Stayin' Alive - Rural
Written by: Dan Empfield
Date: Thu May 20 2010
Cyclists getting hit by motorists. It's just a steady stream of bad news, isn't it? We all know there's a hard truth, that even in such case as a vehicle/cyclist interaction is the vehicle driver's fault, there are often things that the cyclist can do that might have prevented the tragedy.
This is not in any way meant to suggest a shared culpability. Rather that drivers are, on average, unequipped to be given charge of weapons that powerful. Therefore, we must make up the difference.
At best, all motorists get into their cars with baggage attendant. Not briefcases and backpacks, the baggage to which I refer are their dreams, worries, mental to-do lists. Drivers are multi-taskers. Time is short, schedules are packed, it's simply not efficient to drive only. And let's face it, I'm not just talking about them, I'm talking about us. Once we stop pedaling and turn on our ignitions, we become them.
That's at best. At worst, we're sharing the roads with—let's face it—a significant minority of motorists who can't compete. I don't mean they can't compete in triathlons, I mean they can't compete. The drunk driver; the 88-year-old who ought not to be on the road at all; the texting teenage airhead; wouldn't survive in a world less kind and coddling than ours.
Yet here they are, sharing the roadway with you, wielding 5000 pounds.
So it's not a case of fault in an accident. It's a case of survival, and realizing how to steer clear of the clueless and inept, as well as the well-meaning, conscientious drivers who are simply distracted.
We can shake our fists in the air, or, we can prepare ourselves.
To that end, I'm going to write down the result of 35 years of trial-and-error on the roadways. Mind, I'm going to rise from my chair in a little while to go bike riding, and I might not survive the ride. This, because a vehicle may foil all my defensive maneuvers and take me out. However, this regrettable possibility is just as prevalent when we're behind the wheels of our cars, is it not? How many head-on collisions between two vehicles occur on two-lane dividerless roads? Once you exit your property, the risk increases. So you become an agoraphobe or you venture forth, and do what you can to lessen the risk.
I'm splitting this into two installments. Below you'll read about how it is I comport myself on emptier, country roads. Following this is an installment on how it is I behave on busier, urban and suburban streets.
ROAD SELECTION
You drive to your swim workouts, do you not? I recommend you also consider driving to your cycling workouts, if you don't have safe roads proximate to you. Since you're only going to ride two or maybe three days a week, it's not that hard to strategically plan a bike route, and execute your ride on roads both scenic and safe.
What's my idea of a safe road? First, sparsity of traffic. I'm going to use Los Angeles as an example. You might think there is no such thing as a sparse stretch of pavement in this town. But L.A. is replete with great riding.
The city most proximate to The Compound is Palmdale (the start of the Queen Stage of this year's Amgen Tour of California). Palmdale is a city of engineers. It's the home of Lockheed Skunk Works, proximate to Edwards Air Force Base, and, plenty of Palmdale's engineers commute to Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere "down below." If I lived in Palmdale and commuted, I'd take my bike with me to work. On the way home I'd pull off the 210 freeway at Osborne Street and ride Little Tujunga Canyon. The next day I'd pull off the 14 freeway at San Canyon and ride that same fabulous, challenging road in the other direction.
This is not in any way meant to suggest a shared culpability. Rather that drivers are, on average, unequipped to be given charge of weapons that powerful. Therefore, we must make up the difference.
At best, all motorists get into their cars with baggage attendant. Not briefcases and backpacks, the baggage to which I refer are their dreams, worries, mental to-do lists. Drivers are multi-taskers. Time is short, schedules are packed, it's simply not efficient to drive only. And let's face it, I'm not just talking about them, I'm talking about us. Once we stop pedaling and turn on our ignitions, we become them.
That's at best. At worst, we're sharing the roads with—let's face it—a significant minority of motorists who can't compete. I don't mean they can't compete in triathlons, I mean they can't compete. The drunk driver; the 88-year-old who ought not to be on the road at all; the texting teenage airhead; wouldn't survive in a world less kind and coddling than ours.
Yet here they are, sharing the roadway with you, wielding 5000 pounds.
So it's not a case of fault in an accident. It's a case of survival, and realizing how to steer clear of the clueless and inept, as well as the well-meaning, conscientious drivers who are simply distracted.
We can shake our fists in the air, or, we can prepare ourselves.
