If you’ve taken the CyclingSavvy course, you’ll recall the video of John Alexander’s bicycle ride across a huge highway interchange. At less than 10 miles per hour, on an Elektra Townie bicycle.
If you haven’t seen the video, watch it here, and relax. John’s bicycle ride was boring, not daring.
John — and Keri Caffrey, riding behind him with cameras to record it all — had the road almost entirely to themselves, through thoughtful choice of lane position, and by taking advantage of traffic-signal timing.
My own gnarly bicycle riding challenge
I face a similar situation later this month. I have two doctor’s appointments about a mile apart. By far the shortest route between the two doctors’ offices passes through a similar huge highway interchange. I could take a much longer way there, and this longer ride would also include backtracking on a poison-ivy-infested sidewalk.
On Monday, I checked out the route in a car, with a dashcam running:
OK, here’s a challenge for you:
How would you ride this?
Would you ride it at all?
Have a look in Google maps
The image below shows my route, from right to left, in Google Maps. (When I drove, I went straight through on Route 9 rather than turning into William Street. That doesn’t change anything important.)
Google will let me share the location but not the route information. Here’s the location in Google Maps. You can play around with Google Street View and get a closer look.
Not familiar with Street View? If you’re using a computer, click on Google Dude, the yellow fellow in the lower right corner of Google Maps. Drag the green fog under his feet to any street that lights up in blue, release the mouse button, and there you are.
You can move around using the the keyboard’s arrow buttons. The right and left buttons turn you around. The down button is your reverse gear, up button moves you forward. Or click on the image and drag with the mouse.
Once you’ve dropped your Dude, there’s a “compass” in the lower right corner that also makes it easy to turn around:
Once I dropped Google Dude on the road, I spun the compass to point Dude in the direction I’ll be riding next week. I clicked on the street to move forward, and stand with Dude in the middle of any road.
The arrow in the black box at the upper left corner of the screen takes you back to the overhead view.
On a tablet or smartphone, you can tap and swipe the screen to access these same features.
This bicycle ride is possible!
I have discussed this route with a few other people and found at least two, maybe, three different ways to manage it. I don’t consider the ride difficult even for a novice cyclist, but savvy strategies can make it much more convenient. (Hint: see my description of John Alexander’s ride above.)
Please post comments and suggestions. I’ll get back to you in a couple of weeks with video of my ride.
I love to ride my bicycle, but I have my limits. Arriving at the doctors’ offices drenched in sweat during a pandemic or with rain would exceed those limits! If necessary, I’ll ride the route on a different day to shoot the video.
Your turn now.
I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this ride.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Route-9-fallback.jpg395702John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2020-08-14 11:55:362024-01-03 17:50:01Would You Ride A Bicycle Through Here?
The city of Palo Alto, California, had decided it wanted bikeways. The city got them by putting up signage, requiring bicyclists to ride on the sidewalks. Forester tried them and found them dangerous at very ordinary cycling speeds of 10-12 mph, and so he chronicled the hazards in a two-page article.
Forester cited two fatal bike/pedestrian collisions to underscore the danger of mixing bicycles and pedestrians. He wrote about turning conflicts, poor sight distances at driveway intersections, and the impossibility of making a safe and sensible left turn. Forester wrote that he hoped to get arrested, so he could challenge the city’s sidewalk requirement.
That article sparked an epiphany for me. Until then, I’d dreamed of sidepaths along all my favorite roads. Three feet wide, and just for me! Wheeeeee!
The epiphany was, “Be careful what you wish for.” Because even a city as sophisticated as Palo Alto got it completely wrong.
I learned: Sometimes, a well-intentioned intervention is far worse than leaving well enough alone. And that is just the beginning of what I learned from John Forester.
Forester died on April 19, half a year shy of his 91st birthday. The cause of death was a lingering flu, not suspected to be Covid-19. Forester left behind nearly 50 years of immense contributions to the cycling community, in ways that weren’t even imaginable before he articulated them.
My own Forester-related epiphany pales in comparison to those of many thousands of others. I was already a bike rider. Forester made me a better bike rider. Others were liberated to use their bikes to go anywhere, when they previously couldn’t.
Independent mobility for a legally blind person
No one has expressed this better than Eli Damon, a resident of western Massachusetts whose eyesight is not good enough for him to get a driver’s license:
Socializing was especially difficult for me for many reasons, but an important one was that my mobility limitations hindered my ability to act spontaneously or to interact with others on an equal basis. . . . Asking for a ride . . . left me in a constantly dependent and inferior social position. I was lonely and isolated. . . .
. . . My principal social outlet [in 2005] was my weekly choir practice, which . . . was fifteen miles away (ten miles was my limit at the time) on unfamiliar, difficult, scary roads, so biking seemed impossible. I was too far out of the way for other members of the choir to pick me up. There were no buses that could take me.
And Damon had lost his ride to the choir practice.
He found a cycling book that had been given to him.
Eli Damon’s copy of Effective Cycling, 6th Edition
In desperation, I dug the book out and started reading it, hoping to find a clue to my mobility problem. The book was Effective Cycling, by John Forester.
As I read the book, I became very excited. It suggested that I should ride my bike according to the same rules drivers of motor vehicles use and that I should stay away from the edge of the road, sometimes riding in the center or even on the left side of a lane, thus occupying the entire lane. I knew that the designs of roads provided a simple and predictable environment for motorists to travel with ease and flexibility. If I could use the roads in the same manner on a bike, then I could go anywhere with the same ease and flexibility. This was a totally new concept to me, and I was somewhat skeptical of it, but I recognized its immense potential.
I quickly became comfortable riding assertively on small quiet roads. I advanced my testing to bigger, busier roads. And then even bigger, even busier roads. . . I was ready to take on the scariest road I knew of: Route 9 in Hadley, a major four-lane arterial.
. . .
Eli Damon rides Route 9 in Hadley, Massachusetts
It was as if I was no longer disabled. . . I was still [legally] blind, but ignorance, not blindness, had been my disability all along. I had been healed. I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I could do all of the normal things that other people did. I could live a full, normal life. I could go to choir practice.
And yet, Forester made many enemies in bicycling, thanks to a famously abrasive temperament. Sadly, Forester’s detractors are mercilessly dancing on his grave.
For years, Forester’s detractors have shamelessly mischaracterized his opinions with demeaning distortions and outright falsehoods. Some have written hit pieces disguised as obituaries. One obit called Forester a “Dinosaur” in the headline.
John Forester’s contributions . . . far outweigh those of his detractors.
A man who gives legally blind people independent mobility deserves a better remembrance than that.
More like this:
“John’s contributions to bicycling — as transportation, recreation, sport, a vehicle for fitness, social interaction, and discovery — far outweigh those of his detractors, wrote Pete Van Nuys, executive director of the Orange County (California) Bicycle Coalition. “John stood for, and rode for, human dignity and equality. He advocated respect for law and common sense; he trusted civility over fearmongering; he promoted responsibility of the individual above government overreach.”
Yes, one had to look past Forester’s famously abrasive temperament to get the value he offered. But there was immense value.
Because what Forester did was far better than complaining about bad bicycle facilities. He gave us the vocabulary and the framing to understand good versus bad facilities, good versus bad riding, and the root causes of crashes. He gave us the revelation that we could control the behavior of other road users to make ourselves safer. We didn’t have to be passive victims. We could create our own success on the road. On almost any road. Today.
That vocabulary and framing didn’t exist before Forester. If I may exaggerate only slightly to make the point, how good a chemist could you be if you didn’t have the periodic table of the elements?
Before John Forester, we were all road sneaks.
Before Forester, almost every bicyclist rode in a style we call “road sneak,” hiding from other traffic, believing s/he didn’t belong, and even hoping to go unnoticed. Forester replaced all that with a concept well articulated by one of his best instructors, the late Steve Schmitt: “Visible plus predictable equals safe.”
Fred DeLong’s illustration of how to avoid a car door. Well-intentioned, but this exact behavior causes many collisions, some of them fatal. Forester liberated us from this thinking.
Before Forester, other famous bicycling writers pretty much endorsed the “road sneak” vision of a cyclist’s place (or lack thereof).
Even the great Fred DeLong instructed people to ride in the door zone, with the absurd notion that you could swerve to avoid an opening car door and yet be safe. Writers Richard Ballantine and Eugene Sloane, whose books sold in the millions in the early 1970s, offered similarly hapless advice. Other authors of that era were also hapless. They were well-intentioned, but they didn’t know any better.
(In 2013, our colleague John S. Allen wrote a very good critique of the “dark ages” of bicycle safety advice before Forester. It’s at http://john-s-allen.com/blog/?page_id=5273.)
Five core principles guide our thinking
Forester’s framing began with articulating the core principles of traffic law, and telling bicyclists to follow the core principles. Today, they sound pretty mundane:
All vehicle operators keep to the right.
Yield to cross traffic according to pre-defined rules and traffic-control devices.
