Originally Posted by
cramej
... BUT....... there is one guy I see riding to work - pretty well outfitted (lights, bright colors. etc.) but he picks the absolute worst time to ride. He's riding on a narrow 2 lane with no shoulder (as in white line and then ditch) during school rush hour in the morning alongside buses, high school drivers, and parents rushing to school. There are other road options and to top it off, I watched him blow through a 4 way stop this morning!
What's your opinion? Smart, dumb, do you ride this kind of road?
John
In my opinion, it's kinda of stupid to ride the main road if there's a good alternative route available. I roll my eyes a bit at people who choose to ride the main busy road, when they could go 1 sidestreet over and have a route with basically the same distance, but far less traffic.
It gets more complicated if the alternate route is significantly longer or further, though. I choose to ride a route with streets, mostly side streets but a few streets with more traffic, when I could ride almost entirely on bike paths, because rather than being 1:15, it's 0:50 - 20 minutes shorter each way.