How To Ride Your Bicycle Safely On The Street

 

Rid­ing your lovely bicy­cle in a car-centric city such as Los Ange­les can be very stress­ful if you don’t know the best way to ride with each other.  There’s far too many cyclists who are con­stantly rid­ing on the side­walks and too many dri­vers who honk at me to get out of their way.  I believe I’ve been accident-free (and ride stress free) because I always ensure that I am vis­i­ble and fol­low­ing the rules of the road, the same way a car would.

If this arti­cle has the poten­tial to edu­cate even just a few peo­ple to ride prop­erly (and a few dri­vers to sim­mer down), then I am ALL for it.

You are a slow-moving vehicle.

So first things first, let’s get some­thing straight: cars are vehi­cles, but bicy­cles are vehi­cles as well.  When you are rid­ing your bicy­cle you should fol­low the rules of the road the same way cars do.  Cre­at­ing your own rules out of thin air cre­ates con­fu­sion for every­body.  You must inte­grate your­self with the rest of traf­fic as if you are a slow-moving vehi­cle, because that is what you are.

Never ride against traffic.

Nobody would drive their car on the wrong side of the street, so why would you do that on your bicy­cle? Just because you can’t see behind you, doesn’t mean that cars are going to rear-end you.  There are many rea­sons why this is very dangerous.

Motorists pulling out of dri­ve­ways and look­ing to merge onto the street do not bother to look for cyclists com­ing from the com­pletely oppo­site direc­tion.  You will be invis­i­ble to them until it’s too late!

If a car is dri­ving at 30mph and you’re bicy­cling at 10mph and you are both rid­ing in the same direc­tion and there is an impact, the clos­ing speed would be 20mph.  If you’re both rid­ing toward each other, the clos­ing speed dou­bles to 40mph! When the clos­ing speed dou­bles, the force of impact increases by four times, and when the clos­ing speed triples, the force of impact increases by nine times.

In other words, if an impact occurs when you are rid­ing against traf­fic, it could be much more harm­ful than if you were going in the same direction.

To make mat­ters worse, both you and motorists have much less time to react if you’re going toward each other and the sit­u­a­tion may become par­tic­u­larly con­fus­ing (read: dan­ger­ous) for every­body involved.  So please, ride with the nor­mal flow of traffic!

Avoid side­walks like the plague.

Even though igno­rant motorists will yell at you to get on the side­walk and police will usu­ally ignore you and not cite you for rid­ing there, it is a hor­ri­ble idea to ride on the side­walk.  Side­walks were NOT cre­ated for bicy­cles.  Side­walks are for pedes­tri­ans!  Please don’t imi­tate those cyclists who are rid­ing there because they are DOING IT WRONG!

Rid­ing on the side­walk is extremely stress­ful.  You will not be able to truly relax because you con­stantly have to avoid benches, bus stops, pedes­tri­ans, cracked pave­ment, tree roots, poles, fire hydrants, low hang­ing tree branches, and so forth.  There is barely enough room for two pedes­tri­ans to walk side by side, let alone a cyclist to get through.   Pedes­tri­ans usu­ally have no idea a cyclist is com­ing up behind them and there is no easy way to alert them (or direct them), espe­cially if they have head­phones in and are lis­ten­ing to music.

The dan­ger of a car sud­denly dart­ing out of a dri­ve­way and hit­ting you while you are cycling on the side­walk is very scary, because it’s real. A motorist pulling out of a dri­ve­way almost never stops before the side­walk to check if the side­walk is clear.  They will go right over the side­walk and stop just before the street to see if there are any cars com­ing.   If any cyclist is on the side­walk at the same time a car is pulling out, the chance of a col­li­sion is very real (and exac­er­bated like crazy if you’re rid­ing in the wrong direc­tion)!  Pedes­tri­ans don’t expe­ri­ence this issue because they are walk­ing at only 2-3mph and have plenty of time to yield.