First-come, first-served (meaning that if someone wants to pass you, s/he must do so safely, and you still have the right to be on the road).
Destination positioning at intersections (Left-turn lanes and right-turn lanes are for everyone.)
Between intersections, you choose your position on the roadway based on your speed and on the usable width of the road.
Traffic collisions are caused by disobeying these core principles, and not by obeying them.
In 1982, Forester explained to me that these principles were not articulated in traffic engineering classes. He had ferreted them out by thinking and observing the unspoken common principles of all traffic, and seeing how they would be applicable to bicyclists.
Here’s what he said at the time (from a June 1982 article I wrote in Bicycling Magazine):
Highway people had training deficiencies because of the overwhelming success of motorization. They never had to teach any traffic engineers how to drive. They never had to teach the theory of traffic safety — the theory was implicit in everyone’s driving knowledge. Therefore, these people never questioned the principles of the ‘bike safety training’ they had received. They didn’t recognize that it conflicted with the theory behind vehicle safety.
The legislators put up money for very specific things — bikeways. So basically, society bribed the highway departments to do the wrong thing.
Forester around 1980, wired up to score students in a road test. A switch in his glove starts the cassette recorder in his backpack. Credit: IPMBA
So, Forester preached the principles of traffic law to any bicyclist who would listen.
Forester was also a keen student of the characteristics and limitations of bicycles and motor vehicles, bicyclists and motor vehicle operators. His early experience in Palo Alto made him a vigilant watchdog for unreasonable sight distances, curb radii, reaction times and intersection turning conflicts. Forester coined the term “rolling pedestrian,” and noted that even a slow bicyclist is several times as fast as a pedestrian, with very different ability to manage sharp turns and short stops. Forester observed that most bicycle facilities were designed with obliviousness to how a bad sight distance or a sharp turn could make a bicyclist crash.
(Even that observation got distorted by Forester’s opponents. Forester once wrote that a bicycle facility should be designed for a bicyclist going as fast as 30 mph, to accommodate all extremes of bicyclist behavior. His opponents turned that into, “Forester brags that he rides 30 mph.” And Forester’s advice to make traffic law work for you was twisted into “compete with the cars,” or “think you’re just like a car.” That level of distortion can best be described as mean-spirited.)
Without Forester’s innovative instruction, bicyclists of the 1970s, including those who considered themselves safety advocates, simply didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about how a bicyclist’s operating characteristics would interact with a given facility design, to produce a crash. They certainly had little notion that a bicyclist’s own behavior could make him safer.
Forester knew why bicyclists thought that way, and gave it an annoying, but accurate name: the “cyclist inferiority complex.” The cultural pull of the cyclist inferiority complex — the belief that we don’t have the full right to use the road — was, and is today, so strong that it subverts safe behavior.
We all thought we should stay out of the way of “real” traffic, hug the curb, and hope for the best.
Abrasive . . . but he wanted to sit next to me!
And with all the diplomacy of a professor dressing down an ill-prepared student, Forester told us all to think again.
So, let’s talk about his abrasiveness.
Many of us have been on the receiving end of it.
You could be in 98 percent agreement with Forester, and he’d come down on you like a ton of bricks. It sure happened to me plenty of times. I disagreed with Forester on technicalities of retro reflectivity and night time conspicuity; on developmental maturity and teaching children to ride in traffic; on an aspect of rider position during maximum-performance braking; on the political tactics of opposing or not opposing dangerous bicycle facilities; and a few other topics. I learned to ignore — and often not even read — his, uh, disagreements with me.
Still, he must have disagreed with me less often than he disagreed with many others. Because he always wanted to sit next to me in various national committee meetings.
And I watched him make an arse of himself in those meetings, grinding my teeth while it unfolded. If a well-intentioned mayor or traffic engineer used one wrong word, Forester would stand and attack. The vitriol made many of us wince, because we knew it undermined his persuasiveness.
I can’t defend the vitriol.
But in some instances I can explain it. Forester was using science and engineering to describe how bicyclist behavior and bicycle facilities could either help or hurt people. Forester took very seriously the immense responsibility of telling the public what was good for their own safety, and he expected others to gravitate to the facts he presented. When Forester’s opponents displayed obliviousness and/or defiance to the reasons why they were risking serious personal injury or death — not for themselves, but for others — Forester would attack.
It’s a shame so many people never saw past the vitriol, because there was much wisdom underneath it.
John Forester’s books, the curriculum, courses
So, let’s talk about that wisdom — and about how he promulgated it.
That first Bike World article gave birth in 1975 to the book Effective Cycling, which Forester self-published with his own printing press in his garage. It would go through many editions and get published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press; it is now in its 7th edition.
Forester also devised a 30-hour course, also named Effective Cycling. That course made novices into cyclists who were self-sufficient and proficient in every way. In keeping with the more self-reliant ethos of that era, Effective Cyclists were expected to be capable of doing their own repairs, sewing their own cycling clothing, and making various adapters and accessories for their bikes. And, of course, they could ride confidently and safely on big arterial streets just like my buddy Eli Damon.
Forester also saw the need for professional training, so that engineers would not design bad bicycle facilities. This led him to write the book Bicycle Transportation Engineering, later renamed Bicycle Transportation after MIT Press picked it up.
The book Effective Cycling has a defiant, angry tone. Forester believed that you couldn’t be a safe cyclist without being aware of public policy’s endorsement of the cyclist inferiority complex, and the book gives a lengthy dressing down of that policy. Forester offered his rants, expected the reader to take his side, and then showed the reader how good cycling works. It’s not the most welcoming sales pitch I’ve ever seen. But it created an aha moment for many thousands of people.
Forester reached an agreement with the League of American Wheelmen (which subsequently changed its name to the League of American Bicyclists) to train instructors nationwide.
Forester travels the country for policy advocacy
The man went to conferences everywhere, to offer his advice on designs, and on the bad assumptions behind bad designs. No one was paying him. He did it out of a passion for safety.
In the 1970s, many people were working with this newly popular concept of adults riding bicycles. Government agencies everywhere wondered what they should be doing about it. Palo Alto’s sidewalk bikeways were only one small piece of a nationwide let’s-try-this approach to bicycle facilities.
Forester was willing and able to tell them all how it should be done. Having written his books and taught his classes, he set his sights on government policy documents.
Forester was afraid, not without cause, that government policy for bicycle facility design would shunt bicyclists off to sidewalks, leading to turning-conflict collisions and other bad outcomes. Along with other stalwarts of that era (notably the late college professor John Finley Scott and traffic engineer Bob Shanteau), Forester worked hard to make sure that the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) policy would be good for safe cycling.
The CalTrans policy went national in 1981. Much of the language in the CalTrans policy was used in the 1981 edition of the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials’ Guide for the Development of New Bicycle Facilities (AASHTO Guidelines). “That AASHTO document explicitly states the detriments of bike lanes and mentions the alleged benefits in the subjunctive mode,” Forester said at the time. For once, he was actually pleased.
Forester advocated for competent, safe cycling.
But by necessity, that meant he spent most of his energy, and his audience’s attention, talking about things he was against — laws and societal customs that prohibited safe cycling. The big three such laws were laws requiring riders to ride far to the right, laws requiring bicyclists to ride in bike lanes, and laws requiring bicyclists to use sidepaths. Almost every conversation with Forester quickly turned to the bad consequences of these three.
Forester spent about $50,000 of his own money, and months of his time, in support of the California Association of Bicycle Organizations (CABO) for bicyclists’ rights in a well-known lawsuit, Prokop v. City of Los Angeles. The problem Forester was fighting was government immunity. Under certain circumstances, the government could build a bicycle facility and if the facility was dangerous, there would be no recourse for an injured cyclist. Sadly, Prokop lost that lawsuit. Forester again showed generosity to CABO when he had to give up bicycling. He donated his bikes, equipment and tools to CABO, and CABO sold them on eBay. (Not incidentally, Forester was the founder of CABO.)
Held up by Downward Pull. Yes, really!
And although Forester was known primarily for opining about traffic riding, he was a top-shelf expert in many other areas of cycling. I’ll mention my three favorites:
In August 1980, Forester published the provocatively titled “Held Up by Downward Pull” in the League of American Wheelmen magazine, explaining with great clarity the counterintuitive way a tension-spoked wheel supports the rider’s weight. (Writer Jobst Brandt is widely acclaimed for explaining this in his book The Bicycle Wheel, but Forester was a year ahead of Brandt.)
In April 1983, I had the pleasure of publishing in my very own magazine, Bike Tech, Forester’s eye-opening and ground-breaking “Physiology of Cyclist Power Production.” Forester deftly explained why measuring efficiency on an ergometer was misleading, and how the makeup of muscle tissue meant that a faster riding technique would score less efficiency in the lab.
