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- Jul 13, 2015
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Serious question, is it really not safe or is that a perception?
The reason I ask is that there's a lot of talk in Europe about segregated cycle paths being the best way forward because they will apparently encourage people to cycle who currently don't cycle because "it's too dangerous". But a lot of the time danger is in the mind rather than in the world. When I first bought my bike one of the roads very near me seemed dangerous - lots of traffic, lots of junctions, lots of parked cars and so on. So I avoided it. Truth be told I avoided roads as far as I could and stuck to trails. But the way I was cycling meant sooner or later I was going to face the decision of taking the "scary" road or taking a huge detour. I wanted to get home quickly, so figured I'd see what the "scary" road was like to ride. It turned out it was as easy as anything.
That "scary" road had a 30mph speed limit. Since then I've cycled on much faster and busier roads and found the vast majority of motorists gave me enough space when passing. One morning I cycled along the A308 from Egham to Windsor (this essentially runs from west of London and heads west - you can see it on Google Maps if you're interested). The road starts out with a 50mph limit which subsequently rises to 60 before going through suburban areas and fluctuating between 30 and 50mph. I was riding at about 8:30am, so basically the rush hour when people are trying to get to work. So I just kept far enough left that people could pass me, but far enough away from the edge of the road that I had space to escape if someone buzzed me. Cars coming the other way kept slightly further left than usual as well, which meant a stream of rush hour traffic could overtake me easily and safely. Fundamentally the key thing I've noticed is that a more experienced cyclist behaves in a way that's more predictable to other road users and so doesn't get into as many conflict situations. I've seen a few obviously inexperienced cyclists riding towards the back of a parked car, with cars behind them slowing right down figuring they are going to pull around the car. But the cyclist just continues to slow, the car continues to slow, until sooner or later the car has to either stop and wait, or overtake. Of course that's usually about the time the cyclist swings wildly out into the road, and the conflict situation is created. If you see the parked car from 200 yards back and position yourself to overtake it cleanly, that kind of situation arises far less often.