In Cal­i­for­nia there are sev­eral cities that have made it ille­gal to ride on the side­walk.  If you get in an acci­dent, you have no legal claim what­so­ever.   Insur­ance com­pa­nies are not going to pay and you may even have to pay for any dam­age you did to a pedes­trian or car on top of your own med­ical bills!

Side­walks are so dan­ger­ous that if my only choice was to bike there, I would’ve never got­ten into bicy­cling. So, what do you do if you shouldn’t ride on side­walks?  The only place left is the street.

 

You have a right to be on the streets.

You have as much of a right to ride on the road as any other car.  Under­stand that you aren’t block­ing traf­fic when you’re on the street, you are traf­fic.  Cal­i­for­nia law is com­pletely on your side for this.  You must fol­low the same rules of the road as if you were dri­ving a slow-moving vehi­cle.  Rid­ing on the street allows you to ride a lot more relaxed than the side­walk ever could.

Learn to look behind you with­out swerving.

This is cru­cial: learn to hold your line.  That’s a phrase unique to cycling that means keep your steer­ing straight.  When you look behind you, your steer­ing will nat­u­rally move in the same direc­tion.  Please prac­tice look­ing over your shoul­der while keep­ing your steer­ing straight.  Prac­tice it for both sides; strive to be ambidex­trous.

Look­ing behind you is cru­cial when you want to make a left-turn.  You need to check if it’s clear before you switch lanes.  If there’s too much high speed traf­fic and you can’t get to the left-turn lane, you can always pull over and use the cross walk like a pedes­trian.  On commuterorlando.com I found some great ani­ma­tions that show all the ways you can turn left.

Ride clear of the door zone.  Ride on the left side of the bike lane.

You must not ride closer than 4 feet from parked cars.  This area is known as the door zone because you can crash into a door that sud­denly opens in front of you.  While it is the dri­vers and pas­sen­gers respon­si­bil­ity to make sure they open the door when it is clear to, one mis­take can result in a hor­rific, if not fatal, acci­dent.

Poorly designed bike lanes often cre­ate the illu­sion of ensured safety.  They are often improp­erly placed right next to parked cars, almost entirely within the door zone.  Ride on the left side of the bike lane to avoid the door zone if you need to.

If a parked car has their brake lights on and you are won­der­ing if they are going to drive away and poten­tially run over you, stare at their wheels as you pass by them because it’s very easy to tell if wheels start mov­ing.  If you stare at the car over­all, it’s actu­ally very hard to tell if it’s mov­ing at all because you’re mov­ing rel­a­tively fast.

The edge of the road starts where there is no debris and is clear of the door zone.

Notice how all the trash tends to col­lect along the edge of the street? Don’t ride there. The right edge of the road­way, legally for a cyclist, starts where there’s no debris, water, pot holes, gravel, glass and where it is clear of the door zone.  Rid­ing over a small nail or glass could be enough to cause a flat.  That sin­gle white line on the very far right is not intended to be a lit­tle lane for cyclists.  It sim­ply denotes the shoul­der and is not a bike lane.

 

More often than not, lanes are not wide enough to be shared.

Most of the roads in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia have nar­row lanes that are not wide enough to be safely shared by a car and bicy­cle at the same time.  Plenty of streets have lanes that are just barely wide enough for a car alone! You can’t ride on the very far right due to trash/debris, you need to avoid the door zone and a car needs to give you a few feet of space to pass by you, so more often than not, lanes are not wide enough to be safely shared.

Take the Lane: Ride on the left side of the right lane.

If there is no bike lane and the right lane is less than 14 feet wide (the width of 2 cars), the best place to ride is on the LEFT side of the RIGHT lane. This is known as “tak­ing the lane.”

This is the safest, most relax­ing, most stress-free and fastest line you could take.

Rid­ing on the LEFT side of the RIGHT lane makes a bold state­ment that this lane is not share­able and ensures your vis­i­bil­ity. Dri­vers get the hint from a dis­tance that they need to change their lane because they can’t squeeze past you.  You have to be con­fi­dent that you are doing the right thing and the law is on your side.

