Not much needed in a "Be Seen" light

Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 10/24/2014 8:28 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:


I'm imagining a lineup of bikes waiting to merge onto the Interstate so
that they can try and make it to the off ramp 2 miles up the road in the
left lane.

"Wet clean up - aisle 3..."

Where it's legal, riding an interstate is not hazardous. I've done
hundreds of miles of it in the western U.S. The shoulder is almost always
rideable. Traffic is often low in such areas, which means one can often
use the right lane if it's smoother than the shoulder. Sight distances
are tremendous, so motorists can see you from nearly a mile back.

The main problem, to me, was the noise. It usually wasn't a pleasant
aesthetic experience. But oddly enough, my wife and daughter who were
riding with me sometimes preferred riding the interstate when I would
have picked some parallel highway.


I did a couple miles of I-90 coming into Montana and it was a bit of a
white knuckle ride. The shoulders still hadn't been swept, so they were
still full of a winter's worth of gravel, sand and lost auto parts. Why was
I riding the shoulder? You mentioned in an earlier post that highways were
much safer than city streets. One of the big reasons for that is that
everybody on the highway is going the same speed and direction. They say
speed kills, but relative speed really kills. With traffic whizzing by at
70 mph, it endangers all road occupants to have somebody jump in there
who's only going 20 and there was way too much traffic on the I-90 that day
to let them "smoothly go around you".

On 10/24/2014 10:09 PM, Ralph Barone wrote:


I did a couple miles of I-90 coming into Montana and it was a bit of a
white knuckle ride. The shoulders still hadn't been swept, so they were
still full of a winter's worth of gravel, sand and lost auto parts. Why was
I riding the shoulder? You mentioned in an earlier post that highways were
much safer than city streets. One of the big reasons for that is that
everybody on the highway is going the same speed and direction. They say
speed kills, but relative speed really kills. With traffic whizzing by at
70 mph, it endangers all road occupants to have somebody jump in there
who's only going 20 and there was way too much traffic on the I-90 that day
to let them "smoothly go around you".

There were a few places where riding the freeways was scary. I remember
one stretch of a few miles coming into Bozeman, MT (I think) from the
east. There was no alternative road, and traffic was fast and thick.
There were parts of the ride in the Columbiana River Gorge where it was
similar. I'd have used an alternative if I had one.

But there were many hundreds of miles where it was just fine, except for
the noise. In fact, I remember us being disappointed that the big
trucks were so conscientiously changing lanes to give us extra room. We
wanted their draft!


--
- Frank Krygowski