Living Car Free - Is there a safe way to deal with this?

I'm car lite, but for the past week and a half I've been relegated to driving due to the weather, and an unfortunate side effect of all the snow.

It's not that I can't ride around in the snow... I'm fully prepared for it with the right clothes and studded tires, etc. My concern is safety out on the streets. During the height of the storms, plows piled up a moraine along the side of the road. Combined with the heaping strip of ice in the middle of the road, vehicles had about 3' of total "play" where the lanes were plowed. Where they weren't (still aren't) plowed, the only area to drive or ride is the tire-track which is worn down to the pavement. Outside of that track is a slush/ice mix which is nigh impossible to ride through.

Much of my commute to work is along winding 2-lane semi-rural roads. Short of either a) blocking up traffic while I ride in the tire-track until there's a safe pull-off, or b) trying to slide and trudge my way through the sludge at the side of the road, what do people suggest for a best riding tactic in conditions like that?

(Thankfully it's raining now and melting off much of the snow. Even the giant plow-heaps.)

I would ride in the tire track. Make sure you are well visible from a distance. Pull over when you can but only when its safe. But it does depend on the volume and speed of the road, and the attitudes of the drivers on it. If people are going to get antsy and have to pass you without letting you go a few hundred yards, then they can knock piles of that slushy stuff directly into your path. In which case if that's the only road and that it is not safe to ride in the tire track I would look to an alternative to the bike until the weather improves. Riding through slidey sludge is definitely not recommended especially since you already have studs and are finding it still too hard to ride on.

But it does depend on the volume and speed of the road, and the attitudes of the drivers on it.
Moderate volume of traffic. Lots of large trucks because the road has a water treatment facility, a couple of equestrian centers and a demolitions contracting company on it. 40mph speed limit, (typically followed, amazingly.) Good attitude from the truck drivers, but I've never tried holding one of them up for a couple hundred yards. Not so great attitude from many of the passenger vehicle drivers, mostly because I think they're wanting to do about 55mph and the truckers are "holding them up" by doing the speed limit. When the road is clear and I ride over in the swept, 8' wide, paved shoulder, I've had to deal with impatient drivers who cut me off so they can (illegally) pass someone on the right who is waiting to make a left turn. There's also a couple of intersections where the shoulder dissappears to make room for turn lanes, and drivers get miffed that I move out and take the lane through the intersection. Again, truck drivers never seem to care about it.


Riding through slidey sludge is definitely not recommended especially since you already have studs and are finding it still too hard to ride on.
Ugh, it's that horrible, choppy packed stuff that's getting broken up as the weather warms up. Now it's mixed with 3-5" deep of oatmeal-consistency slush because it's been raining for the past 2 days. The studs were great 2 weeks ago Thursday when all this first started and the roads were just hardpacked snow and ice. I think I'd need a Pugsley with those fatty Endomorph tires to do any good making my way through some of this slop.

Thankfully it's still raining (harder now) and the roads should be safely ridable by tomorrow.

There's also a couple of intersections where the shoulder dissappears to make room for turn lanes, and drivers get miffed that I move out and take the lane through the intersection. Again, truck drivers never seem to care about it.

I find that during the winter drivers are much more tolerant of lane-taking than during the summer months where lane-taking may still be necessary. I think they can see there is no other place for you to be. That and perhaps a bit more fear of accidentally sliding into you so they'll (90% of them) stay back.

Depending if there are occasional gaps in traffic you could also try to ride the stretches between pullout points after waiting for a gap to open up so that you minimize aggravation (which can become dangerous when the aggravated try stupid passing moves)

I'm car lite, but for the past week and a half I've been relegated to driving due to the weather, and an unfortunate side effect of all the snow.

It's not that I can't ride around in the snow... I'm fully prepared for it with the right clothes and studded tires, etc. My concern is safety out on the streets. During the height of the storms, plows piled up a moraine along the side of the road. Combined with the heaping strip of ice in the middle of the road, vehicles had about 3' of total "play" where the lanes were plowed. Where they weren't (still aren't) plowed, the only area to drive or ride is the tire-track which is worn down to the pavement. Outside of that track is a slush/ice mix which is nigh impossible to ride through.

