GORP Biking - City-Riding Etiquette - Get Educated and Organized

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City-Riding Etiquette
Get Educated and Organized
By Chain Gang Expert Biker Dennis Coello

Get Educated

Most of us learn by doing when it comes to riding the streets, but learning what doesn't work can be costly. Try reading a little something before you hit the pavement (both literally and figuratively). The following books are both worth your attention no matter how long you've been pedaling.

Stateside commuting. Feeling alone?

John Forester's excellent 600-page Effective Cycling is especially good since it contains more than a hundred pages on commuting safety alone. His book includes pages and pages of drawings showing exactly where bikers should be ("proper positioning," as he terms it) in every imaginable traffic situation (far more, in fact, than I could imagine, even after decades of commuting), and provides dozens of pages on the causes of all kinds of accidents, the dangers of multi-use paths, traffic law and how it applies to us, changing lanes in traffic . . . His is a masterful treatment.

Tips for City Cycling

A hundred pages is too long for you? Try the ten-page chapter"Sharing the Road" in Susan Weaver's A Woman's Guide to Cycling. Susan Weaver moves from etiquette tips to defensive tactics, emergency maneuvers, city street-smarts, getting through gridlock, asserting oneself on narrow roads, and handling harassment. Guys and gals alike will benefit from her "Gracious Cyclist" suggestions for riding courteously.

For those with an even shorter attention span, an interesting online piece called "How to Avoid Getting Hit by Cars" (click here to visit this page) has illustrated and commented on examples of ten collisions to avoid.

Get Organized

Okay, so you aren't the rabble-rouser type. Me either. But you can still do your part by joining an organization of cyclists that's been around since 1880 — long before Ford's Model T. The League of American Bicyclists (see their Web site), formerly the League of American Wheelmen, has 35,000 members, 455 recreational clubs, and 50 bicycle advocacy organizations working to get across their "Share the Road" message to bikers and drivers alike. A few bucks a year will allow you to help support the league's important work for our right to be on the public roads.

Susan Weaver's Etiquette Tips for City Cycling
1) Stay to the right.
2) Pull off the road when stopping to wait for someone or to read a map.
3) Don't ride side-by-side on busy roads.
4) Stop at stoplights; put a foot down (don't ride in circles or balance on a car).
5) When you're at a red light at an intersection with both a straight-ahead and a right-turn lane, position yourself to the far right of the straight-ahead lane, thus leaving the right-turn lane free for cars to do their thing.
6) Don't perturb drivers who have worked to pass you on a narrow street by squeezing past them at an intersection and making them pass you once again in the next block.

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