In the 1971-1976 time period, Forester sued the then-new U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on the grounds that many of its proposed regulations were technically incompetent. He had many spot-on arguments. Accordingly, the CPSC 1976 Bicycle Safety Standard — which remains federal law today — has many numbered paragraphs that simply say “[reserved]”. The court picked through Forester’s points and upheld some and rejected others.
Back in 1977, I spent some time in a Washington, DC courthouse studying the lawsuit documents, and I marveled that a non-lawyer could get to first base arguing on his own behalf in federal court. Forester would write incisive technical stuff, and the attorneys defending the CPSC would get it struck down because he’d used the wrong-size paper. Nevertheless, he persisted. (How does this affect you today? The bikes you buy today are not burdened with useless design constraints they would have had without Forester.)
These are only three examples. There are hundreds more.
Time does not permit a listing of all the unfair criticisms of Forester’s work. But one I’ve seen repeated endlessly was that he was “against all infrastructure.” He was certainly against unsafe infrastructure. But he had no objection to rail trails, and in certain circumstances (bridges and high-traffic-volume arterial streets) he was okay with well designed bike lanes. I never asked him about secure parking or bike stations, but I believe he would have supported them.
Forester was the son of C.S. Forester, the famous British author. There was a complicated father-son relationship, and Forester’s two-volume biography of his father (available for free download at JohnForester.com) will test your attention span. Forester was born in England, and his childhood years cycling there, sharing roads with motor vehicles, demonstrated to him that bicyclists could do so safely. He frequently cited his experience in England as informing his advocacy when he moved to the U.S.
Ballroom dancer, model boat racer, photographer
John Forester was an industrial engineer with two masters’ degrees and a couple decades of work experience before he quit engineering in 1972 to go full-time on bicyclist advocacy work. He once said, “If you can’t make it as a mechanical engineer, you become an industrial engineer. If you can’t make it as an industrial engineer, you become a traffic engineer.” He wasn’t particularly modest, but that was his way of saying he had insights that many traffic engineers didn’t, without sounding too imperious about it.
The man had a human side too. He was enormously talented in more ways than I’ll ever know.
John Forester was an avid photographer with his own darkroom, an accomplished ballroom dancer, an avid square dancer, a downhill skier and active swimmer.
Forester had interests you might expect of an engineer: a broad knowledge of train engines and aircraft. He built radio controlled model airplanes and ship models. He built and raced radio-controlled model boats. He had an aquarium and, of course, lots of papers and books.
His own cycling got slower as his years went on, and continued until about age 80. His last bike had five-cog half-step gearing, with a top gear of about 78 inches. That’s about right for an old man.
“I just got rear-ended.”
Once, I saw John Forester look a bit embarrassed. It was 1986, and I was interviewing him in his house, which at that point was in Sunnyvale. It was raining cats and dogs outside.
The front door burst open, and in stormed a teenage girl. It was Forester’s significant other’s daughter. Not only was she soaking wet. She was carrying the pieces of a broken bicycle, and she was mad as a wet hen.
“I just got rear-ended,” she shouted. “The Ken Cross study says that motorist overtaking collisions are only four percent of non-fatal car bike collisions, and I just had one.” Forester responded with . . . embarrassed silence. You could see his pride that the girl knew to cite the Cross study, his horror that she’d been hit, and his relief that she wasn’t hurt.
I smiled inside. It was a unique interaction between a teenager and a semi-parental unit.
Cyclists fare best when. . .
John Forester usually spoke and wrote in long paragraphs, but his best sound bite was 13 words:
“Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles.”
As long as this remembrance is, it leaves out many, many things. There is so much I failed to mention. Forester’s work was very far-reaching, and his motives were always to help us be better bicyclists.
John Schubert during his transcontinental tour
Shortly after I first met John Forester, at a mini road course he taught in Washington DC in 1977, I launched on a spectacular solo 4,000-mile transcontinental tour. I was grateful for Forester’s wisdom to make myself a safer rider on that tour. My buddy Eli Damon is glad he could go to choir practice. Many thousands of others thank Forester too.
We’ve come a long way since 1977. The way we teach safe cycling behavior is far easier for a novice cyclist to learn and do. That’s the way of all improvement. Complexity starts. Simplicity follows. In future articles, John S. Allen will describe how Cycling Savvy was able to stand on Forester’s shoulders.
For that instruction to be improved on, it had to start. And it started with Forester.
Thanks, John.
With thanks to Jim Baross, Bill Hoffman, John S. Allen, Clint Sandusky, Robert Seidler, John Brooking, Eli Damon, Keri Caffrey and many others.
Countless other people had remembrances about Forester. Read some here.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/john-forester-feature.jpg499700John Schuberthttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Schubert2020-06-02 12:55:222024-03-02 16:23:27Requiem for a Heavyweight-••-John-Forester-1929-2020
Have you been out walking or riding on your local shared-use paths? Has use been a bit heavier than usual? It certainly has been where I live.
The Orlando metro area has over 100 miles of shared-use paths. I’m an avid user, both for walking and cycling. But with increasing use, it becomes apparent that a lot of users don’t have a good grasp on safety, or how their behavior affects others — more so as new users seek fresh air and sunshine during a pandemic.
This is part one of two posts about how to be safe and considerate on shared-use paths.
Path Etiquette: ensuring you and your fellow path users have an enjoyable time.
On roads, pedestrians are required to walk facing traffic, so they can see cars coming and step aside. Stepping off the road is not always necessary, but pedestrians can easily do it when it is.
Pedestrians should never be expected to step off a shared-use path or a sidewalk to make way for another user, and so it doesn’t make sense for them to walk on the left.* Doing so causes both the pedestrian and an oncoming user to have to stop whenever passing isn’t possible due to opposite-side traffic. When all users keep right, faster users can simply slow and wait for the opportunity to pass. BTW, if you cannot keep your bike balanced at walking speed, you probably aren’t ready yet to be on the path (more on that below).
Take it easy!
That brings me to my next point. When an obstruction is on your side of the path (or road, for that matter), YOU yield — whether it’s a fallen branch or a slower user. If there is oncoming traffic, wait until that traffic has passed. Don’t thread the needle! This is disrespectful to both the person you are passing and the oncoming person. A crowded path isn’t the place to set speed records. If you have a need for speed, you should use the road instead. When you do pass a slower user, move over! This is my chief complaint as a walker. I can’t tell you how many times a pathlete has blown past my elbow when there were eight feet of path to her left. Why would you do that? You know you hate it when motorists do that to you on the road.
It’s also nice to say something. I personally prefer to offer a gentle “good morning” vs screaming “ON YOUR LEFT.” Some people may react by moving left! Some are listening with earbuds and may not hear you. Startling them by yelling doesn’t necessarily help you pass safely.
So even if you say nothing at all, moving over as far as possible and passing at a reasonable speed is fine. In this pandemic time, social distance is about more than only common courtesy. (See our recent post about riding in the pandemic.) Along those same lines, when you are riding side-by side with a companion (these days, a member of your household, I’d hope!), it is polite to single up in order to give a slower user more space when passing. Oftentimes two cyclists are so engrossed in their conversation that the left rider doesn’t even move left and the rider on the right brush-passes the pedestrian (me, yes, this happens a lot). Please be present.Similarly, many older shared-use paths are not wide enough to remain side by side when there is oncoming traffic. Without a centerline, some users don’t recognize this. The additive closing speed of both users can be disconcerting.
Shared-use path courtesy when walking
When walking or jogging with family/friends, do not spread across the path requiring every other user to have to ask you to move in order to pass. I’ve walked many path miles with my dog. I trained her to walk on my right. She does this by default now, so I never have to worry about her wandering out in front of someone. A well-behaved dog makes everyone’s life easier on the path. It’s very alarming for bicyclists to have a dog on a retractable leash run across in front of them or wander toward them while the owner appears distracted. Dogs can cause a crash! Some people have a fear of dogs due to having been attacked. Having a dog lurch toward them can cause panic.
Another point on retractable leashes: they can cause cuts and burns to both pets and people.
Brush up on skills
Though it may not seem to make sense, the path is NOT the place to learn bike handling. You need a set of simple skills before you ride on the path, especially a well-used path. To be safe around others, you need to be able to:
start and stop easily,
balance at very low speed,
ride in a straight line,
look over your shoulder while riding in a straight line (particularly if the path goes alongside a road, more in part 2).
This is true for kids as well. Please don’t bring your kids to the path to teach them basic skills. Children (and adults) tend to have target fixation when learning basic balance on a bike. A kid will literally ride straight into an oncoming bicyclist instead of steering away. A kid will also ride off the edge of the path and then fall, trying to steer back over the pavement lip.
Skills can be developed in a parking lot or quiet street. Or in a CyclingSavvy Train Your Bike class.
Using shared-use paths in the dark
Most shared-use paths are technically “closed” from dusk to dawn even though they are not physically closed. Many of us use them anyway, either for commuting or early morning exercise. And you know what, they were built with transportation funds, so… that’s a rant for another time.