To that end, I'm going to write down the result of 35 years of trial-and-error on the roadways. Mind, I'm going to rise from my chair in a little while to go bike riding, and I might not survive the ride. This, because a vehicle may foil all my defensive maneuvers and take me out. However, this regrettable possibility is just as prevalent when we're behind the wheels of our cars, is it not? How many head-on collisions between two vehicles occur on two-lane dividerless roads? Once you exit your property, the risk increases. So you become an agoraphobe or you venture forth, and do what you can to lessen the risk.
I'm splitting this into two installments. Below you'll read about how it is I comport myself on emptier, country roads. Following this is an installment on how it is I behave on busier, urban and suburban streets.
ROAD SELECTION
You drive to your swim workouts, do you not? I recommend you also consider driving to your cycling workouts, if you don't have safe roads proximate to you. Since you're only going to ride two or maybe three days a week, it's not that hard to strategically plan a bike route, and execute your ride on roads both scenic and safe.
What's my idea of a safe road? First, sparsity of traffic. I'm going to use Los Angeles as an example. You might think there is no such thing as a sparse stretch of pavement in this town. But L.A. is replete with great riding.
The city most proximate to The Compound is Palmdale (the start of the Queen Stage of this year's Amgen Tour of California). Palmdale is a city of engineers. It's the home of Lockheed Skunk Works, proximate to Edwards Air Force Base, and, plenty of Palmdale's engineers commute to Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere "down below." If I lived in Palmdale and commuted, I'd take my bike with me to work. On the way home I'd pull off the 210 freeway at Osborne Street and ride Little Tujunga Canyon. The next day I'd pull off the 14 freeway at San Canyon and ride that same fabulous, challenging road in the other direction.
The next day I'd pull off the I-14 at Acton and ride Aliso Canyon Road up to Mill Creek Summit on Angeles Forest Highway (on last year's Amgen ToC queen stage).
All these are sparsely traveled roads, and cars have room to give you a wide berth. There are countless low-density roads in SoCal. It amazes me that cyclists in triathletes who live in the South Bay (from Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica) ride north on heavily trafficked, stoplight-infested roads instead of simply driving their bikes to Malibu, where the good riding on challenging, scenic, spare and car-free roads commences.
PROPER POSTURE ON COUNTRY ROADS
What do we keep hearing? That so many of these horrible accidents actually do happen on sparsely traveled roads. So, even if you take my advice and find these roads, how can you remain safe?
Just as you never know who's going to swerve into you, creating a head-on accident, while you're driving on roads like these, you never know when a motorist is going to cause a tragedy beyond your control to avert. It's a numbers game. Yet, there are a few tips I can share that might increase your odds.
1. You need your hearing. You need to know when a car is approaching. Therefore, I never ride with music streaming into my ears, and I recommend you don't either.
2. Music or no, wind direction plays an important part in what you can hear. If you're riding into a headwind, you can't hear what's coming up behind you. Therefore, when riding into a wind, you must recognize this, and be on extra alert.
3. We all ride as we are supposed to, by law, and that is as far to the right as is practicable. But that doesn't mean you straddle the fine line between asphalt and dirt. Probably you ride 12" to 24" away from the edge of the roadbed. When I hear a car approaching from the rear. I keep riding with my 12" to 24" margin. As I sense the car getting close—after he's calibrated for what he feels is his proper gap between his car and my bike—I gently steer toward the edge of the roadbed. By the time the car reaches me, I'm very nearly at the edge of the road. In other words, I've taken the margin the driver thinks he needs, and I've added an extra foot or foot-and-a-half margin he's not accounting for. The idea is to make this extra room late enough in the process so that the approaching car can't add this extra margin into his figuring.
4. I'm on high alert when a car is approaching from the other direction. Why? Because, if a car is approaching me from behind, and happens to pass me at the exact moment the car on the other side of the road passes by, now all three of us must squeeze through at the same time. For this reason, if a car is approaching from the other direction, well before that car approaches me I may look back and see what's coming up from behind. Otherwise, I employ the same tactic as described above, providing extra margin just as the oncoming vehicle passes me.
5. When there's one, there may be more. Keep in mind that when a car passes you from behind, that's not the end of it. Very likely there is a second, or even a train, of cars behind the first car. So, after I've made that extra margin for the car overtaking me, I don't immediately reestablish my normal 12" to 24" margin, because I have to keep that margin established for the cars that might come after the first overtaking vehicle.
6. Learn to look behind you without swerving. It's common to veer in the direction you look, that is, if you look over your shoulder to the left, it's common to then steer your bike marginally to the left. This is a bad habit. Best to train yourself how to look over your shoulder while keeping your bike in a straight line. This is not only a safer way to ride your bike in vehicular traffic, it's also a good way to keep from taking down cyclists who're riding behind you.
