
fact the majority of miles around here are on small, safe lanes**, all of
them tarmac-topped. Since we're recreational riders, we don't mind
mapping routes that keep us off the six dangerous roads out of town*.
It's not worth the stress of going on them. I ran into an old pedalpal
with whom I'd lost contact and he reminisced about how thirty years ago
we used to go on three of those six roads (the other three were already
too dangerous) after dinner in the summer, returning at about midnight
when it was pitch dark, with only the inadequate bicycle lamps of the
period, because there was almost no traffic and what there was proceeded
at a reasonable speed, about half the rate they drive at today; he went
out on one of those roads in broad daylight the other day and in less
than three miles experienced so many close passes of trucks and cars that
he turned off the main road and continued on the lanes. He said, "I'm
cycling for my heart. Man, I was praying for Baxter's Bridge to come up
so I could get the **** out of that Death Rally. I don't need that
stress." I understand how he feels. A favourite downhill ride of mine
ends on that road only a few hundred yards from town, but rather than
ride on that road, I turn around and slog back up the hill and go home
the long, hard but stressless way (or at least, via my HRM, in control of the stress).

The point I'm trying to make is that if you choose your routes well, the
usual amount of common sense and alertness an adult should possess will
keep you safe and make your rides a joy rather than a chore. There is no
need to force your way in where you're not wanted by people going about
their business at speeds you cannot and don't want to achieve.

Andre Jute
Some places "taking the lane" is a suicide note

*Beside one of which a few years ago a wooden cross was planted in memory
of one "John Forester". It's a road on part of which cyclists who want to
live "take the ditch", which is three feet wide, only a foot deep, and
paved, quite pleasant really in dry weather. Makes one wonder whether the
memorial is for that John Forester.

**Doesn't mean you don't need to take care; you had better: a schoolboy
was killed on his bike on one of my favourite downhills when at the
bottom of the hill he met an oncoming car whose driver never saw him
around the curve until it was far too late.



I’ll +1 your +1.


Oh jeez, something Jute wrote actually made sense.