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Old 05-14-14, 01:22 PM
  #27  
squegeeboo
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Rochester, NY
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Bikes: Specalized Tri-Cross

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Originally Posted by rm -rf
A popular biking road near here has an even sharper angle, on a one-lane in each direction road. I have a mirror, so it's easy to monitor traffic coming up behind. I'll either let the cars pass by, or take the lane and point left, like a left turn signal. But I end up in the oncoming lane, so there can't be any cars approaching, either.

If your tracks were just a little less angled, I'd ride across them staying straight on the road, not trying to angle over. But I'd keep my speed up enough to coast over the tracks. The critical thing is to make sure to be centered and balanced on the bike, so the tires don't have any side force at all.

I've seen riders fall when they turn sharply just before the tracks to hit the rails at 90 degrees. They are still leaning into the turn when their wheel crosses the rails, and they slide right out, even though the wheel is at 90 degrees.

Your crossing. It looks like a 45 degree angle to the road. It's tricky to cut across your lane, since you can't really control two lanes of traffic coming from behind, and you'll be in the left of the two lanes by the time you cross over.


Thanks for the advice, it's really sounding like I should use the path to cross, and then move back into the road when safe to do so, if there's any heavy traffic at all. I'm able to stay just in the right hand lane when crossing instead of going across both, by doing a not quite 90 degree angle, (basically, solid white to dashed white, not double yellow), it's really only been an issue the once so far when once I moved over to the solid white some jerk college kid thought it meant he could pass me, in the right lane, directly on the tracks, but it's bound to happen again.
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