7. Trailers and trailer mirrors. I hate seeing utility trailers pulled by pick-ups coming up on me. This, because trailers are frequently—in fact, usually—wider than the trucks pulling them. But the trucks' drivers don't recognize this, so, they allow you a margin commensurate with their trucks, not their trailers. I'm on extra alert for these, and, I try to use the tactics described above to grant myself the extra margin I need.
8. Riding two and three abreast. You ladies and gents need to decide what's important to you: practicing your social life aboard your bikes; or riding safely. When you and I ride together, I can guarantee you that if we're riding two or more abreast, I'm going to be the one against the side of the roadbed. If you want to ride out there in traffic, be my guest. Just make sure I know your spouse's cell number, so that I can apprise him/her what hospital you're at. Conversely, if you ride directly in front of or behind me, I won't take it personally. We can catch up on social events at brunch after the ride is over.
9. We're triathletes, so, we ride tri bikes. This means many of us have a special muscular burden we bear: in the backs of our necks. Just as a tired boxer let's his guard down, making him vulnerable to attack, so we're vulnerable to getting hit if we don't stay sufficiently diligent. Calibrate your bike position, and the distance of your ride, so that you're not spending an unsafe amount of time looking down instead of forward.
Above are 9 tips for safe rural riding, and I'm sure Slowtwitchers could conspire to add to this knowledge, and make this ruleset number an even 10.
Next up are my rules for safe urban riding.
All these are sparsely traveled roads, and cars have room to give you a wide berth. There are countless low-density roads in SoCal. It amazes me that cyclists in triathletes who live in the South Bay (from Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica) ride north on heavily trafficked, stoplight-infested roads instead of simply driving their bikes to Malibu, where the good riding on challenging, scenic, spare and car-free roads commences.
PROPER POSTURE ON COUNTRY ROADS
What do we keep hearing? That so many of these horrible accidents actually do happen on sparsely traveled roads. So, even if you take my advice and find these roads, how can you remain safe?
Just as you never know who's going to swerve into you, creating a head-on accident, while you're driving on roads like these, you never know when a motorist is going to cause a tragedy beyond your control to avert. It's a numbers game. Yet, there are a few tips I can share that might increase your odds.
1. You need your hearing. You need to know when a car is approaching. Therefore, I never ride with music streaming into my ears, and I recommend you don't either.
2. Music or no, wind direction plays an important part in what you can hear. If you're riding into a headwind, you can't hear what's coming up behind you. Therefore, when riding into a wind, you must recognize this, and be on extra alert.
3. We all ride as we are supposed to, by law, and that is as far to the right as is practicable. But that doesn't mean you straddle the fine line between asphalt and dirt. Probably you ride 12" to 24" away from the edge of the roadbed. When I hear a car approaching from the rear. I keep riding with my 12" to 24" margin. As I sense the car getting close—after he's calibrated for what he feels is his proper gap between his car and my bike—I gently steer toward the edge of the roadbed. By the time the car reaches me, I'm very nearly at the edge of the road. In other words, I've taken the margin the driver thinks he needs, and I've added an extra foot or foot-and-a-half margin he's not accounting for. The idea is to make this extra room late enough in the process so that the approaching car can't add this extra margin into his figuring.
4. I'm on high alert when a car is approaching from the other direction. Why? Because, if a car is approaching me from behind, and happens to pass me at the exact moment the car on the other side of the road passes by, now all three of us must squeeze through at the same time. For this reason, if a car is approaching from the other direction, well before that car approaches me I may look back and see what's coming up from behind. Otherwise, I employ the same tactic as described above, providing extra margin just as the oncoming vehicle passes me.
5. When there's one, there may be more. Keep in mind that when a car passes you from behind, that's not the end of it. Very likely there is a second, or even a train, of cars behind the first car. So, after I've made that extra margin for the car overtaking me, I don't immediately reestablish my normal 12" to 24" margin, because I have to keep that margin established for the cars that might come after the first overtaking vehicle.
6. Learn to look behind you without swerving. It's common to veer in the direction you look, that is, if you look over your shoulder to the left, it's common to then steer your bike marginally to the left. This is a bad habit. Best to train yourself how to look over your shoulder while keeping your bike in a straight line. This is not only a safer way to ride your bike in vehicular traffic, it's also a good way to keep from taking down cyclists who're riding behind you.