Much of my commute to work is along winding 2-lane semi-rural roads. Short of either a) blocking up traffic while I ride in the tire-track until there's a safe pull-off, or b) trying to slide and trudge my way through the sludge at the side of the road, what do people suggest for a best riding tactic in conditions like that?

(Thankfully it's raining now and melting off much of the snow. Even the giant plow-heaps.)

It's folly to ride ,drive or walk in weather that isn't fit for man nor beast.

No, it's worse than folly it's a death wish. :notamused:

You often see posts here about carfree cyclists having a good Plan B. Reason is that there will always be occasions -- even natural disasters -- that will prevent you from traveling. The same is true if you own a car. There are many times when people travel by car and they really shouldn't.

For most cyclists a good Plan B might be to take the bus. But it could also mean getting a car ride from a colleague, walking or -- better yet -- working from home.

The thing about it is that you need to have the Plan B in place before the disaster or bad weather hits. I say this because I've been doing a little bus travel lately and have discovered that my wardrobe is too light for the cold temps we are seeing. I need a good parka with hood, along with the wind pants and balaclava that I regularly use on the bike.

The main thing in bad weather is to be reasonable and prudent. It is very easy to get an inflated sense of what you are capable of, and in bad weather that leads to accidents.

In the conditions you're describing, I pretty much always choose walking or mass transit over biking (so far). I'm good at walking on bad surfaces, and it tends to be a bit easier for me as smooth surfaces tend to aggravate my joint troubles. So if I choose the bike, it is in situations where I don't have time presssure, and I *can* just fall back on walking if need be. That way I can practice skills that I'm bad at, and my fallback is something where the stakes just aren't all that high.

It doesn't sound like you have as many options as I do, so falling back on the car is good sense.

I'm car lite, but for the past week and a half I've been relegated to driving due to the weather, and an unfortunate side effect of all the snow.

I also live on the eastside of Seattle (although farther south near Issaquah), came to the same conclusion, and reluctantly took to my car. I have no problem riding on busy arterials and do it routinely during my commute, but significant snow puts an end to that quickly. I love riding my MTB through fresh stuff, but not on streets where half the drivers don't know what their doing, and there's nowhere for me to bail when someone in a 2 ton or more hunk of metal screws up and is coming at me to get close and personal. Or doing something completely stupid, like the idiots who were doing high speed drifts around blind corners and nearly hit me while I was running the other night.

I'm a strong advocate of mass transit and often put my bike on the bus for varying amounts of my 46 mile (RT) commute. However, when it snows here, transit becomes almost useless. The articulated buses are the first things that get stuck, the transit agencies drastically reduce service, and the remaining buses are so slow you could walk faster.

Or doing something completely stupid, like the idiots who were doing high speed drifts around blind corners and nearly hit me while I was running the other night.

Ugh. I only encountered that once so far. I was helping a neighbour dig out their stuck car in the parking lot, my fiancee was waiting for me to dig this person out so she could get back into her own spot, and some d-bag pulled a drift around the corner and almost took us all out. I whipped a shovel full of slush at him, and I know a lot of it went in his window. :lol:

LOL! Good move! Wish I could have done something like that, but the car was out of range by the time I'd recovered from my sprint into the nearest driveway. Had I been on my bike I probably would have been hit, as I would have been riding in the snowfree track in the road.

I ride every year in those conditions in Michigan, but would hesitate in Washington. Two reasons:

*I saw how poorly those Seattle drivers handled their cars in the snow. Drivers here are much more experienced and skilful.

*They do a crappy job of clearing the snow there. Here, streets are cleared before the next rush hour. Only the side streets still have that slushy, greasy or rutted surface that remains after the sniow stops falling.

It's folly to ride ,drive or walk in weather that isn't fit for man nor beast.

No, it's worse than folly it's a death wish. :notamused:

Well, most of us can't or won't stay indoors all winter. Besides, the ability to handle difficult conditions is a result of training and experience. You get neither if you stay holed up indoors for 5 months.