Andy_K 

The discussion of different riding contexts in the "Being Seen" thread got me to wondering about how often I get passed by cars and how that compares to where other people ride.

Most of my commute (10 miles each way) is either on very low traffic residential streets or on arterial roads with bike lanes. Having cars buzzing past when I'm in the bike lane really doesn't bother me at all. I'm aware that the cars are there, but as long as there's little chance that they'll turn in front of me I don't consider them a danger.

Anyway, like I said, I was curious so last Friday I decided to count how many cars passed me on my way home. I only counted the cars that were on the same road I was on, going the same direction as I was while I was moving. I guessed it would be around 100 but then that seemed kind of high, which is why I decided to actually count them.

The actual total: 205

One of the more useful things I noticed was that there's a short stretch of side street with no shoulder that I think of as a residential street where around a dozen cars passed me. I think I'm going to try a different option for that part of my commute.


So now it's your turn. How many cars pass you on a typical commute?

Steely Dan

i take a mostly side-street route with pretty light traffic because it's nice and mellow. 5 miles one-way distance.

i have never counted how many cars typically pass me, but i will tonight on my commute home.

if i had to ballpark a guess i'd say maybe 15. we'll see how close i am in about an hour.

caloso

Mine might be a negative number. I think I might pass more cars than pass me on my evening commute. I will have to check the Fly6 tonight.

mcours2006

Way too many to count, and might be dangerous for me to occupy my mind that way while riding too.

Reading the title I thought you were going to ask about being passed by other cyclists. There used to be a website devoted to 'The Game' whereby you accumulate points for passing other cyclists based on various criteria--type of bike, attire, etc. Couldn't find the link.

I was passed this morning by a guy on an ebike on a hill. I was pushing maybe 20 km and I saw him in my mirror. He passed doing maybe 30 km/h, on the same hill. I thought, I gotta get me one of those.

HardyWeinberg

I get passed a lot. Most of them I catch at the next stoplight.

KD5NRH

Pretty near all of them. I've got a mile of 55mph road, another of 75mph road, and 5 miles of county roads with a de facto limit of 60mph.

RubeRad

I'll try to remember to count tonight. I bet I can beat 205. A lot of my commute is on a street that is an exit off an interstate, so lots of cars pouring by all the time. But also generous paint-buffered bike lanes, so no worries.

Andy_K 

Ah yes, silly commuter racing. I don't keep score, but I have to admit to participating.

There was a day last week when I spotted another commuter ahead of me. I was slowly gaining on him over a couple of miles. He got stopped at a traffic light, and I figured I'd catch up to him there and there would be no excitement. As it turned out... The intersection with the light was right at the bottom of a short hill (about 15 foot drop in around 50 yards). He waited a bit then moved over to the awkwardly placed "cyclist crossing" button and took both feet off the pedal as he pushed the button. Meanwhile, I was at the top of the short hill and hadn't started to slow down yet. At that very instant, the light turned green. I blew through the intersection at speed while he re-oriented himself and tried to get moving. I'm pretty sure he didn't even know I was back there until I blew past him.

It was kind of like this:

ThermionicScott 

Not only do I get passed a lot, I wave them around me whenever I see an opening.

Steely Dan

Well, I was WAY off. I only counted 3 cars that passed me on my 5 mile ride home.

Kinda hard to believe considering that I commute through very dense, urban, and congested city neighborhoods, but that is the beauty of the chicago residential side street.

The main street two blocks over is a veritable grid-locked zoo of angry rush hour insanity, but by going a tiny bit out of my way, the side streets feel like quiet shady small-town roads. I love it.

AlmostTrick

This is true for me too. My route is in the suburbs where motor speeds are frequently 40mph and more. There are few controlled intersections on my route, so there is usually no "catching up to them at the light" either.

Archwhorides 

Interesting question to which I will never have an answer. I'm guessing that I am passed by close to 200 cars and I in turn pass over 500 cars each way from the orifice.

SylvainG

i thought you would have asked how many bikes passed me compared to the number of bikes that overtake me, then it would have been I overtake most of the bikes but for cars, it depends on traffic. Some days, car passes me by by the dozens but other times, traffic is through a crawl and I overtake most of them.

AusTexMurf

Thank you, State of Texas and TxDOT !

Steely Dan

i counted again this morning to see if my morning route is different from my evening route. i was passed by 5 cars and 1 motorcycle. all but one of them was on a 1/4 mile stretch of a busy-ish street that i need to take to get around a walled-off cemetery. because of some one way streets that i take into and out of downtown evanston, that particular street isn't part of my evening route.

