Originally Posted by
Cypress
Oregon has a "as close as practical to the right" law, and even goes into how riding two abreast is against the law given certain conditions. My old team and I were on a training ride in the middle of nowhere once and got pulled over by a Deputy Sheriff for being two abreast. When pressed to show us the statute to defend the stop, he pulled out the statute book and flipped right to a bookmarked page. Sure enough, we were in the wrong. "When operating a bicycle alongside not more than one other bicycle as long as the bicycles are both being operated within a single lane and in a manner that does not impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic." The deputy had to slow down behind us, so we were impeding normal traffic.
Not all laws are aligned with safety of the cyclists. We have the same law but usually ignore it as it's safer to ride two-up on roads without a shoulder. Riding single file encourages vehicles to pass when they shouldn't, i.e. blind corners or oncoming traffic. There are numerous situations where even a single cyclist or line of cyclists should 'impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic'.