Originally Posted by
Commodus
wow. I haven't followed this thread, but this is about the exact opposite of my experience.
In my experience, hugging the curb in these super tiny lanes (which I deal with daily) invokes a constant stream of close passes as the motorists behind me will squeeze between me and the traffic in the other lane. Most won't even slow down, just sort of aim for the middle of the 'gap' and carry through. Very dangerous situation. Also very common, so it's odd that it's even a matter of debate.
Avoiding this, of course, is why virtually everyone advocates riding further out into the lane.
Nobody likes to be passed inconsiderately by impatient drivers. As far as "very dangerous situation" goes, I have to dispute that. An uncomfortable situation, sure. Scary to some. Statistically, however, riding in the lane in front of traffic to prevent close passes (or "incipient collisions") turns out to be far more dangerous than the consequences of riding too far right (and, you'll still get close passes). This is statistically indisputable, as few things are in this subject matter. The type of collision detailed then disavowed by J. Forester in this thread is almost totally absent from available data. The hit-from-behind is an order of magnitude more prevalent.
So if safety is your ultimate motivation for riding one way or the other, the moral of the story is find a new route. Lane-taking on an uncomfortably narrow, high-speed route is trading a largely phantom risk for a very real one. And if you don't have the flexibility to change routes, I guess that's rough. But you should give real consideration to the risks that are associated with your choices.
I say this as a bicyclist who does more lane-taking in two months than most strident VCers will do in their entire lives. I know a little about taking the lane. I have lots of reasons for doing it, preventing close passes not really one of them.
Let's talk about truly narrow lanes. In an 11-foot lane (width of a bike path) a cyclist must hug the curb to make in-lane passing physically
possible for just about any vehicle on the road today. To most drivers, the gap will still appear too small. A few may try to squeeze past the lane hugger, but if you ride with your tire just 3 feet from the curb in an 11-foot lane, leaving 7 feet of usable lane space assuming a 2-foot wide cyclist, in-lane passing becomes physically impossible for most vehicle types. My neighbor's Camry is 7.5 feet wide mirror-to-mirror, for instance.
My experience is that in such narrow lanes, when I
want to coax a pass from a following driver, it is usually very difficult to achieve even if I slide all the way over. Even if I slide all the way over and wave them by.