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The World from the Saddle of Your Bike

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Last week we talked about how to work with your bike. This week, we get into how to make your bike effectively and safely work for you!

In case you missed it, here’s part 1.

Getting Around by Bike

As a bicyclist, you may use any public roadways that are not explicitly off-limits to bikes, such as freeways. However, if you’re an inexperienced bicyclist, you may feel more comfortable avoiding busy roads and sticking to neighborhood streets. As you gain confidence and experience, you can move up to bigger arterial roadways in order to get where you’re going faster.

Try mapping out a route on Google Maps, then go test ride it on a weekend. You’ll get a feel for how best to navigate those roads, and you’ll find out about how long your ride will take. If you test ride your route, I guarantee you will find some important helpful detail you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of!

Staying Safe on Your Bike

Bicycling, statistically, is a very safe form of travel, even accounting for all the people who always ride in an unsafe manner. Bicycling becomes radically safer as you learn to ride on the road safely and predictably as a part of traffic. Doing this does not require speed, bravery, or any special skills. If you understand the principles of traffic and the rules of the road, the same ones you follow when driving a car, you already know how to do it on a bike!

You need to be proactive and take responsibility for your own safety, because nobody else will. As a bicyclist using the public roadways, you have all the same rights and responsibilities of any other driver on the road. Think of yourself as the driver of your bicycle- that’s what you are! You should ride, or drive, in a way that other drivers expect. This means you need to follow all the same rules you would as if you were driving a car: ride in the same direction as traffic, stop at stop signs and red lights, signal and yield when changing lanes… that sort of thing.

There is one exception to this equality though: in many US states, bicyclists are subject to a law that says some variation of “bicyclists must ride as far to the right as practicable.” (I’m most familiar with California traffic laws, so that’s what I’ll refer to here, but if you live somewhere else you should check your local laws for variations.) However! It’s important to remember that “as far right as practicable” does not mean “as far to the right as possible!” The law actually provides several exceptions to the requirement to ride to the right. These include: when passing another vehicle, when traveling at about the same speed as the rest of traffic, when preparing for a left turn, when the lane is too narrow to safely share side-by-side with a car, or when any “hazardous condition” exists that makes it unsafe to ride at the road edge.

In fact, there are many “hazardous conditions” that you would be subjecting yourself to by hugging the curb or riding as far to the right as possible. By hugging the right edge of the road, you put yourself at much greater risk of the three most common types of car-bike collisions. To avoid being hit by an opening car door, ride at least 5 feet away from parked cars. (This area near parked cars is called the “door zone.”) Also, debris or other rough, slippery road conditions tend to gather along the edge of the road where cars don’t normally drive. Not only can that put you at a higher risk of flat tires, it can even cause you to lose control of your bike and crash. These road hazards that are so apparent to many bicyclists are not necessarily obvious to someone driving a car, or to someone who is inexperienced at cycling.

The best way to avoid all these hazards is by using, or riding in the middle of, a full travel lane, just as you would when driving a car. By riding in the center of a lane, or just to the left of center (which is where other drivers expect to see traffic), you communicate to those other drivers behind you that they need to change lanes, giving you plenty of space, to safely pass you. When it’s safe, you may move to the right to allow easier passing by other vehicles. Behave like the driver of any other vehicle and people will, subconsciously and by default, treat you as such, unless they specifically go out of their way to harass you. I personally use this technique every day. It can be intimidating to ride a bike in the same lane as other traffic- but, trust me, it really does work very well! You can read more information about these techniques here.

Some roads include bike lanes or cycle tracks. These can be useful to cyclists, but be cautious when using them. Don’t ride in a bike lane, path, or track just because it’s there. Check to be sure it’s actually safe and free of hazards before you ride in it. Many bike lanes are actually not safe to use because of poor road planning or maintenance. You are never legally required to ride in an unsafe bike lane. When you do use a bike facility, be aware that you’re still a part of traffic, subject to the same rules as other drivers, and that using the facility does not mean you’ll be isolated from traffic. Take special care at intersections, where cars will be turning and often will not be looking for inconspicuous bikes.

Remember those hand signals they taught you in driver’s ed for when your car’s turn signals don’t work? Those work for biking too. You should signal whenever you want to merge or turn left or right, just as you would when driving a car.

