What Kind of Cyclist Are You?
Aggressive or Cautious? Either Type of Bike Rider Can Be Safe.
There isn't one single correct approach to bike riding. But no matter what type of cyclist you are, it's always better to be safe than sorry.
It may seem surprising, but, with some people, conflicting philosophies of bike-riding can inspire almost as much deep feeling and controversy as religious differences.
Many experienced cyclists advocate that bike riders should take a confident place on the road, well out into traffic, thus ensuring their own visibility and forcing motorists to allow them enough space to ride. In general, this position goes along with a philosophy of trying to keep up with the flow of traffic and behave as much like a car as possible. For example, these cyclists often learn how to execute left turns on multi-lane streets the same way cars do, by using the left-turn lane.
There are also cycling advocates who believe that this approach is better suited to the more naturally aggressive and physically strong rider, and that less experienced, smaller or more cautious cyclists should not force themselves to ride in a way that doesn’t suit their personality. Such a cyclist will likely make a left turn by riding straight through an intersection, then positioning themselves on the far side to proceed in the new direction.
Many cyclists will fall somewhere between the most aggressive and most cautious extremes. Either way, every good cyclist will probably end up acquiring a strange combination of stubbornness and deference. Here are some practical illustrations of a balanced approach to bike riding:
It’s great to be cautious, but that doesn’t mean being indecisive. When a cyclist makes a move, they should do so with certainty, so that motorists, pedestrians and other cyclists can understand what they’re doing.
Sometimes it’s hard for the cautious cyclist to learn that in situations where it’s not safe to pull over to the right to let a car pass, the safest choice is to firmly and confidently hold a position in the lane that doesn’t allow passing until it’s safe to do so.
However, no cyclist can stop a car by determination alone. One strong female cyclist in Toronto, when asked for her very best piece of cycling advice , stressed that, whether you’re right or wrong, the car will win. This idea is mirrored in the Spanish proverb that says: "Whether the stone hits the pot or the pot hits the stone, it’s the pot that breaks."
There’s also a supposedly genuine pedestrian’s epitaph that reads: "Here lies the body of John C. Day/He died defending his right of way/He was right, dead right, as the day is long/But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong."
The next article will discuss cars and bikes sharing the road.
