Originally Posted by Six jours
You start the argument with "seem to be". Before we go any further I'd want to see the statistics. It seems to me that this sort of road is responsible for many cycling deaths, but my personal anecdote isn't worth any more than yours.
All of the statistics I've ever seen posted have indicated what I believe to be true to actually be true. Statistics often (always?) show that the most common deadly collision is the hit from behind, making one think that narrow lane roadways are more dangerous, but when you dig deeper you find that a surprising number of these hits occurred with a cyclist who was riding out of the way on a wide roadway. When you read about the hit from behinds on narrow roads, they almost all appaear to be overtaking collisions where the motorist saw the cyclist but did not give them enough space while passing. You could argue that these motorists were surprised by the presence of the cyclist and didn't have enough time to move far enough out of the way but that's not how the collision reports read. There was a thread started by HH a while back (
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=279174) which confirms a lot of what I've posted.
Originally Posted by Six jours
If such hits are indeed rare, then why change what works? I would worry about centering myself on certain mountain roads, again because of the motorsports enthusiasts who populate them. I want them to have as much chance as possible to avoid running me down, and centering myself in the lane minimizes that chance, IMO. As for the transference of the technique from narrow mountain roads to everywhere else, that hardly seems sensible to me, because the circumstances aren't at all the same. One might as well ask why 70 MPH doesn't work in an alley if it works on the autobahn. Technique needs to be adjusted based upon the environment, and neatly packaged black-and-white solutions don't work, IMO.
The reason I changed my position on narrow roads (from near the edge to near the center) was because I was tired of motorists trying to squeeze by with oncoming traffic putting me in an incredibly dangeorus position, where I'm susceptible to getting clipped during the pass or crashing off the edge of the road. I want as little chance as possible of this all-too-common scenario occurring. So center of the lane for me it is. Adjusting for the "motorsport enthusiast" as a default position seems similar to me to those who argue that it's too dangerous to ride a bike at all because of drunk drivers. If those drivers were truly so out of control that they could not handle encoutnering a cyclist on the road, they wouldn't be on the road for very long.
What part of using the center of a lane in absence of faster traffic does not work on a higher speed road? The technique is adjusted to account for the difference in speed of faster traffic (speed limits are NOT a good indication of what motorists' speeds will be) meaning that you move over earlier as the closing speed increases but that hardly proves that it can't be used.