Riding facing traffic

I have a German proverb trotting in my head: "Links gehen, Gefahr sehen", but I always assumed this
applies strictly to pedestrians.

Elisa Roselli Paris, France

Powdered Toast Man said:

Wasn't there some kind of fad in the 1970s or 1980s where "conventional wisdom" said you had to
ride FACING the flow of traffic? When did that start up, and how long did it last? Was it some
government fact sheet or magazine article that said to do this?

This is an interesting topic. In the late, 1950s, when I started riding, the Boy Scout Handbook
explained that one rode on the right
(i.e., as a vehicle).

Pau;

"Jeremy Parker" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Wasn't there some kind of fad in the 1970s or 1980s where "conventional wisdom" said you had to
ride FACING the flow of traffic? When did that start up, and how long did it last? Was it some
government fact sheet or magazine article that said to do this?

I always rode WITH the traffic as we all do nowadays, but when I was 12 (early 1980s) I remember
some kid in the neighborhood riding up to me and trying to reason with me that I was on the
wrong side of the road and I ought to be on the left side.

That's a good question, and I have been trying to answer it for years, without success.

The fad was widespread, almost universal, when I first went to the USA in 1963, and seems to have
spread to Canada and Mexico as well. However, as far as I can tell it was never state law
anywhere. Whether there were any local ordinances, I don't know. If there were, they would have
contradicted state law, and so been illegal.

John Forester, who grew up in London, and emigrated with his family to the USA in the late 1930s,
did not hear of it in Berkeley, Calif. as a teenager. He thinks, spceculates, really, that the
idea may have originated in the midwest, in the 1950s.

I think that for the idea to have spread across a whole continent it must have been written down
somewhere. I doubt that would have been among the "road safety" establishment, police and AAA and
such, but might have been among stuff intended for schools. School bike safety zealots always seem
to be able to hold only one idea in their heads, usually wrong. In about 1960 the idea was, "ride
on the wrong side of the road". In about 1975 it was flags, horizontal or vertical, attached to
your bike, or a red triangle pinned to your bottom. No need to say what it is now.

When bike magazines appeared, in the 1970s, they campaigned against against wrong side riding.
I remember, when "Bicycling" was a good magazine, that John Schubert had a very good article
about it.

However, the wrong way idea is still quite widespread, and seems to produce a bike accident
pattern quite a bit different from Europe's

Jeremy Parker

As far as I know byclists in NSW have always had to ride on the left hand side of the road and obey
the same road ruls as cars. As for pedestrians working on the right hand side of the rode against
the traffic. to my understanding this only applies where there are no footpaths.

The number of children I see riding their bicycles on the incorrect side of the rode, into oncoming
traffic frightens me. I am suprised that more children are not killed or seriously injured partaking
in this prractice

Brutus45

Take a look at the statistics and advice at massbike.orgbostraf.htmOpen ↗ Taken at face
value it's nearly 30 times more dangerous to ride facing the traffic than against it.

Bruce G Patrick said:

The number of children I see riding their bicycles on the incorrect side of the rode, into
oncoming traffic frightens me. I am suprised that more children are not killed or seriously
injured partaking in this prractice

My parents love me very much, but out of a skewed sense of what they thought would be safe, as a
child, they told me to always ride against the traffic.

Their reasoning? I could see the oncoming traffic, and take appropriate action if necessary.

Well, I did that as a child; but after I started driving, and then got back into bicycling, I no
longer had the balls to do it. It's scary!!

I don't know how I did it. I used to hit downhill speeds of 25mph then, and the road I lived on,
while rated at 25mph, is usually driven faster; that could easily have resulted in an effective
75mph crash, when I could otherwise have avoided a crash entirely by the fact that I was going
traffic speed, or by the fact that I didn't suprise the hell out of some driver.

Now, I ride safely with the traffic. I can't see the traffic coming up behind me, so if somebody
isn't paying attention or is drunk or whatever, I'm roadkill. But somehow, I'm not scared.

I try to ride safer roads, anyhow.

Quoted message said:

Brutus45

--
Rick Onanian

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

...

Quoted message said:

Now, I ride safely with the traffic. I can't see the traffic coming up behind me, so if somebody
isn't paying attention or is drunk or whatever, I'm roadkill.

That's what mirrors are for... Glad to hear you figured it out on your own!

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REAL programmers write self-modifying code.