Commuting - A little bit of terror

Part of my commute, about 9 km, is down Highway 55, the main stretch of road that travels into a big tourist destination in southern Ontario, Niagara-on-the-Lake. I get a big kick out of riding home after work because I usually have a tailwind from the west or southwest and manage to keep my speed above 40 km/h, a fair bit faster than the ride in.

The scary part comes when people decide that 80 km/h is too slow and they have to pull out and pass everyone. Because traffic is pretty heavy in the summer months, cars rarely get to pass more than one or two other vehicles before they're forced back to their lane.

I'm sure that most of us stay pretty aware of the traffic to avoid being hit from behind. But on some days, like today, the terror of looking at an oncoming vehicle on the wrong side of the road is a thrill I just don't need. Today, I was in a section that has a pretty good bike lane, but only a few hundred metres from the part where I'm forced to share the same space with cars.

I guess my questions are: Do they not see us?
If they do see us, do they not care?

I'm kinda big and would make a pretty unflattering dent in the front of their vehicle.

It makes this morning's ordeal with the skunk from hell a lot easier to take. That's another story though....

They probably did not see you right away. The people that I know that pass and change lanes constantly are just bad drivers. Good candidate for a defensive driving course.

I always wear one of those orange mesh vests with the reflective yellow stripes that road crews wear when I commute. People give me strange looks due to the geekeness of it, but I think the additional visibility is worth it.

do you work at the shaw festival?

do you work at the shaw festival?

No, I work in St. Catharines for the Region.

They don't care. Most drivers get behind a wheel and loose their common sense. They are in a hurry and could care less about other drivers and especially cyclists.

It's one of the things I really hate about the downtown area here - nowhere near the speed, but the bike lanes are right on the center line going against traffic on a lot of streets (north/south). If there is a car making a left hand turn, you never know if they see you or not. Even if they have enough space to make the turn without hitting you, you never know that if they make that turn, the car stopped behind them isn't going to follow. The car behind has no way to see you through the first car.

I've had to stop at lights where I should have had the right of way simply because I had to slow down so much that the light turned yellow and I was unsure of what the oncoming cars were going to do...

Give me a rear end collision, or a car turning a right hook across my path or a door any day over a head on collision.

The cars in your situation were probably so close to the car in front of them that they could not see you at all (forward car blocking vision) when they decided to pass. It's easy for a biker at a distance to disappear behind the metal thingy that comes up along the side of the car between the windshield and the side window. If you are a couple of hundred feet away, you are smaller than that 3" wide piece of metal, at least from the perspective of the driver...

OB, you might want to look for a longer, less stressful route, especially during tourist season. While 55 is the shortest straightest road from NOTL to St. Catharines, it's probably also the most dangerous and most boring.(I learned how to drive on that road).
I work at Halton, was out your way for the Niagara MS Bike tour on the weekend, had a nice ride!