If you don’t feel comfortable riding on a particular road, don’t ride there. Find an alternate route. Later when you’ve gained more experience and confidence riding as a part of traffic, consider taking busier arterial streets. They’re usually faster than neighborhood streets. You’ll still meet the occasional jerk who is very vocal about not wanting you on “their” road, but they are few and far between. Act like any other driver, confidently and predictably, and the vast majority of drivers will treat you like any other driver. It really is driving your bicycle.

Next time you’re driving your car and you see a cyclist riding in the middle of the lane, you’ll know that they’re positioned there for their own safety, not to annoy you. It’s easy to just pass them safely as you would pass anyone else.

Bicycling Safety Gear

The defensive driving techniques discussed in the last section are the primary and most effective ways to stay safe on your bike, but you’ll often need additional equipment to stay safe.

It’s always good to have lights on your bike, even if you don’t plan to ride after dark. This will give you the peace of mind to not have to worry about being stranded after dark. Your lights’ primary job is to help other drives see you. If it’s very dark out, your headlight will also enable you to see the road. If it’s foggy, rainy, or if other visibility problems exist, lights will help other drivers see you more easily. You should have a bright white headlight and at least one or two bright red taillights, as well as a red reflector facing rearwards. Buy the brightest head and tail lights you can afford. Detach your lights from your bike when you park, and take them with you. If you do plan to ride at night, or around dawn or dusk, lights are absolutely essential!

Riding a bike after dark with no lights is illegal and very dangerous. No, really- please use lights at night. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen cyclists at night wearing all black with no lights, and the only way I could see them was when they were silhouetted against lights in the background. Even if you stay to the edge of the road (which is less safe for the reasons discussed earlier), there are still plenty of potential conflict points that become much more dangerous when nobody can see you.

The very last line of defense you have on your bike, if all else fails, is your helmet. Depending on your age and where you live, riding without a helmet may or may not be legal, but it’s always a good idea to wear one. A helmet, properly worn, can greatly improve how you fare in what may otherwise have been a serious or fatal crash.

If you are in a crash and you are hurt badly enough that you can’t tell other people your medical information, a medical ID that gives paramedics access to your emergency medical and contact information can also help save your life. Probably the most popular medical ID for cyclists is the RoadID.

Go do it!

So that’s about it! Based on my personal experience with using my bike for transportation, these are the first things I would tell anybody considering doing the same. I find cycling for everyday transportation quite fun and rewarding. The best part is, I get to ride my bike just about every day. How great is that?

This 2-part article is just a first primer though- there are countless additional resources out there for everything biking related. If you want to read more, here are a few of my favorite websites related to bicycling. Be careful clicking on any of these links- you may end up spending hours there!

Links From This Article:

 

 

Driving:

 

 

Technical:

Joy of Biking:

Buy:

 

 

Logistics:

Photo by Rob Adams

Photo by Rob Adams

Travel

Rob Me

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There are certain aspects of my life where I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve managed never to break a bone or have a cavity, I went to a great university despite being an unapologetically lackluster student in high school, and hell, today I flew cross-country for a job interview only to find myself in the TSA screening line behind the very person I was traveling to meet.  But there is one place that luck seems to elude me (and it’s not my dating life, for those of you who read this site regularly)—it’s that people love to mug me.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

That is not a statement you can write if you’ve only been mugged once. I’ve been pickpocketed in Manila, held at knifepoint in New York, and punched out in both Baltimore and Los Angeles. Having been mugged or otherwise robbed four times means, clearly, I’m doing something wrong. Word to the wise: if you don’t want to get your ass kicked and become intimately familiar with the practice of replacing the entire contents of your wallet, don’t be named Kyle. I hear that works pretty well.

MANILA

The Philippines, beautiful as it may be, is insanely dangerous. In the south, there are al Qaeda–affiliated terrorist groups who like to kidnap tourists; in the north, there was a military coup three weeks after I left town. Before college I was there visiting my great-uncle, and near the end of my trip he pulled me aside and told me I needed to “truly experience Manila.” My options were to go with him to a brothel so he could “make sure I left as a man,” or to go see what is regarded as a cultural hallmark of the Philippines, a cockfight. Telling my girlfriend back home that “it’s not cheating because my uncle made me do it” was not a thing I wanted try, so I figured watching chickens fight to the death was slightly safer.

