Sir, – Brian O’Connor is critical of cyclists riding “abreast” on rural roads in Ireland (“Reeling in political breakaway on cycling issue a worthy exercise”, May 5th) and attributes this behaviour to “peloton fantasies”. I would like to invite him to reflect on the basic arithmetic of road positioning for cyclists.
Riding in compact groups and leaving gaps between groups for overtaking drivers to slot into is not inconsiderate – it’s good cycling etiquette and should be encouraged. On many Irish rural roads, it is only safe to overtake a single cyclist safely (ie with 1.5m passing distance at 30 km/h, or 4m at 80 km/h) if the overtaking motorist crosses the centre line.
Whether cyclists are two-abreast or in single file makes no difference at all to the fact that drivers will have to wait a few seconds (or, in extremis, perhaps a few minutes) until they reach a point where it is safe to cross the centre line and drive on the wrong side of the road.
The advantage of two-abreast riding is that it minimises the time motorists then spend on the wrong side of the road; it is much easier for a motorist to get back to their own side of the road quickly after overtaking a group of cyclists if the group is not strung out.
Overtaking compact groups of cyclists is like overtaking trucks or tractors – tedious, perhaps, but essentially very straightforward for a competent driver. Overtaking stretched-out lines of single-file cyclists is much more complex and fraught and more likely to result in mayhem and carnage.
So it often makes sense for cyclists to ride in compact formations rather than in single file; by doing so, they make safe overtaking easier and dangerous overtaking more difficult. Solo cyclists make it easier for motorists to spot them in good time on twisty rural roads by adopting roughly the position the outer cyclist in a two-abreast group would maintain.
Setting down clearly defined minimum passing distances in law (and integrating them into the driving test in much the same way as stopping distances feature) would make all this much clearer.
We need to talk less about the attitudes of road users and more about the basic maths involved in sharing road space. – Yours, etc,
SARAH SWIFT,
Badstrasse,
Bamberg, Germany.