When should ride single file or side by side?
Question: My buddy and I ride side by side so we can talk. Honestly, the conversation is the whole reason we ride. It’s legal in our state. But when I glance back and see four or five cars stacked up on a road with no good place to pass, I feel guilty and single up. My buddy says I’m being a pushover, that we’re traffic too, and cars can wait 30 seconds. He’s right on the law. I still feel like a jerk. Where’s the line between our right to the road and plain courtesy? And does singling up actually help drivers pass, or does it just invite a closer pass? —Marty F.
RBR’S STAN PURDUM REPLIES: Let me first say that there are times when not letting traffic pass immediately is the safest thing to do. I have previously explained the matter of taking the lane. But because of lane-taking’s potential for angering drivers, it should be used sparingly. It’s best to read the road and decide whether taking the lane or singling up is the wisest tactic in a particular situation.
That said, you should not compromise your own safety — such as moving onto a potholed or a debris-covered surface — just to rush a driver’s convenience.
But essentially, I’m with you on this one. If you can single up safely — that is, if there’s room for the waiting cars to pass you after you single up without forcing you and your buddy off the road — then do it.
Some drivers don’t need much of an excuse to get pissed off about cyclists impeding their immediate forward progress, and no good can come from having agitated motorists on your tail.
Here’s the incident that brought this conclusion home for me: Several years ago, while riding with my buddy Wayne, we were on a low-traffic road with a paved shoulder. There wasn’t any other traffic within sight on this long straight section of the road, so we were riding side-by-side and conversing. Wayne had a hearing loss in his left ear, so when we were talking, he always preferred to ride on my left so that his right ear was facing me. Thus, I was riding on the shoulder, and Wayne was riding alongside me, on the traffic side of the white line. We both had mirrors, and eventually we noticed a pickup truck coming up from behind. It was still a long way off, so Wayne dropped in behind me, leaving the driver a completely open lane. Nonetheless, as the truck overtook us, the driver blasted his horn, and continued doing as he passed and even after he was fully ahead of us.
After he was gone, I said to Wayne, “I wonder what he was upset by. We weren’t obstructing him at all.” Wayne responded, “He was sending us a message: Bicycles don’t belong on the road.”
Some years later I had a more direct confrontation with another guy who had a similar opinion: Read about it here. That encounter confirmed for me that the pickup driver wasn’t the only motorist to hold that viewpoint.
I’m not suggesting that every driver of the cars stacked up behind you is opposed your right to be on the road, but life has all kinds of frustrations, and cyclists, exercising that two-abreast privilege, can be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back, leading irritated motorists to take hostile action against you. And even if nothing that extreme happens, your riding partner’s insistence on staying doubled up adds fuel to the notion that bicycles don’t belong on the road.
What’s more, the current political environment doesn’t help, where recently, as the League of American Bicyclists explains, “federal safety regulators quietly stripped bike lanes off the list of Proven Safety Countermeasures. Now the administration’s transportation priorities would block all federal funding for bike infrastructure and actively support ripping out lanes that already exist.” The intent of eliminating bike lanes may not necessarily be anti-bicycle per se, but rather driven by the view that the roads are for motor vehicles only, but when we cyclists block traffic unnecessarily, we are not building good feelings about cyclists as road users.
You might want to remind your riding buddy that as adamant as he may be about exercising his legal bicycle rights, there are non-cyclists who are just adamant about keeping roads only for cars, trucks, buses, RVs and the like. You might also tell him that having insisted on exercising his bicycle rights will be cold comfort when he’s lying on the road, awaiting an ambulance, after a road-rage encounter with an angry driver.
And by the way, never assume drivers know about the laws covering cyclists on the road.
If conversation is really the whole reason you two ride together, choose lower-traffic roads or trails.
I like the comment that a cyclist named Peter MacMartin posted on Facebook: “Think amicable flow. Not ‘my right is to be here.’ Amicable flow. We can share. It’s not about pissing each other off; it’s about getting home. Learn to know the difference and ride to smile — not to sneer.”
Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.
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