Originally Posted by
ItsJustMe
The "slowing drivers down" think makes me somewhat amused. If you added up delays I cause to every driver on my route I bet it's less than 10 seconds, and actually zero because they make it up as soon as they're past me, by catching up to the car they were behind in the first place anyway.
OTOH, cars slow me down by at least a minute, often 5 or more minutes, on every commute.
That's pretty much my experience too. Many times I have counted up the seconds motorists were delayed behind me and compared those seconds to the minutes I was delayed by them, just to have a chuckle. The average speed of a car over its lifetime in the US is about 24 mph, which isn't far from the average speed of a fit cyclist. There are big differences in peak speeds, but who's riding on the freeway?