Originally Posted by
chipcom
If there isn't room for a motor vehicle to safely share the lane with one bike, requiring crossing the line to pass, what difference does two make?
From some of these rants, I feel like I am in a car forum, not a bike forum.
Where have you ever been that a car cannot safely pass at some point? I ride plenty of narrow canyons with no shoulder. There's always a place for the cars to pass using a few feet of the other lane. American roads are practically always at least 20' wide. An H1 - probably the widest passenger car is under 87", so even two H1's passing on a 20' road have over 5' of roadway to allocate to space between them and room for a biker. The narrowest most paving machines will go down to is 8' per pass, so that would be a 16' roadway. Still plenty of room for an H1 to pass with a little of the other lane, and plenty of room for two typical passenger cars to pass with a biker. Yes it would be tight, but the I'm not buying the claim that there's not room to pass. Not based in reality of any road I'd consider biking on.
Even if you happen to find some obscure road that's 14 feet wide, the car is going to pass. It's just a question of how close you want to be to it.