It's not your fault, given how many others do the same. I keep falling for it, probably because it gives me an opportunity to practice expressing and explaining my views in writing. I do try to follow a consistent set of principles and appreciate the "testing" for inconsistencies, regardless of the motivations of those doing the testing. So thanks.


It's not dynamic swerving, please. Al and Chipcom have already covered this.

I am not surprised you've never had trouble spotting a cyclist up ahead in the danger zone, considering you are a cyclist yourself. Choosing a more centerish position is done for several reasons, but it does include to be more visible to those approaching from the rear. The idea is based on the following premises:

• There is a significant difference between "seeing" and being aware. Our Road 2 teacher has repeated several times how drivers "pretty much ignore us" when we're riding off to the side, as if we're not there. Now, he's talking about this in the context of merging in fairly busy traffic, how the first step, moving from the right side into the center of the rightmost lane, is the "hardest". When we're in a bike lane, or off to the side in a bike lane, we're pretty "disengaged" from the rest of traffic. When we try to move left, we're trying to get engaged. Once we have moved left, we are engaged, and it is much easier to get motorists to cooperate from that point on. Anyone who has done any significant amount of merging using negotiation in traffic (as opposed to waiting for a gap and cutting across) should know what I'm talking about here. At any rate, the point is that when you're in the danger zone, motorists may "see" you, but many are likely to be unaware of your presence.
• Drivers who drift tend to not be following another car. Drifts come from relatively prolonged distractions that a motorist will not allow when there is a car right in front of him that could slow at any time. In other words, a motorist is more likely to take his eyes of the road for a signficant period, a few seconds, when his intended path up ahead is clear. It is these longish periods of times during which the driver has allowed himself to be distracted, that drifts happen.
• Motorist lack of awareness of a cyclist up ahead is a significant factor in causing inadvertent drifts into cyclists. From time to time we hear about tragic cyclist fatalities caused by motorists that drift into a cyclist riding in a shoulder, bike lane, or right side of the road. It seems obvious that, in these cases, had the motorist been aware of the cyclist, he would not have drifted into him.

The incidence of motorist drift into cyclist are pretty rare. If you never thought about it, you'd probably never be affected by it. But, given the finality of these events, why not do what you can to reduce their likelihood of happening to you? Why not be in a more centerish position as a motorist approaches from the rear, and only move aside after it is virtually impossible for him to not be aware of you? Remember, even distracted motorists look away from where they are going for only short periods of time (look away for too long and they drift out of their lane and crash). The key to this approach is on a straight and otherwise empty road (where drivers are more apt to look away and not pay attention, rather than on a curvy road) to give a potential drifter plenty of opportunity to see you and become aware of your presence during one of his looks up ahead to make sure his straight path is still clear. The idea is that once he sees you up ahead in his path, he is much more likely to pay attention (be aware of you) than if you are up ahead off to the side out of his intended path in the danger zone. A distracted driver like that, who is partially focused on the radio, shaving, getting a drink, dialing a number, talking to his boss, whatever, is likely to not even be aware of a cyclist who is up ahead and out of his path. That's what makes the cyclist who is riding a steady line in the danger zone more vulnerable to an inadvertent drift than a cyclist who rides in a centerish position until awareness is achieved, and then moves aside temporarily into the danger zone, until the next gap.

Finally, reducing the possibility of becoming a victim to an inadvertent drift is simply a secondary reason for practicing DLLP. The other reasons to choose a more centerish position, out of the danger zone, are:

1. to make yourself more visible to traffic that is intending to cross your path, so that they don't cross right in front of you, or into you.
2. to give yourself more of an escape buffer zone to your right.

Again, these have all been covered, in so many words, by chipcom, and others (including LCI_Brian above). Whether you agree or not, hopefully now you will no longer say you don't get the notion that the side, relative to the center, is the "danger zone".

Yes, I invented the term "danger zone" to refer to the right edge of the roadway, just a few days ago as a matter of fact. So what? I honestly don't know if I'll stick with it. So far, I'm pretty happy with it. I was concerned that danger zone might be overstating, well, the "danger" of riding there. I've also toyed with "conflict zone", but that sounds too clunky or something. I'm sticking with danger zone for now, at least until I or someone comes up with a better term. But, the basic concept is to bring attention to the fact that the right side of the road is not the safe haven that many cyclists seem to think it is, whether or not it is demarcated with a white stripe. In his book Cyclecraft, John Franklin recommends that cyclists use a centerish position as their primary riding position. In The Art of Urban Cycling, Robert Hurst advocates a similar approach, refering to the centerish position in the lane as the cyclist's default position. This danger zone concept is just another way to present the same concept - that a cyclist is generally safer riding away from the edge of the road. I and several others have touched on some of the reasons in the post of this thread, including this one. These books cover many of these in more detail, if you're interested. Ironically, the generally accepted "bible" of VC, Forester's Effective Cycling, does not explicitly cover this approach of generally eschewing the right side of the road whenever faster same-direction traffic is not present. However, it is arguably derived from the principles presented in EC. At any rate, if you're sufficiently interested in the topic of traffic cycling to find and read this forum, not to mention getting this far in this post, you'd probably be able to appreciate these three books, as well as John Allen's Cycling Smarts which is available for free PDF download on his website, http://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts.


If you or anyone else can make a compelling argument that the center of the lane should be called the "hazard zone" because if a cyclist crashes there, he is more likely to be run over, I, for one, would be interested in reading and evaluating it.