Rule 1. Use lights! Head-on collisions between unlit users are a thing—they can be a deadly thing. Don’t count on well-lit cyclists to see and avoid you, either. It isn’t easy to detect an oncoming ninja outside the range of a headlight, and closing speed can make the range of a headlight too short to react. I’ve learned to look for the tiny glint of pedal reflectors, which is how I saw this guy coming:
The burden of care rests with faster users — bicyclists — but pedestrians also do well to carry a light and wear reflectorized items. In a few places, this is required by law.
Rule 2. Aim bright lights down. I love that bright headlights have become so affordable. I’m old enough to remember when a 300 lumen bike light cost more than a bike. Now you can get 3x that for $30. But with great brightness comes great responsibility… to not blind your fellow users. The old “be seen” weak headlights needed to be aimed straight out at the horizon for maximum visibility. Today’s 900 lumen LED lights should be aimed toward the ground ahead of you. This is not only to keep you from blinding other people, it helps you see debris or pavement issues that could cause you to fall. The best bicycle headlights have a flat-top beam pattern to cast the beam farther without glaring into people’s eyes.
Rule 3. Don’t flash! When it’s dark out. that bright headlight should stay on steady mode. First of all, a flashing headlight is blinding and annoying. It keeps other users from being able to gauge your speed and location. And most importantly, it can cause an epileptic seizure in a vulnerable person. You could literally kill someone with that thing.
If you want to have a blinkie to catch attention, there are lots of little low-powered lights you can pick up for a buck apiece and strap onto your helmet or bike. Here is some good advice on headlights.
Next: Safety
The next post will cover safety concerns. We’ll look at some path hazards, and discuss intersection safety.
Have fun out there!
* Yeah, there’s always some dumb law out there. This is no exception. Rhode Island requires pedestrians to walk on the left on shared use paths.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/path-etiquette-feature-702x373-1.jpg373702Keri Caffreyhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngKeri Caffrey2020-05-30 09:00:022020-07-20 22:10:40Shared-Use Paths, Part 1: Etiquette
At CyclingSavvy we teach communication with other road users. But there’s a part of the course called “Train Your Bike.”
Cute catchphrase? Well, sort of. You are actually training yourself, but “training the bike” is how it feels. We want you to feel at one with your bike.
Many riders never learn to be one with their bike when they are starting and stopping.
It sounds so basic. Why spend time on it? How could people possibly screw up starting and stopping enough for that to be a problem?
Well, they can and it is.
Lowering the stress level
CyclingSavvy founder Keri Caffrey once had a student who was a super-experienced athlete. The student had completed a half-Ironman triathlon. But for her, starting and stopping were near-crashing events. She wobbled scarily at slow speed — and slow speed is part and parcel of every start and stop. Keri’s instruction lowered that student’s stress level enormously.
You don’t have to be a serious triathlete to need this instruction. Look around at other cyclists, and you’ll see:
People don’t stop at stop lights because their stop/start skills are so poor. (Double that when an unskilled rider gets a pedal-binding system.)
If someone does stop, it’s disturbing to watch, and so are the first 30 feet after restarting.
Just as you come to a stop sign, there is a gap in the cross traffic. Is it long enough? That might depend on your being ready for a quick restart.
Category IV (novice) mass-start road race starts are scary. People don’t accelerate smoothly away from the starting line.
The solution is right here!
This can be fixed. Easily. But you have to know how.
If you follow all the steps in sequence, every start is smooth. Every stop is smooth. None of these steps is difficult. None requires fancy bike-handling skill. But you have to know them and understand them.
This is exactly what we teach in Train Your Bike.
It looks so easy. Because when you start and stop the best way, it’s a non-event.
To start, you lift a pedal to the power position while straddling the bike, with your butt in front of the saddle. Stand on the one pedal, lift your butt up and slide it rearward. Put your other foot on the other pedal and continue pedaling.
To stop, use the brakes to stop the bike, slide your butt forward off the saddle and put your weight on one foot. Lean the bicycle toward the other foot — so it is outboard of the pedal. Put that foot on the ground just as the bike stops. You use that foot and your hands to hold the bike while it’s stopped. And you use the other foot to lift a pedal into the power position for your next start.
Putting a foot down for a landing
We love teaching starting and stopping — and other skills — because we love to see both novices and experienced riders discover entirely different and better ways to do things on their bikes.
Try practicing this skill. Watch the video a few times. Then follow up with practice, so the sequence unfolds smoothly. It takes practice, as the saying goes, to get to Carnegie Hall.
Should bicyclists be riding now? Should bicyclists wear face masks now to avoid the risk of catching the COVID-19 disease?
Common sense suggests that masks help, but the US Centers for Disease Control until recently downplayed them. With masks in short supply, the highest priority has been to ensure first responders and medical professionals have protection.
Judgments like that are about the Greater Good. They aren’t just about saving you in particular. They are based on epidemiological risk assessments from one point of view or another.
Good Health and the Greater Good
I like to think that I advocate for the Greater Good, but I do better at that if I am in good health. I might take that idea farther than some people. By 1978, bicycle helmets were becoming common, and like many people I wore one. But I was unique in wearing an industrial respirator mask when riding in the city.
The author riding with helmet and mask in 1978 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Anita Brewer-Siljeholm
Cities were smelly in 1978. Most cars did not have catalytic converters. Brake shoes were made of asbestos, and they shed asbestos fibers into the air. But my respirator worked great. Car exhaust had a heavy, oily smell back then, but it came through the mask odorless. Acrid diesel-bus exhaust exited the mask’s activated charcoal filters smelling like a fresh slice of whole-wheat toast.
If I hadn’t been wearing a respirator mask while cycling in the late 70s, the damage to my lungs and body would have been as significant as if I smoked cigarettes. Then, things got better. As pollution control on cars improved, I used the respirator less. It deteriorated in storage, and eventually I threw it away.
Now we have a different problem.
The pandemic has created a new and different problem. CyclingSavvy outdoor sessions have been postponed or canceled. Bicycle clubs have suspended their group ride programs. Should I ride at all? Wear a mask?
There is no absolute social distancing. The widely cited 6-foot rule reflects a balance of risk against what people will tolerate. The good news is that you don’t get infected by just one individual virus spore. Exhaustive research on the AIDS virus has established that there is a threshold level of contamination below which it does not take hold in a person. With the virus that causes COVID-19, the principle is the same, though the amount is not yet known. Individual susceptibility varies, and a higher dose appears to result in worse symptoms. Wearing a mask does lower the risk of catching the disease, or transmitting it.
Are Masks Practical?
I happen to have a few N95 masks left over from sanding and painting projects (opened box, not accepted for donation). I have shaved my beard — for the first time in 50 years — to make the masks work better.
My wife and I reserve the masks for shopping trips. We use them only once every several days, so they have time to decontaminate themselves. (Viruses die outside of the host animal’s body.) Three or four masks between us will probably hold out until supply improves. I wear eye-protection goggles over my eyeglasses. We also happen to have a couple of surgical masks.
My experience:
An N95 mask proved practical only for short bicycle trips, especially in cold weather, because I couldn’t lift it off my face to blow my nose.
A surgical mask is not practical for me when cycling in cool weather, because it doesn’t seal, and fogs my glasses. Lifting this mask is possible, though, without unbuckling the helmet.
There are too many kinds of improvised cloth masks for me to come to a single conclusion. A bandana that hangs down and can be lifted up is probably going to allow blowing the nose.
An industrial respirator mask is practical, though it could become uncomfortable on a long ride. The degree of protection it provides depends on the type of filters.
Any mask will somewhat impair breathing.
Should Bicyclists Wear Face Masks For Shopping Trips?
While I have access to a car, I prefer to shop by bicycle. The bicycle is more convenient when I am bringing home a small load. Cycling to the store alone generally carries far less risk of infection than riding public transportation. But when shopping, I have to interact with people, and sometimes go into a store.
Should bicyclists wear face masks for this kind of trip? Yes, at least when going into the store, but also if having to ride under crowded conditions.
For shopping trips, I wear gardening gloves with rubber fingers and palms. I carry a small bottle with disinfectant solution, and disinfectant wipes. I disinfect the shopping-cart handle before gripping it. I also disinfect my gloves, then my hands after I leave the store. When I get home I disinfect them again after removing the mask, goggles and helmet.
The reusable shopping bag in the picture below does not go into the store. Stores in Massachusetts don’t accept them any more, as they might carry infection. I use the bag after I’m done shopping, to increase the carrying capacity of my bicycle.
The author, April 2020, in full kit for a shopping trip. Photo by Jacob Allen
When I get home, I lay out items that I bought in the driveway to disinfect them, or pour food out into clean containers. Apartment dwellers have to disinfect indoors. There’s plenty of good information online about how to disinfect foods, and yourself after handling them. Here’s one example.
Should Bicyclists Wear Face Masks For Recreational Riding?
