Originally Posted by
tomg
depends also if there is a sholder that is wide enough and safer to ride on.
there was a stretch on ikenberry's east coast tour in cape cod that was multi-laned, no sholder and there was no other option but to take the lane. i felt apprehension to say the least on that 10 mile stretch!
having the ridden the length of the Cape innumerable times I can imagine which road you might be talking about here (there are alternatives BTW). If you are referring to Route 6A the speed limit is not 60 mph, though cars do occasionally travel on it at close to that speed, in the summers on the Cape drivers tend to be a fairly large percentage of tourists unfamiliar with the roads on their way to beaches, their hotels or cottages or out for the scenery- they may or may not see bikes as part of the tourist traffic and can range from accommodating to unbelievably hostile to the presence of a bike in "their" lane. The locals know the roads better but travel at high speeds and by mid-August have such contempt for cyclists and tourists in any vehicle they will intimidate at a fairly high percentage.
I would more than likely take the lane on such a road and have in the past but admit to loathing such roads and riding on them. I prefer to be as far from the madding crowd as I can get. I loathe driving a car on those roads so it would take a whole lot of denial to convince myself I enjoyed riding a bike on them.
edit: a side note- I just voted (would take the lane but consider the road unfriendly) and noticed most responders feel this kind of road is unfriendly to bikes and though some would ride it my guess is most would avoid it, if possible. Often advocates for "take the lane" in every situation will cite the low rate of come from behind collisions on a road like this- maybe that's because so few cyclists choose to ride on such roads.
I'm also still looking for plausible explanations for the increasingly high death rate of cyclists in 45-55 year age range over the past couple of decades. Is there a correlation to older cyclists choosing a "take the lane" position on roads like this to their higher death rate? After all a collision with a car on a road like this tends to be catastrophic. Given the kind of "I'm visible and therefore Invincible" attitude of some "take the lane" proponents it wouldn't surprise me if there were a relationship. Anyone have statistics as to the types of roads and circumstances for fatal bike accidents by age?