[BVC-CHAT] Your input appreciated

[Gary Varner]

Greg Hercules wrote:
> Forwarded for A&M Cycling listserv:
>
> Taken from the Texas Driver's Handbook:
> "Persons riding two abreast shall not impede the normal and reasonable 
> flow of traffic on the roadway."
>
> When riding the planned Tunis-Roubaix race course today, Steve, Ian, 
> and I were about a mile north of Col du Nomo on 3090.  Steve and I 
> were side-by-side, and Ian was squeezed behind/between us in the stiff 
> headwind.  There was some oncoming traffic, which prevented the few 
> cars behind us from passing.  Once the oncoming cars had passed, the 
> traffic behind us made it's way by.  The last vehicle (I think there 
> were only three total) was a Sheriff's deputy.  He pulled in front of 
> us, turned on his lights, and pulled off the road.  We pulled over, 
> and he nearly doored Steve when we were approaching.  In my naivete, I 
> thought that maybe this was the Corporal that I had talked to over the 
> phone Wednesday, and he wanted to know if I was the Aggie he had 
> talked to.  This was not the case.
>
> He straight-up told us that we were breaking the law by riding 
> two-abreast.  In a slightly mis-quoted form of the law, he said that 
> when there is no shoulder on the road we may not ride side-by-side, 
> and must remain single file so as not to impede traffic.  I told him 
> that this was not how I remembered the law, but I didn't have any 
> source to back me up and simply agreed to comply with the Deputy.  He 
> didn't ticket us, but threatened to.

I've wondered about this too, for instance during Saturday's Caldwell 
ride, where there was a nasty crosswind. Twice I found myself working 
with two other riders. The natural thing to do was "eschelon" (I think 
it's called), where in order to get a proper draft a following rider had 
to be off to the side of the leading rider (roughly with one's front 
wheel alongside their crank). This meant that, even apart from the big 
lead group, a group of just three stragglers were taking up the whole 
lane, and cars were having to wait until there was a view a good ways 
ahead before passing.

I can see how that could count as "impeding the normal and reasonable 
flow of traffic."

On the other hand, riding all by myself, say on Rock Prairie, I will 
ride 3 or so feet out into the lane when there are cars approaching from 
both behind and ahead and, in my judgment, the car approaching from the 
rear should not attempt to pass because of how close the one approach 
from ahead will be at the time the car from behind overtakes me. As soon 
as the one coming from ahead passes, I abruptly swerve over to the very 
edge of the road, hoping that's understood as signaling "I think it's 
safe for you to pass now."

I think of that as impeding the "normal" flow of traffic, reading 
"normal" as what would have happened if there hadn't been a "slow moving 
vehicle," and I think it's fair to say that a vehicle going 15-20 mph 
out there is not a "normal" vehicle. We riders of slow moving vehicles 
have a right to use the road, however, and when I obstruct passing in 
the way just described, what I'm doing is forcing the driver overtaking 
me from behind to wait what I judge to be a "reasonable" time before 
passing.

So in a cross wind where you can't get a reasonable draft single file, 
in a road race, or in a large group ride between rte 50 and Caldwell, is 
it "unreasonable" to delay motorists by taking up the whole lane?

Here's an argument for why it's more "reasonable" to bunch up and fill 
the whole lane, at least when you're in a big group like the Caldwell 
ride is. On the roads through Tunis to Caldwell, like on Rock Prairie, 
it's just not safe (in my judgment) for an overtaking car to be abreast 
of a bicyclist at the same time as a car is passing in the opposite 
direction. So with the large Caldwell ride group, it would delay a 
motorist longer to have to wait behind a single file version of the 
group, since then they'd have to have an even longer view ahead in order 
to be sure they could safely get past everybody before an oncoming car 
arrived.

Enough procrastination,

-- 
 ____________________________________________________________________
|    |  |____      Gary Varner                                       |
| ___|       |     Philosophy       "Fighting entropy since 1957"    |
| \       .  |     Texas A&M                                         |
|  \/\_     /      Director of Graduate Studies                      |
|      \  /        (979) 845-8499, 845-0458 (FAX) g-varner at tamu.edu  |
|       \(         Home page: http://philosophy.tamu.edu/~gary/      |
|____________________________________________________________________|