Should you wear a face mask while riding? Or not? Or just hang up the bicycle? Strategies are different if you’re riding solo or with someone else.
Each person’s circumstances are unique. In my case, it’s only a mile from my home to semi-rural outer suburbs. Traffic on roads there is very light now, and I’ll go on solo rides without wearing a mask.
Urban and suburban traffic is also light, though a friend — a high-mileage recreational road rider — has had to dodge many newbie wrong-way riders. (This is one more reason to stay away from riding on the edge of the road.)
Another friend who is a strong advocate for shared-use paths avoids them now, because they are crowded, largely with people who don’t know how to be safe on them.
In some places, notably New York State, masks are now required for everyone where social distancing is impossible. Spain and Italy have banned recreational cycling, allowing cycling only for some kinds of essential trips. That seems excessive to me, at least where I live, considering the low risk of contagion on lightly-used rural roads.
If You Ride With Another Person
The 6-foot rule doesn’t apply to bicyclists riding together, because bicyclists are moving, and the risk depends on which way the wind is blowing. One recommendation was to maintain 35-foot spacing, and greater at higher speeds. The front rider uses hand signals to indicate turns; the rear rider repeats them to confirm. Checking for confirmation is easier if the front rider uses a rear-view mirror.
Crash Risk
I do think about the risk of a crash that would require care in an already overburdened hospital. It could happen, but my last crash that required a doctor’s attention was in 1984, to no small extent because of the kind of skills that CyclingSavvy teaches. There is a balance to achieve.
April 2020: The author headed out on a recreational ride, no mask. Photo: Jacob Allen
I’ve been riding on the nearly empty semi-rural roads — without a mask, to stay in shape and avoid going stir-crazy. But you have to make up your own mind about this.
Even if you have hung the bicycle up for the duration, the time will come when you dust it off and ride again. This is a useful way to while away the time until then.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/john-allen-with-mask-2020-featured.jpg231248John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2020-04-18 10:00:422020-04-19 23:23:43Should I Be Riding Now?
In 2019 Great Rivers Greenway contracted with American Bicycling Education Association to create this lunch & learn-style presentation for St. Louis-area law enforcement officers.
The contractual agreement includes allowing any CSI to adapt and present CS for LEOs in their markets. Download P...
When I was a hot-shot, I wanted to be the next Greg LeMond (I know, I’m dating myself). I stripped every nonessential gram from my Italian racing steed, so I could go that much faster. I actually looked into how I could inflate my razor-thin tires with helium, so I could shave off another fraction-of-a-fraction-of-an-ounce.
A mirror on my helmet? Pfff. I was too cool to even wear a helmet, let alone put a dorky mirror on it. None of the professional cyclists I idolized even wore helmets, let alone helmet mirrors. And I was practically one of them.
My cycling spidey sense was so sharp…
…I didn’t need a mirror on the helmet I didn’t wear. My ears told me the make, model, year, closing speed, and passing clearance of whatever was behind me. Oh, yeah, my ears knew the color of the vehicle behind me, too. Amazing!
What can I say? I was an over-confident teenage boy with an overabundance of derring-do — and a decided lack of humility. Yes, I could hear an approaching vehicle, and even be able to guess pretty accurately whether it was a sedan or a semi. But that’s nothing special if you have average hearing, which mine most assuredly is. Ask my wife.
Maybe hearing is good enough…
…if all you ever do is hug the edge of the road (and pray for your life as you hear a roaring engine barrel toward you). Your hearing might be all you ever need if you never leave the edge to make a turn, change lanes, or avoid a hazard. Or if you don’t mind getting your legs shaved by the land rocket that just buzzed you.
Not so cool anymore.
If you’d like more space, read on.
First, understand this:
When you choose to ride on the edge, you’re irrelevant.
This is one of the most important things I learned when I encountered CyclingSavvy. The more relevant you are to motorists, the more you influence their choices. Where are you more relevant? Somewhere away from the edge.
Every time you glance over your shoulder, you take your focus away from where it’s most needed: In front of you.
The exact location away from the edge depends. That’s the next thing I learned from CyclingSavvy: How to think critically about the road and the traffic on it. How wide is the lane? Can I safely share it with a car? An F-150? A semi? How heavy is traffic? How fast? What conflicts am I vulnerable to? How can I reduce my risk? What’s my cycling behavior communicating to others?
It’s OK to ride far to the right,if many conditions are met.
Can you see the car behind me? I can, too!
Often, though, it’s not OK. It’s more dangerous to be on the edge than in the lane of traffic. With savvy cycling know-how, I learned how to tell where I should drive — yes, drive — my bicycle.
This is CyclingSavvy’s other big takeaway: Cyclists who adopt driving behavior— rather than edge behavior — are more visible, less prone to conflict, and more relevant to others on the road. They also get where they’re going faster and more directly.
Oh, and they have more fun.
What does this have to do with bicycle helmet mirrors?
Think about it. Do you need mirrors on your car? On your motorcycle? Yes, of course. They’re required by law, and for good reason. Drivers need to be able to see all around them in order to change lanes and make turns.
Bicycle drivers are no different. Unlike car drivers, though, we have a built-in advantage. Because we’re not encased in a steel and glass box, we have much more ability to know what’s going on around us. My teenage self was spot on: you can hear what’s coming from behind you. Seeing what’s behind you is pretty simple, too. Just glance over your shoulder.
Here’s the thing, though. Every time you glance over your shoulder, you take your focus away from where it’s most needed: In front of you.
Me and my helmet mirrors. Yes, mirrors.
Rockin those mirrors, Brian!
I love — and I mean capital “L” LOVE — my helmet mirrors. Yeah, that’s plural. I have one on my left, and one on my right. I often need to change lanes to the right. A mirror on the right gives me a quick check of what’s behind me on my right.
(If my know-it-all doofus teenage wannabe racer self could see me now, his eyes would roll right out of his head.)
With mirrors, I keep my focus in front of me more of the time because I can just move my eyeballs instead of having to move my whole head — or in my case, my whole upper body, since I’m not quite as limber as I used to be.
Whether you use a mirror or not, ALWAYS look over your shoulder before making a lateral move.
By taking a quick look in my mirrors, I get a preview of what’s going on behind me. I can read the behavior of the drivers behind me and see in real timehow they’re responding to me.
Note that I used the word preview. Before changing lanes or lane position, I always look over my shoulder as well.
I’ll say that again. It’s super important.
Whether you use a mirror or not, ALWAYSlook over your shoulder. Turn your head or torso to see what’s behind you before you change lanes or lane position.
A mirror can be helpful, but it’s not a good substitute for a head turn.
Why should you look over your shoulder if you have a mirror?
“Shoulder Check” a crucial savvy cycling skill
CyclingSavvy co-founder Mighk Wilson demonstrates a perfect shoulder check
During the parking lot skills session, CyclingSavvy instructors work extensively with their students on “Shoulder Check.” Being able to look over your shoulder while keeping a straight line does several things: It helps you check for traffic. It establishes your humanity and allows you to communicate with others. Also, you don’t want to “wobble” when you’re out and about (and we show you how not to). Riding straight is important for predictability and respect from others.
“A good head turn is a tool for getting drivers to notice that you want to do something,” Keri said.
“When you turn your head over your shoulder, more often than not, other drivers will help you out if they can.”
It’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally, even for bicycle safety experts.
“I didn’t develop a good shoulder check until I rode without a mirror for several months,” Keri said.
CyclingSavvy taught me that I have a right to use the road, and that cowering on the edge doesn’t do me or anybody any good. But in addition to that, I learned how to claim my rightful road space and cooperate with other drivers as I control my space.
This is the essence of Control & Release. With helmet mirrors, it’s a lot easier.
Here’s how: Let’s say I’m riding down Perry Avenue near my home. Like most roads around here, it’s a 2-lane road with 11-foot lanes, too narrow to share.
There’s no way I’m going to “get out of the way” and “share” a lane with that 10-ton behemoth, so I calmly give everyone The Hand.
I make myself relevant by riding in the middle of the lane, so it’s obvious to drivers who want to overtake me that they’ll need to change lanes to pass. This is the passive communication that our lane position always gives.
As I ride along, I glance at my mirror and see a car approaching me quickly. I glance again, and see that the driver has slowed down. She’s hanging back, patiently waiting for a safe opportunity to pass.
Motorist Eternity
After a few moments, I take another look in my mirror. Now I see a monster truck stacked up behind the nice patient lady. Monster Truck is not happy with the delay. It’s been about 30 seconds — an eternity in “Motorist Years.”
I wave to Monster Truck and don’t get a return wave. That’s OK. I got what I wanted, which was my space.
“Motorist Eternity” —also known as Must Pass Bicyclist Syndrome— happens when a motorist finds him- or herself “stuck” behind a bicyclist. Motorist Eternity can kick in as early as five seconds of being “stuck” behind the bicyclist.