KD5NRH

The county roads are rarely an issue. With no center line, and not that much traffic, pretty much everybody waits for oncoming traffic to clear and goes to the far side regardless of what line I hold. In spite of the "pickup driver" stereotype on here, the only ones I usually have issues with are college girls and soccer moms in nice cars and SUVs. Pickups are often rubbing the grass on the left side when they pass because they're used to heavy equipment in the road.

ptempel

I'd probably lose count if I tried. Try commuting from North Jersey over the GWB and downtown Manhattan and you'll see how "urban" it really is. I'm all for modifying the commute. I've done a few things to make the commute a bit safer:

- Use the sidewalks for the metal grate bridges. You can ride the metal when its dry but why bother? Yes, the sidewalk is slower and has a lot of debris. Just give your tires a rub after crossing the bridge.
- I use the sidewalk when the traffic is heavy on Polifly Ave. A lot of cars and trucks come off of Rt 80 there. So I just ride the sidewalk there for two blocks to avoid getting jammed up into the curb.
- For large intersections like Rt 46 and Bergen Tpke in Little Falls, I'll just ride with the traffic and stop on same side of Bergen Tpke. Then wait for the light there to cross 46 and be on my way. There's just too much traffic there to take advantage of the turn lane.
- For most busses on a road with no shoulder, I just wait for the bus to go. I got pushed into a big red cone once by an articulated bus in Fort Lee. Was a lesson to lay off, take it easy and follow the bus from behind.

RubeRad

On my way home last night I forgot to start counting until I had gotten past the freeway, when I saw a backup as bad as I've ever seen in 4 years of bike-commuting. There was a stoplight out, blinking red, so I was passing 3 lanes of standstill traffic. I counted 100 cars and stopped; probably 150-170 in the end.

Then on my way in this morning I took a different route; longer, but also a lot of it on a MUP. I counted like 120, it was pretty early (like 6:30).

I'll try to remember on my way home tonight, to see what a normal evening rush hour is like.

rhm

Riding to the station in the morning, maybe five or ten cars.

Riding from Penn Station to my office in the morning, probably a couple dozen; hard to tell since when I pass them, I pass an uncountable number more or less as a group; and when they pass me, it's the same deal.

Riding from my office to Penn Station in the afternoon, I pass more cars than pass me; but probably not more than a couple dozen.

Riding from the station to home, dunno, it might be over a hundred cars. Hard to count them.

caloso

I was right. In 3.8 miles, 17min of moving time, I was passed by a car 23 times. I passed a car 61 times. (Some of these were the same car, and in one case, I passed and repassed a car 5 times.)

That's a net of 38 cars that I passed on my way home last night.

Bikewolf

Yep, know that one too :-)

KD5NRH

You should stop letting that slowpoke catch up so many times.

1nterceptor

I pass hundreds:

Andy_K 

That's pretty sweet! I pass a lot of cars on the first road out of my office because about 3000 people work at my location and there are only two or three ways out. If I leave at the peak traffic time the cars can be backed up more than half a mile to the first traffic light. I didn't count those to subtract them. For the rest of my commute traffic flows pretty smoothly and I don't pass anyone.

On the other hand, the reason I was wondering about this is relative safety. The part of my commute where I'm zipping past a long line of stopped cars (with me in a bike lane) is probably the most dangerous part of my commute because I have to be super alert for someone leaving a gap for a car coming the other way to turn left across the line. My experience is that the cars turning left in this scenario never, ever, ever see me or expect moving bikes to be a possibility.

By contrast, I think the part of my commute where I'm getting passed by a lot of fast moving traffic is pretty safe because the cars have their own lane and they need to stay somewhat alert to avoid hitting one another. Most of the heavy traffic parts are arterial roads bypassing the endless maze of suburban cul-de-sacs so there are very few places for them to turn and most of those are controlled by traffic lights.

I think the situation in which I'd feel least safe is a rural road with no shoulder and sparse traffic. With nothing to keep drivers engaged or slow them down driver error seems a bit more likely.

PatrickGSR94

Highly depends on the time I leave the house. My commute is 15 miles and consists of a few miles of neighborhoods, about 1-2 miles of arterial, and then close to 10 miles of 2-lane rural.

The only time I've actually bothered to count was when I left the house at around 5:00 AM to make a 7 AM morning meeting, and in those cases I often will only have 5 or 6 cars pass me in 15 miles, and most of those are closer to work when it's past 6 AM at that point. When I leave the house between 6 and 6:30 there's much more traffic, and then even more at 5 PM. I would estimate the count to be 100 cars or more.