Originally Posted by
Carbon Unit
I too am glad that you are OK. Iam not sure that I am understanding where you were on the road. Were you near the center of the road so that cars couldn't pass you? Would it be possible to ride as far to the right as possible? Even if there is no bike lane, at least you would be out of the way of on coming traffic and safer.
No. I was 1-2 feet to the left of the white line--there is no shoulder. I was basically shrinking the lane: if i'm taking up 2 feet of space on the right side of the lane, and they must give me (in theory) 3 feet, that means that i am, in effect, taking up 5 feet of space on the right hand side of the lane. If the the lane is 12 feet wide and the car is 7' wide, then they could pass (just barely)...most people recognize that to pass safely, they'll have to just go over the yellow line--that's what I want them to do. There isn't much traffic on this road, so it's not like I'm impeding traffic. The danger with riding on the white line is that people then think they have plenty of room to pass you without going over the yellow lines. For cars, that's typically fine, but for trucks, it's more likely that they'll just run you off the road or hit you with a mirror.