Cycling Outside Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

… the person in the video just seems to think it means they get to first all the time.

…

Not clear to me. It looked like the bicycle group was just going at their speed for as long as they want. It’s not appropriate for slow-moving traffic (of any kind) to slow down all traffic to their speed indefinitely. It’s reasonable for motor vehicles to have to slow down as they approach and wait for the bicycles to pull over or change their configuration but not reasonable to expect motor vehicles to simply drive at 30km/h until the cyclists make a turn, however long that might take. The roads in question are engineered for traffic running at 60-90km/h for a reason.

And I say this as somebody who generally agrees with the cyclists’ view of a situation. I’m no friend of the motorist, in general.

It has been extensively studied and the "share the road" signage leads to greater confusion and driver (and cyclist) entitlement to the roads. It quite clearly doesn't improve the roads.

As far as sharing the roads...where should the cyclists pull over? Do they need to pull into a driveway and stop? That seems excessive to me? How slow do they cyclists have to be traveling, and/or how many cars must be waiting before cyclists are required to stop to allow them to pass? The trailing vehicle can overtake any time it is safe, but under no circumstances should the cyclists squeeze right to permit an unsafe overtake. Obviously, when the road widens and gives an opportunity for safe overtaking, the cyclists should not prevent that. But even if we accept that standard, we're still going to have loud and probably occasionally fatal disagreements on the roads about what constitutes widening to allow safe overtaking.

The reality is our country roads only work as well as they do because despite the loud complaints of drivers, rarely are they actually held up for a significant period of time, traffic on our rural roads is so light, that overtaking is actually reasonable easy. Cyclists tend to avoid riding on the roads where that isn't the case for any extended period of time.