(Funny how Motorist Eternity never kicks in at red lights. Motorist Eternity doesn’t appear to afflict drivers completely stopped in interstate traffic jams. No bicyclists there. Hmmmm.)
The nice lady’s patience is starting to wane.
But it’s the driver of the monster truck who I’m really thinking about. Sure enough, at Second 31, Monster Truck starts scooching over to pass both of us, even though there’s an oncoming car.
There’s no way I’m going to “get out of the way” and “share” a lane with that 10-ton behemoth, so I calmly give everyone The Hand.
I just hold my hand there and glance in my mirror again.
“The Hand” is the universal hand signal for “stay back,” left arm extended diagonally out, palm back. Sure enough, Monster Truck moves back into the lane. That driver is not happy, but gave me what I wanted, because I asked.
I knew to ask because I could read their behavior in real time by looking in my mirror. Passive communication with my lane position wasn’t enough. I needed active communication too.
The Hand, the Come Along Wave, and Thank You Wave
Fortunately, there’s a usable shoulder coming up, so I retract The Hand, and give a right-turn hand signal as I maintain lane control. When the shoulder opens up, I look over my right shoulder, move to the right, stop pedaling, and give everyone the Come Along Wave, left hand making a circular motion in a “come along” kinda way.
As the nice lady starts to pass me, I now give her the Thank You Wave. She waves back!
I wave to Monster Truck, too, and don’t get a return wave. That’s OK. I got what I really wanted, which was my space.
Signaling left and keeping tabs on the car behind me
After Monster Truck passes, I glance in my mirror again, see nobody behind me, do a shoulder check, give a left-turn hand signal, do another shoulder check (since my arm is already out anyway), and move left into the middle of the lane.
Those dorky helmet mirrors give me the awareness I need to be able to mix and mingle with traffic in a fluid, harmonious way.
In all of this, the mirror allowed me to see how drivers were responding to me without me taking my focus away from where I was going. My mirrors also gave me a first glimpse prior to my shoulder checks as I prepared to make lane position changes.
It’s certainly possible to do Control & Release without using mirrors. It’s just that without a mirror, you’ll spend an awful lotta time looking over your shoulder…over and over…each time you want to see what’s happening back there. No fun!
Act like a driver to be treated like one.
The more relevant you make yourself, the more you are respected. Using “driver behavior” makes it easier to see what’s happening around you, so you’re able to respond more quickly to dynamic situations.
Why every ride is a joyride.
My mirrors are key to my safety and success on my bike. It’s why every ride is a joyride. Because, yes, those dorky mirrors on my helmet give me the awareness I need to be able to mix and mingle with traffic in a harmonious, responsive way.
My bike is no longer a stripped-down thoroughbred. I always wear a helmet now. My younger self would be embarrassed to be seen with me.
But if I had the chance to take my younger, sportier self out for a ride, I think even he’d be impressed with that middle-aged guy with the dorky mirrors, riding with grace and confidence, hardly ever getting buzzed, fluidly cooperating with traffic, glancing back occasionally in his mirrors to see if that young racer know-it-all is keeping up.
CyclingSavvy co-founder Keri Caffrey uses an EVT helmet mirror when she shoots video
That’s right! For the same price you’d pay online for one of these fantastic mirrors, you’ll be helping ABEA spread savvy cycling to more people.
“Wearing my EVT Helmet Mirrors are like having eyes in the back of my head,” said Brian, who loves these mirrors so much that he became a dealer. He also suggested this promotion to benefit ABEA.
While ABEA makes no specific product endorsements, many instructors join Brian in making good use of EVT helmet mirrors. ABEA also appreciates Brian’s incredible generosity!
Your Donation to ABEA is Tax-Deductible
Make a $40 donation for each mirror you want. Your tax deductible amount is $18 per mirror. The rest covers the cost, shipping and handling of the mirror from Bremerton, WA (USA).
Match Brian’s generosity with your own and help “pay it forward” for ABEA. Thank you, Brian!
I’m not a great fan of riding on sidewalks. If I’m riding on anything located alongside a street, I slow way down, because I know I must be able to stop on a moment’s notice.
Sidewalk riding is sometimes exactly the right thing to do.
You may be surprised, then, when I say that sidewalk riding is sometimes exactly the right thing to do.
Route 9 is a four-lane divided highway with a 50 MPH speed limit. Quiet local streets on either side of Route 9 make some good connections for bicyclists.
Kingsbury Street T’s into Route 9 from the south. A signalized crosswalk across Route 9 connects with the sidewalk on the left side of Kingsbury Street. Push-buttons trigger the signal to stop traffic on Route 9.
Looking toward Route 9 from Kingsbury street (Wellesley, MA)
Need to cross Route 9 with your bicycle?
Push the button, use the crosswalk. End of story. Right?
Whoa, no, wait a minute. Let’s think about this.
Savvy bicyclists plan ahead.
The best strategy is to use the left sidewalk to get up to the intersection, crossing Kingsbury Street well before reaching Route 9.
Yes, I just wrote that.
Why? Think about it. I want to use the pedestrian crosswalk there to get across Route 9.
Don’t follow the on-road shared lane markings at this intersection. Easiest way to cross is to use “pedestrian” behavior
What could happen if I followed the shared lane markings in the photo and rode up almost to the corner on the right side of Kingsbury Street, and then cut across?
What if a motorist is turning right — like in the photo above — just as I want to move left to use the crosswalk cut-through? The driver coming around the corner might not see me making that maneuver until too late to avoid a collision.
Instead, I wait until there is no vehicle in front of me that might turn left into one of the last driveways before Kingsbury Street, then merge into one and ride on the sidewalk up to the corner.
I’m cognizant of being on a sidewalk, so I ride slowly enough to see into the other driveways that cross this sidewalk, no problem.
When I get to the corner, sometimes a car will have triggered the traffic signal. If not, I push the button and cross after the traffic signal changes.
Route 9 northbound from Kingsbury Street to Sprague Road (Wellesley, MA)
The picture above shows my path:
On Kingsbury Street headed for Route 9
Using one of the driveways to get onto my preferred sidewalk
Pushing the button on the corner and waiting for the signal to change
Turning left onto Route 9’s right traffic lane
Turning right onto Sprague Road
Because I’m riding off of a sidewalk
and entering the intersection from an unusual location, I’m careful to wait until all traffic has stopped. Since Route 9 is a divided highway, I can roll across to the median without concern that a motorist behind me might cut a left turn across my path.
When I get to the other side of Route 9, I turn left and ride on the road a short distance to turn right onto Sprague Road.
Wait a minute. Why does the illustration show me riding in the travel lane on high-speed Route 9? Why would I do that? There’s a wide, paved shoulder!
Well, yes, riding on the shoulder would be nice, but isn’t always possible. Have a look at the next image, a Google Street View:
Child activates traffic signals. Shoulder of Route 9 is in use as a travel lane due to construction (Wellesley, MA)
We are looking west along Route 9 from location D in the earlier image, with location E in the background. A child with a backpack is pushing the button to turn the traffic signal red and use the crosswalk. That isn’t surprising. There’s a public school on Kingsbury Street.
But in the photo, construction work is underway and the shoulder of Route 9 is serving temporarily as a travel lane. You can’t always count on an empty shoulder’s being available, whether because of construction, snow in winter, a disabled vehicle, or a state trooper issuing a traffic ticket to a wayward Massachusetts driver.
So, yes, I’m going to enter from a crosswalk and immediately turn left into the right travel lane on a highway with a 50 MPH speed limit. Scary? Not!
Confession time
For decades, I’ve worked as a bicycle safety and crash reconstruction expert. I wrote Bicycling Street Smarts, which has been published in several editions and sold more than 300,000 copies.
Even experts learn new things.
Even experts learn new things. I learned the following incredibly useful technique only last year, when I became a CyclingSavvy Instructor (that story is here).
What technique is that? Using traffic-signal timing to get a busy road to yourself.
In this case, it’s easy to move onto Route 9 from the Kingsbury pedestrian crosswalk when Route 9 traffic is stopped at the light.
I have Route 9 all to myself all the way to Sprague Road!
Using traffic signal timing to ride on “scary” roads with little to no other traffic was a revelation. (Yes, this technique is now included in the CyclingSavvy edition of Bicycling Street Smarts.)
How to cross Route 9 in the opposite direction
The most favorable route enters at Audubon Road, which Ts into Route 9 without a traffic signal or crosswalk. The image below shows the route. You ride on Route 9 from Audubon Road to Kingsbury Street, and cross there. You could ride on the shoulder (if available) and pull onto the sidewalk to push the crosswalk button.
Route 9 southbound from Audubon Road to Kingsbury Street, shoulder option (Wellesley, MA)
If the shoulder’s available, riding on it is fast and easy. If there’s absolutely no traffic on the road, you might move from Audubon directly into the left lane to get easily onto the crosswalk at Kingsbury.