We were dropped off at what can only be described as the shadiest arena ever built: this place looked like a dilapidated tennis stadium coated in a centuries worth of grime and chicken shit. Inside, all the seats had been removed and a crowd of nearly a thousand men (no women allowed) surrounded a fighting pit the size of a boxing ring. About halfway through the third bout, I felt something rubbing against me and looked down to see a hand stealthily trying to slip my wallet out of my pocket.

Looking back, I realize I made a few mistakes: aside from going to what is without a doubt the most dangerous place I’ve ever been in my life, the bigger mistake was the spectacle my uncle and I made upon our entrance. Two people getting out of a chauffeured car and leaving a bodyguard at the door is a bit conspicuous. Add in the fact that I’m a head taller and significantly paler than the rest of the crowd, and it starts to make a little sense why I was targeted. When traveling, it’s wonderful to get a true sense of the local culture, but if you stray from traditional tourist destinations, be careful not to bring the tourist vibe with you. There is something to be said for the theory that you’re safer when you blend in with the herd.

NEW YORK

In the fall of my first semester at NYU, the oppressive summer heat had started to give way to the welcome crispness of autumn, and it felt like a great day for a walk around my new city. There I was, minding my own business, listening to a mixtape from my then long distance girlfriend (yes, the same one I didn’t want to piss off in Manila), when a guy started yelling at me that I had bumped into him and broken some glassware he’d just bought.

I can be oblivious at times, but even in my own world listening to some awful Feist mashup that I thought captured the depth and complexity of “love” at age 18, I was fucking positive that I wasn’t responsible for the random shards of glass that this guy was claiming I broke. I protested, and that’s when he got more aggressive and flashed a knife at me. Bear in mind: this is mid-afternoon on 14th Street, and somehow I happened to be on the one block that was completely deserted. For those of you not familiar with Manhattan, finding a deserted stretch of 14th Street at any hour is like winning the lottery three weeks in a row—except, instead of becoming a millionaire, I lost the money I’d intended to use on a fake ID.

The lesson was to not fight it. At the end of the day, nobody robbing you really wants to hurt you: it’s just an intimidation tactic. While it sucks, giving up a little cash is the easiest way to ensure you stay safe and get the whole process over more quickly. That being said, if you plan on walking or taking public transit a lot in a major city, it’s best not to carry large amounts of cash on you. Most places take cards nowadays and paying a few extra ATM fees is better than getting stabbed or losing a hundred bucks in one fell swoop.

LOS ANGELES/BALTIMORE

One of the dumber things I’ve failed to learn in my life is that bad neighborhoods are bad neighborhoods for a reason. That’s not meant to seem like this privileged half-white kid from Malibu is afraid of minorities (after all, I am one); it’s more to point out that walking down a block filled with burned-out buildings in a sketchy part of Baltimore or trying to score some tacos at 3 am in a park known for LA’s May Day Melée is probably a really stupid idea.

Both of these instances have one major thing in common—drinking. An analysis of my drinking habits would likely necessitate another article, or bloat this current one past a length my editors would be willing to publish, but the thing to glean from this is that having one too many makes you an easy target. When sober, I’m pretty vigilant, but while drinking (and I don’t think I’m alone in this) I tend to get a little more reckless. Typically, this means I make ill-advised decisions with my phone or possibly earn some “constructive criticism,” but other times it means I go to iffy areas and mistakenly think everything will work out fine.

The easiest way not to get mugged is to not put yourself in a spot where that is likely to happen. If you wouldn’t go to a place during the daytime, you certainly shouldn’t go there at night, especially alone. Exploring new neighborhoods is often exciting, but what might be intended as a night of edgy fun can quickly take a turn from hipsterrific-dream to manic-pixie-nightmare. If you’re going to an unfamiliar place, don’t make it even less familiar by over imbibing. Nothing screams “rob me” like a drunk person who won’t remember the street corner they’re on in the morning, let alone their mugger’s face.

The brutal reality is that if you live in a highly concentrated urban area, you have to deal with the dangers that come with it. There’s nothing I can impart in this article that will ensure you never get mugged. While the act itself does feel violating, the key is to remember it could be worse: if you manage to get out unscathed physically, it’s a win. Usually nothing in your wallet or purse is irreplaceable, and it certainly isn’t worth putting yourself in danger. For those of us who feel that inexplicable draw of the big city, a hefty dose of common sense and responsibility goes a long way. And if that fails, just avoid hanging out with me at night.