How to Ride Your Bike on a Road With Traffic

Video Transcript

KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi. I'm Kevin Livingston. Let's go over some tips to help you ride in traffic. To start, always obey the rules of the road. Follow the rules of the road. So this means stopping at stop signs, stopping at stop lights. Basically, as if you were driving a car, you want to do the same on a bike. Now if there is a bike lane, you use the bike lane. That's what it's there for. You generally want to avoid sidewalks; this is for pedestrians, for walkers, or runners. Sidewalks aren't really meant for cyclists. Another good tip is ride predictably. This will help reduce the anxiety of drivers around you as well. If you ride holding a steady line, signal your turns, right turn, left turn. If you're with other cyclists, you can use a slowing motion, but we're talking about riding in traffic. So again always ride predictable, signalling your turns and so drivers know what you're up to. I think a big component of cars getting aggressive or annoyed of a cyclist is when they don't know what the cyclists are doing. This makes them nervous and they react in a more aggressive way. Now if there's no bike lane, you want to ride pretty much to the far right side of the road as you can, but for a little bit of safety on the rider's part, you might want to ride slightly left in the line out of all the debris. When cars are driving in the shoulder, you don't know there may be a big shoulder, they're constantly pushing gravel and other debris to the side of the road. So you have to ride just slightly out of these debris because you want to avoid getting a flat tire or hitting something that may cause you to have an accident. So follow the rules of the road, ride predictable, let drivers know where you're going and then finally, I think a great tip too, is always assume that drivers or other obstacles out there, people on whether a motorcycle, a car, a truck that they don't see you. This way you'll always be on kind sort of on a cautious side. Another important thing to remember when riding in traffic, especially when you're with other riders, is to ride single file. On roads that are quiet or if you have a bike lane or a big shoulder, you may ride to abreast right next to each other, but if you're in traffic it's better that you single up, you get behind each other, form a pace line. This way, it gives you more safety to the right side and also cars have the room to pass you and continue on.