Don’t do this if there’s any other traffic on the road. Traffic signals won’t help. The previous traffic signal is more than a mile back, and platoons of traffic spread out and mix together. It’s hard to judge the closing speeds of fast-moving traffic (and you don’t want to get caught up in that).
If the shoulder isn’t available, use the sidewalk.
Yes, you read that right. A quick exploration of Route 9 in Google Street View reveals that there are exactly zero driveways on the north side of Route 9 between Audubon Road and Kingsbury Street.
When planning your next bike trip or adventure, Google Maps and Google Street View are your best friends.
Instead, a long, high fence gives residents relief from the unpleasantness of Route 9 — and offers bicyclists a first-rate opportunity to ride safely on a sidewalk. Just take care around any schoolchildren or others who may be sharing the sidewalk with you.
Now that we’ve looked at both directions of travel across Route 9, let these be your takeaways:
Riding in sidewalk space is unsafe where there are hazards with turning and crossing traffic, obscured sight lines and unpredictable pedestrians.
Even so, sidewalk riding can be useful. Remember that when you’re in pedestrian space, use pedestrian behavior.
Smart use of traffic-signal timing can empty a busy street for you.
Planning ahead makes it easy to get through segments which at first appear challenging and even intimidating, because:
Google Maps and Google Street View are your best friends for armchair pre-planning.
Happy savvy cycling, wherever you ride.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/riding-on-sidewalks.jpeg303304John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2018-05-30 11:30:462018-08-23 01:29:48When Sidewalk Riding Is Your Best Option
CyclingSavvy is many things to many people. At its core, it’s a traffic cycling education program. When you’re a savvy cyclist, you can go anywhere on your bike with safety and confidence — which also makes bicycling more fun!
Savvy cyclists are paving the way for a new understanding and acceptance of cyclists into the transportation network.
But there are other facets. CyclingSavvy goes beyond cyclists’ training as a resource for bicycle-related education for traffic engineers, transportation planners, law enforcement professionals, educators and the general public. Urban planners and environmentalists see CyclingSavvy as a tool for social change, leading to more sustainable and livable communities where the drivers of human-powered vehicles are expected and respected as a normal part of traffic. Here in Southern California, I’ve used the resources of CyclingSavvy in the courtroom as an expert witness to defend cyclists unfairly ticketed for defensive bicycle driving.
Because there’s so much to CyclingSavvy — and because we all encounter occasions to discuss savvy cycling with others who want to learn more about our passion — I’ve developed a four-by-four framework to capture four dimensions of CyclingSavvy. The framework easy to memorize and once committed to memory it’s instantly accessible and useful for impromptu discussions about bicycling.
Four Priorities
As a traffic cycling program, CyclingSavvy has priorities for how cyclists operate in traffic:
Safety is paramount — safety first! As vulnerable road users, we need to control our space, maintain good sight lines to see and be seen, and be relevant and predictable to other road users.
Safety, Cooperation, Convenience, Legality
Cooperation is also a priority for savvy cyclists. The Rules of the Road require cooperation among all road users. As drivers of narrow and relatively slow vehicles, cyclists have many opportunities to cooperate with motorists as well as other cyclists and pedestrians.
Convenience is essential for bicycling to be a practical means of transportation. Cyclists must have access to all surface streets to minimize travel time and distance, and have the option to control the full lane on travel lanes that are too narrow to share safely with motor vehicles (which is usually the case). This is particularly important for faster cyclists — which now include not only fit roadies, but also anyone riding an e-bike, regardless of age and fitness level.
And it’s more convenient for two cyclists traveling together to ride side-by-side in order to converse, the same way a motorist and passenger can talk. This, of course, requires full lane use.
Legality is also important. In all states, cyclists are expected to observe the same laws as drivers of motor vehicles, with a few exceptions. But there are some situations, such as in states with mandatory bike lane, bike path and shoulder use laws, where following the letter of the law may not be the safest option for cyclists.
A savvy cyclist knows where safety takes precedence over strict legality. As CyclingSavvy co-founder Mighk Wilson has observed, “It’s better to risk the courtroom to avoid the emergency room.”
Four Techniques
CyclingSavvy offers four broad categories of techniques to achieve the priorities described above.
The first is Drive your bicycle. This involves:
Drive, Communicate, Cooperate, Facilitate
Following the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles
Riding on the road and avoiding sidewalks and sidewalk-like facilities, and understanding their limitations if you do use them
Using lane control as the default mode of operation (but see Cooperation below), and
Anticipating and using the proper lane on multilane roads — such as turning right into the leftmost lane when planning to make a left turn.
We must also Communicate. Using hand signals to convey our intention to turn, change lanes and slow down or stop helps motorists give us the space and time we need to be safe and comfortable on the road.
But there’s another form of communication that’s even more important than hand signals. We use this to communicate 100 percent of the time we’re bicycling on public roads: our lane position.
CyclingSavvy encourages additional hand signals that are not taught elsewhere and yet are very useful and instantly understandable by our fellow road users. One is the “stay back” signal (hand extended to the side with palm facing back), which tells following drivers not to pass. Encouraging motorists to pass when safe can be done by using a side-sweeping motion from back to front.
Shaka hand signal
To recognize and reward the cooperation of other drivers, we can use a “thank you” signal by raising an open hand toward the sky–although in surfing states like Hawaii and California, the shaka (or “hang loose”) sign might be appropriate (extending the thumb and little finger).
Finally, the shoulder check to view traffic behind is also a means of communication, but its meaning depends upon the context. When done from the middle of the lane looking left, it will mean the cyclist is looking to merge left into the next lane. But when done before or after having moved toward the right edge of the road, it can be understood as an invitation for following traffic to pass.
That savvy cyclists Cooperate has already been mentioned above as one of the four Priorities, but cooperation must be included here, too, as a set of techniques.
Unique to CyclingSavvy are four traffic release techniques:
Control and Release involves a centered lane position with perhaps the “stay back” signal to inform motorists behind that it is not safe to pass, and then encouraging them to pass when safe by moving right in the lane and perhaps using a “pass now” hand signal.
Release on Green involves pulling over to the side of the road to allow accumulated traffic to pass when a traffic light turns from red to green
CyclingSavvy co-founder Mighk Wilson practices Release on Red
Release on Red allows motorists to turn right on red when the cyclist moves to the left of a dual-destination (through and right turn) lane
Slow and Release can be used when two traffic lanes merge into one; the cyclist slows down before the merge to allow traffic behind to pass before moving into and controlling the sole remaining travel lane.
Finally, CyclingSavvy teaches several ways to Facilitate traffic cycling, so that situations that would intimidate many cyclists can be handled easily and without stress.
Some of these techniques involve timing your moves for when there is no or little traffic on the road, even on normally busy streets. Waiting for a green signal to turn right into the leftmost lane where the cyclist will next turn left is a good example. This “right-left” maneuver is taught in just about all on-bike CyclingSavvy courses as it facilitates cycling by both reducing traffic and eliminating lane changes.
Waiting for gaps in traffic between “platoons” is another way to reduce traffic and facilitate lane changes, as is making lane changes early if a gap appears in traffic. Such techniques facilitate both the cyclist’s travel as well as that of nearby motorists.
And perhaps surprising to many, cyclist lane control on multilane roads makes it easier for motorists to pass, as this makes it clear from far back that they must change lanes to overtake, giving them more time and space to do so.
Four Questions
In my one-hour classroom introduction to CyclingSavvy, I start by showing the Dance video, in which CyclingSavvy co-founder Keri Caffrey and other savvy Orlando-area cyclists demonstrate bicycle driving using lane control and cycling on the center and left lanes of multilane roads.
When I ask attendees why all bicyclists don’t operate in this manner, four questions are usually raised.
Legal? Safe? Rude? Stressful?
The first is whether cyclists’ use of the full lane and use of center and left traffic lanes is Legal. The answer is “yes” in almost all cases. States that have “Far to the Right” laws and mandatory bike lane/bike path/shoulder use laws have many exceptions to these requirements. No state obligates you to endanger yourself for another road user’s convenience.
A second question is whether bicycle driving in this manner is Safe. Technically, this is impossible to answer without agreeing on what “safe” means and knowing “compared to what.” But it’s clear that bicycle driving involving lane control on lanes too narrow to safely share is usually safer than edge or sidewalk riding. Lane control eliminates or significantly reduces the probability of the five most common motorist-caused car-bike crashes: sideswipes, doorings, right hooks, left crosses and drive-outs.
Even if savvy bicycle driving is legal and safe, might it not still be Rude? A bicycle is, after all, a narrow and relatively slow vehicle. Doesn’t cyclist lane control delay motorists?
No bicycles involved in typical traffic jams
Anyone who drives or bikes in a city with congested traffic knows that it isn’t bikes that delay traffic. It’s other motor vehicles. And bicycles are not the only slow-moving vehicles. There are garbage trucks and city and school buses. Not to mention traffic signals and grade-level railroad crossings with long and slow freight trains. As mentioned above, cyclist lane control on multilane roads may actually make it easier for motorists to pass. And recall the four traffic release techniques that CyclingSavvy teaches and encourages cyclists to practice — quite the opposite of rudeness!