Most dri­vers are com­pletely obliv­i­ous to the spe­cific haz­ards that cyclists need to avoid (door zone, pot holes, sewer grates etc) and think you should always ride as far to the right as pos­si­ble.  Don’t con­cede to their igno­rance.  As a cyclist you need to do the right thing and pro­tect your­self. You must assert your­self and ride defen­sively by tak­ing the lane.  It will make you pre­dictable, vis­i­ble, and send the clear mes­sage that this lane is not wide enough to be shared.

But Anto, Why the left side?  Why not the mid­dle or the right?

1. Dri­vers see it as an invi­ta­tion to squeeze past you: If you ride on the right side, I guar­an­tee that dri­vers are going to try to squeeze past you when it is not safe to do so.   You will undoubt­edly fear for your life dur­ing those very scary moments when you are get­ting dan­ger­ously squeezed past by a car AND are rid­ing in the door zone AND are going over pot holes.  You will never expe­ri­ence that if you are tak­ing the lane.

2. You will get cut off: If you ride in the mid­dle, I guar­an­tee a dri­ver will pre­ma­turely cut you off.  They will per­form what is known as lane-splitting, mean­ing they will only put half of their car in the other lane, accel­er­ate and then cut back into your lane before they have com­pletely passed by you.  You need to ride on the left so they know they have to com­pletely clear you before they can get back in the right lane.

3. You send a clear mes­sage to dri­vers and pre­vent delay: When you make it very obvi­ous that the lane is not share­able, dri­vers get the hint up to a quar­ter mile away and will change their lane hun­dreds of feet ahead of time.  If you ride in the mid­dle or right side, dri­vers won’t know they can’t squeeze past you until they get very close to you, caus­ing inde­ci­sive­ness and delay.  Or worse, they will try to squeeze through any­way as I said in point #1.

4. Vis­i­bil­ity / Line of sight: The fur­ther away you are from the curb, the bet­ter other dri­vers can see you, espe­cially the ones pulling out of side streets, dri­ve­ways and park­ing lots.

5. Pre­dictabil­ity reduces ambi­gu­ity.  Who is safer?  The cyclist who goes from the side­walk to the street and back to the side­walk with no rhyme or rea­son or the cyclist that con­fi­dently takes the lane and holds their line, min­i­miz­ing any ambi­gu­ity? Rid­ing on the left has the least haz­ards and you can eas­ily main­tain a straight line.

If you are on a nar­row, sin­gle lane road and there are more than 5 cars backed up, then you should pull over and let them all pass through, the same way a slow vehi­cle would legally have to uti­lize a turn-out.  Cyclists abide by the same rules as a slow-moving vehi­cle. (See: Vehic­u­lar Cycling)

Chill out when dri­vers honk at you.

Now, what’s guar­an­teed to hap­pen is that peo­ple are going to honk at you.   These peo­ple are most likely to be igno­rant of the law, don’t know what it’s like to com­mute on a bicy­cle, and are com­pletely obliv­i­ous to the spe­cific haz­ards that cyclists face.  These peo­ple are also often very angry.  You are just another oppor­tu­nity (an excuse) for them to project their stress onto you.

Try not to react. They will just speed away past you like a pissed off 12 year old.

I pity how stressed out, irra­tional and stu­pid they seem all at once.  A dri­ver just needs to press on a pedal to go for­ward and can change a lane with just a fin­ger, yet they honk at cyclists, who are pow­er­ing the bicy­cle with their own legs and expect them to pull over.  Sorry, no can do.  I drive all the time too, I know what it takes to change a lane: Noth­ing.  There’s no rea­son to go crazy over it.

If any­one starts threat­en­ing you, you can always pull over and take out your cell phone imme­di­ately.  See­ing the cell phone may scare them off.  If they try to run you off the road, try to get their license plate num­ber and call 911 imme­di­ately to report it in.

Well, that should cover the basics pretty well. If you have any ques­tions please don’t hes­i­tate to ask. I would love to answer them!