7. Trailers and trailer mirrors. I hate seeing utility trailers pulled by pick-ups coming up on me. This, because trailers are frequently—in fact, usually—wider than the trucks pulling them. But the trucks' drivers don't recognize this, so, they allow you a margin commensurate with their trucks, not their trailers. I'm on extra alert for these, and, I try to use the tactics described above to grant myself the extra margin I need.
8. Riding two and three abreast. You ladies and gents need to decide what's important to you: practicing your social life aboard your bikes; or riding safely. When you and I ride together, I can guarantee you that if we're riding two or more abreast, I'm going to be the one against the side of the roadbed. If you want to ride out there in traffic, be my guest. Just make sure I know your spouse's cell number, so that I can apprise him/her what hospital you're at. Conversely, if you ride directly in front of or behind me, I won't take it personally. We can catch up on social events at brunch after the ride is over.
9. We're triathletes, so, we ride tri bikes. This means many of us have a special muscular burden we bear: in the backs of our necks. Just as a tired boxer let's his guard down, making him vulnerable to attack, so we're vulnerable to getting hit if we don't stay sufficiently diligent. Calibrate your bike position, and the distance of your ride, so that you're not spending an unsafe amount of time looking down instead of forward.
Above are 9 tips for safe rural riding, and I'm sure Slowtwitchers could conspire to add to this knowledge, and make this ruleset number an even 10.
Next up are my rules for safe urban riding.
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Comments
Staying Alive-Rural
Reviewed by: Ernie McFerrin, Jan 11 2011 8:21AM
I'm all for doing anything to improve your odds for survival. I go to any extreme that I feel will improve my position. The thing I find most effective is to alert the motorist that I am aware of their presense. I always wear bright colored gloves and use a mirror on my bike. I choose to hold my position on the road as the car approaches and I hold my left hand straight out almost as if I am going to indicate a left turn but wave my hand up and down suggesting that the motorist be cautious. I feel this tells him that I am aware of his approaching me and virtually every time the motorist slows down and gives me the space I need while he passes me. I almost feel that by not doing this the motorist senses that I am simply not going to give up my positon and perhaps he then decides to teach me a lesson. This requires a higher level of concentration on my part but that actually is a good thing. By doing this I feel it breaks the drivers pattern and causes him to move away from me. Flashing rear and front lights and bright clothing are also an absolute must. Forget fashion and always think safety.
Ears and Mirrors
Jim Cunningham
Reviewed by: Jim Cunningham, Jun 2 2010 3:39AM
Yes they are geeky! I have a mirror extending out of my handlebar. It is oval and angled so that it has a minimum effect on airflow. I had the only bike at the Fly by Night duathlon (we didn't need headlights). With many cyclists and "lines" on the Watkins Glen track, I could easily anticipate the line of approaching cyclists. Riding on the road with a group, some of us have ears and some of us have mirrors. A trained ear is awesome. With a head wind, a mirror is invaluable; the ear doesn't pick up the approaching car. Interestingly, the ear can pick up a car before the mirror. Together the ear and mirror make ours rides safe.
Riding to Survive
Reviewed by: Kris Ridgway, May 24 2010 6:21PM
Excellent report. I have been riding to and from work for 15 years and have followed a similar set of personal rules. Ride on safe roads, be very alert, ride in a way as to anticipate problems.
Good Start
Kokua Multisports
Reviewed by: Robert Mitera, May 24 2010 2:56PM
Very good start to an article we can all add to. I am amazed at how many people also feel they can ride without a helmet. Brainless. Lastly, tell someone how far you are riding and which way you are going and stick to it. My last crash I landed on my phone and crushed it into 500 pieces.
Excellent Article
Reviewed by: Lou Savastani, May 24 2010 8:24AM
Dan, Excellent Article. To elaborate on the "train of cars", I find that the second or third cars to pass are more problematic than the first car that passes. Why? Because often they can't see you. The first car blocks their vision. If the first car slows down to pass, as often happens on the congested roads in my area, the second car will generally close the gap between vehicles, reducing their sight line even further, and possibly making them more impatient (not knowing why the car in front of them is slowing down). For those reasons, I always expect the second or third car to give less room, if any, when passing.
I've had people tell me to assume drivers just don't see me. While that's good advice, I take it one step further. I assume that every driver does see me, but really doesn't care if they hit me or not.
Ride safe!
I've had people tell me to assume drivers just don't see me. While that's good advice, I take it one step further. I assume that every driver does see me, but really doesn't care if they hit me or not.
Ride safe!