Finally, while bicycle driving may be legal, safe and not rude, isn’t it nonetheless Stressful? Well, that depends both on where you ride and what you know.
If you believe that the faster motor traffic behind you is your greatest danger on the road, you may well find lane control stressful. But a savvy cyclist who understands that lane control eliminates or significantly reduces the “Big Five” motorist-caused car-bike crashes will recognize that in most cases, lane control is safer and therefore less stressful than edge riding or sidewalk riding.
From video of traffic behind as I ride on Culver Boulevard (click image for video)
Even as a savvy cyclist, I find some roads not particularly enjoyable for cycling. One such road is westbound Culver Boulevard in Los Angeles through the Ballona Wetlands. This road connects my neighborhood of Playa del Rey with the adjacent neighborhood of Playa Vista.
There are no cross streets on this stretch, so it has a freeway-like feel to it. Since there’s no convenient cycling alternative, I use this road, making sure I’m visible and relevant. And I keep tabs on the traffic behind me with frequent glances into my helmet-mounted mirror.
There’s no useful shoulder, so I control the right lane. I almost always get full lane changes. I know that riding on the edge would be much more stressful, as I would be effectively telling motorists to squeeze by me in the narrow lane. In fact, I wouldn’t even consider using this road if I felt I had to ride on the edge.
If traffic builds up behind me at the first stop light on this stretch, I use “release on green” to let these motorists go ahead of me before taking possession of the full lane. This ensures that motorists in the next platoon coming up behind me have plenty of time to see me and can easily change lanes to pass, as you’ll see in the video.
Four Goals
While CyclingSavvy is at its core a traffic cycling education program, it has the greater potential to transform our transportation culture and how we move about our communities.
What I like about this perspective is the realization that my savvy cyclist behavior is not only serving to enhance my safety and enjoyment of bicycling, but it’s also helping to change cultural beliefs of how cyclists typically do and should behave.
When you’re a savvy cyclist, you upgrade the expectations of others about cyclists, and this cultural shift upgrades the quality of life in your community
A short time ago, a friend and I rode 52 miles through the arterials and residential streets of Los Angeles. For much of our ride we were side-by-side, controlling the right lane on multilane urban arterials. We experienced not a single challenging honk, no close passes, and no incivility whatsoever from the hundreds of L.A. motorists we encountered. Of course, we looked for opportunities to allow motorists to pass us where convenient and safe, and we exchanged many friendly waves and smiles with other road users.
It’s exciting and satisfying to realize that my savvy cycling behavior is helping change the beliefs and expectations of motorists and other cyclists with whom I interact.
Cyclists in the 19th Century were responsible for getting roads paved. These roads were eventually swarmed by motor vehicles in the 20th Century.
Now in the 21st Century, savvy cyclists are paving the way for a new understanding and acceptance of cyclists into the transportation network of our cities, towns and neighborhoods.
Many savvy cycling topics and techniques have been presented here — and many more could be added. But the primary purpose of this article is to provide a simple framework for CyclingSavvy instructors and graduates to aid them both in their traffic cycling and communicating about CyclingSavvy with others.
Memorize it, go forth, have fun and change the culture!
Four Dimensions of CyclingSavvy
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/savvy-cycling-four-dimensions.png245400Gary Czikohttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngGary Cziko2018-04-11 11:30:222018-08-23 17:10:17Four Dimensions of CyclingSavvy
Recently, a friend who works in a bicycle-related job showed me a letter he had received from another cyclist, along with two orange cloth arrows about a foot in length. The letter writer stated that much of his riding was on two-lane rural roads (one lane each way), many with no usable shoulder. Motorists very rarely more than touched their left wheels on the double yellow line to pass him.
So he created these arrows and wore one on the back of his jacket, pointing to the left. He claimed that the difference he got in passing distance from motorists was incredible since he started wearing it, and wanted to share his great idea.
Many of us have seen photos on social media of cyclists with similar motivations. Some have gone so far as to mount on their bike some kind of stick with a flag on the end, pointing left, to ensure motorists give them their legally required three feet of passing clearance.
This looks like more than three feet, and is rigid besides. If hit, it would likely cause the cyclist to crash
A pool noodle is more flexible, in case of being hit, but we’re still not sure it’s best
This one attempts to calm motorists down with smiley faces :-)
One person even made car-sized PVC-tube framing to surround his bike! (Sorry I can’t find the image now.)
I don’t want to outright dismiss these well-meaning and original attempts at a solution. Fear of traffic is real. Many cyclists do struggle with getting adequate passing clearance. Maybe these devices do some good. They certainly get noticed.
One sentence of the cyclist’s letter to my friend leapt out at me:
Since I started wearing this, almost all the cars that pass me give me plenty of room, some even going almost completely over the double yellow line!
My immediate response when I read that was: But I get that behavior too, without wearing a flag on my back!
I do usually wear a hi-viz jacket, and use lights at night and in some daytime bad-weather conditions, but that’s about it.
No arrows, no sticks, no noodles.
Great passing was not always the norm for me. In my early days of commuting, I remember some terrifying close passes. Nowadays, it’s rare that a motorist doesn’t move at least halfway over a double yellow line to pass me, assuming there is no oncoming traffic. Many change lanes completely to pass. What’s different?
I believe the difference is almost entirely due to my behavior, in two ways.
Relevance
First, I often use more of the travel lane now than I used to, even if I’m not completely controlling it. One of the first pieces of good advice I got about traffic cycling — from an internet forum no less — was that the farther you ride from the edge of the road, the better passing you get. It’s counter-intuitive, but it works!
Why? I don’t know for sure, but I have some theories. It was suggested that you tend to get a similar amount of room on your left as you have left yourself on your right, and that is also my experience. Maybe people tend to picture you as if you were centered in a lane, with equal space on both sides, even if you’re really not.
I have no idea if that’s really the reason. Probably a better explanation is CyclingSavvy’s teaching about the importance of relevance.
When you ride very close to the edge, not only are you less noticeable, but even if you are seen, you are not perceived as relevant. Motorists approaching from behind, even when they see you, are more likely to assume there’s room to pass, so they don’t slow down or move over right away.
When they’re closer, they may realize there could be a problem. But by then, they have less time and room to react, especially if they feel pressure from additional traffic behind them. So they decide they don’t have any choice but to pass.
There are many other reasons it’s better to ride farther away from the edge:
The more room you give yourself, the more room others give you:
(Wondering about that double yellow line issue? You can read a lot more about it in this article on our companion site, IAmTraffic.org.)
Control and Release
The second related behavioral change that I’ve made over the years is implementing CyclingSavvy’s advice on “control and release.” I don’t think I even realized early in my cycling career that my closest passes came when there was oncoming traffic. I was just squeezing myself to the edge all the time, without regard to the situation!
CyclingSavvy taught me that it was not only possible, legal, and safe, but that it isn’t even rude to control your lane in situations where the road is too narrow to be passed safely. When you’re a mindful bicyclist who monitors the traffic situation and sees when it would be unsafe to allow yourself to be passed, you can simply use a lane position that does not allow it. Voilá! You’ve just eliminated the most extreme unsafe passing situations!
When it becomes safe to pass, you can move slightly right again to encourage it (but still far enough into the lane to get your good passing distance), and maybe give a little head nod or thank-you wave to acknowledge the driver. If they’ve had to slow down and wait for a chance to pass, in most cases they give you plenty of room once they are able to!
Communication Is Important
Your lane position by itself is a form of communication, which CyclingSavvy calls “passive communication.” If the situation requires it, you can add hand motions such as “stay back” during the control phase, followed by “go ahead” or “thank you” when you move over to release. We call this “active communication.” (Some people feel that waving motorists on is not a good idea. I tend to agree in general, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes you want to keep them from hesitating too long. But I usually just give a thank-you wave.)
Sometimes, it’s just not safe to allow yourself to be passed.
I’m convinced that most people really want to do the right thing by cyclists, but it’s easy for them to make a mistake. They assume there’s room when there’s not, or they just don’t plan ahead. They are not helped when the cyclist hugs the edge and does not communicate at all, leaving the motorist wondering if they should pass or not. Naturally, some of them are overly-optimistic.
I don’t know the cyclist who sent my friend this letter. If I had to, I’d guess that he’s not very assertive in his lane position, but I obviously don’t know that for sure.
I know from my own experience that some rural roads here in Maine do tend to have more aggressive motorists than others, and that is challenging. But if that orange arrow is really working for him, I’ll bet that more assertive lane positioning would, too. Maybe someday we’ll get to meet and talk about it.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/change-lanes-to-pass.png329329John Brookinghttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Brooking2018-04-04 11:30:392018-08-23 17:10:56How to Get Great Passing