flipped4bikes

Gee dude, didn't mean to get your panties in a bunch. On rides like this it's not our intention to drop her. Duh. And with most of the group having to pass her again isn't just an inconvenience. What happens is that on large rides everyone is bunched together creating both spacing and safety issues.

Now if you want to compare me to a JAM, hey that's your opinion. But you'd be wrong.

dynodonn 

For a moment there I thought I was reading a motorist rant........

Generally at the most, other cyclists are only 5 to 10 mph slower than myself and are much easier to deal with than a person in a motor vehicle operating in the same manner. In your situation, after the first mile or two, I would have either pulled in behind them and stayed there, or pulled over at a favorite store, stop, watering hole, etc. and give them a considerable lead. This type of tactic is what I also have found to work the best for me when driving a motor vehicle behind a line of motor homes, pickups with trailers, sightseers on a curvy narrow two lane road.

CB HI

Group ride and your whining about spacing issues! Sounds like your group needs practice improving your cycling skills.

If you do not intend to drop her, then you might as well let her lead the group and no one will HAVE TO PASS her.

Sadly, I doubt that you get the point, since most in your group just have to pass the cyclist ahead.

flipped4bikes

Man, why so hating? You have no idea who I am and what the group ride is about. I would explain it to you, but seems like you've already made up your mind about what I was describing. So go and spew your opinion somewhere else.

CB HI

Just responding to your spewing of opinionated hate on other cyclist. Chill out Mr. Penguin.

jfmckenna

Isn't there a disease called Island Happiness or something?

CbadRider

This thread would be a lot happier if the name-calling and personal attacks stopped.

jfmckenna

If I am in city traffic I'll filter right up to the front and once the light is green I'll just get right in the flow like a motorcycle. If it becomes to hard to pedal then I move over and let the cars pass. Out in the country though I like to show some respect for drivers that slowed down to pass me, waited for the right moment, passed safely and are now waiting at the light.

It's called common decency.

Keith99

I agree he as very brusk at the least and could be seen as rude.

But the question still stands.

Is this a ride where she would be dropped?

I recall the same happening to me near the end of a ride. The club I ride with makes no official efforts to stay as a group (except for regroup or rest/meal stops). At this point ther were 3 of us heading home. Me a lady and the other guy considerably slower than either of us who would filter to the front every light.

If it were not for the lady thigns would have been easy. I could have worked hard and made a light. (Hmm come to think about it I'm thinking the lady and I may have been riding together for a while and caught him). I actually take some pride in giving good wheel. And each light things would go like this. He wuold start out slow and in front, we would each pass him in turn and I would soft pedal a bit until she caught my wheel and we would go at a comfortable pace and he would drop far far back.

Eventually we got a good enough start to make a light and be done with the annoyance.

What was really annoying was that he would always filter and make absolutely no effort to keep opn a wheel. I've always been fine, more than fine with making holding my wheel easy. But someone who is not willing to work at all to get to go fast and then filters to gain ground is upsetting.

flipped4bikes

Thanks for asking. No, this wasn't that kind of ride where you got dropped. This was a cycle club ride out of New York City. No one gets dropped, and we always had a sweeper. The rides tend to be large and until we were out in the suburbs, there is very little shoulder and narrow lanes. Every so often the leader would stop at a stop sign or junction to make sure we were all together.

In our group rides, there will several subgroups because of variations of average pace. Faster groups would end up passing slower ones. The rider in question who is in the back on of the ride would pass 20 or so riders and get all the way up front at these stops. After she did this a couple of times, the leader asked her not to filter up front. Despite the request she continued to keep filtering.

IIRC this ride was long, about 65 miles, and you want to ride with cyclists going approximately the same pace as you are. We take turns in front and pull for each other, as well as trying to keep up. The filter rider made it difficult for us to ride consistently. Now if I'm like a JAM thinking that this is annoying, that's one opinion. But it can get frustrating to pass someone and have to do it over and over again.

Keith99

So If I getting it right this was not a we all stay in one group. It would break into subgroups. There was a sweaper to make sure no one fell off the back alone and it frequently would regroup.

Sounds like she was a jerk, esp. considering that there was an official leader who asked her to stop donig this.

flipped4bikes

We started as one big group (35+) and as the ride progressed, it would splinter into faster riders up front. I can't say she was being a jerk- I couldn't relate to the mindset where if you were in back, that one would filter up front at stops.

I've been on other rides where I was definitely slower than most, but it would never occur to me to filter to the front. If I caught up to the group, I'd stay in back. It seems to me presumptuous and rude to filter into the front of faster riders.

unterhausen

I agree that it's silly to filter through a group ride. Although filtering in group rides is not really what this thread started to be about.

I don't really know where filtering started. I think it has to do with cyclists considering themselves second class citizens and the fact that if you stay by the side of the road you will have a motorist pull up beside you. I learned it from other cyclists, I think. But I'm not sure about that.

flipped4bikes

True that. I got this thread off track in a not so great attempt to compare filtering in front of cars and how it felt when another rider filtered in front of other cyclists.

I generally don't like to filter in front of anybody. In my beach scenario mentioned earlier, I could've done the same thing the roadie at the beach did- filter until I was away from the stop-and-go traffic. But I felt that it wasn't safe for lots of reasons. Is it rude to do it? I guess in my definition of rude, it would be yes. But as seen in this thread, and more so out in the real world, one's rude is just another's I'm going to do what I want, no one is really going to care.

Dan The Man

You are taking up more street length at the stop light and backing up traffic further. If you are in heavy city traffic this definitely slows down drivers more than filtering.

charbucks

As has been stated by many people... it's a situational-dependant issue. If we were to write out a guideline that says "No filtering, except when:", the list would be pages long.

Here's a situation that surprised me the first time I saw it: 2 lanes each direction, no shoulder on either side, traffic gets backed up during rush hour but opens up a few blocks later. Here's the street view. Clearly this was not taken during rush hour.

The first time I rode this little section (only 2 blocks), I took the lane. I was stuck under a bridge in smelly exhaust, for a good five-seven minutes. That doesn't sound like a long time on paper, but it really is. During that time, at least 4 cyclists passed me by squeezing between the lanes of gridlocked traffic.

While I never want to be caught in that haze of asthma-attack-inducing exhaust again, filtering between lanes of traffic just seems stupid. If I have to ride that stretch, I now take the sidewalk, and even at walking speed it's much quicker. In fact, on newer underpasses in the city, bike lanes have been built in to the sidewalk.

CB HI

By the standards of a few here, I must have been a very bad cyclist this morning. I filtered past over two blocks of stopped motorist. They were all backed up for a really bad three car crash at an intersection. When I got to the intersection I did even more bad cycling and made a right turn to go down the road, U-turn and filter to get back to the original road I was on and continue my commute, OH MY. Lots of cops around, a couple of them nodded their head towards me, none said anything negative or tried to stop me.

I am sure the crash was caused by a criminal fleeing from the cops (5-0). A pickup truck had head on crashed into a compact car and another compact car rear ended the first. Significant damage to all vehicles - front ends all bashed completely in. Lots of cameras filming the crash. Odd though, an ambulance was on scene, but the EMTs were ignoring the victim and just talking between themselves.

I suppose I could have waited for traffic to clear, but I also have no doubt it would have been stopped all morning and I would be way late for work if I had patiently waited for traffic to clear, rather than filtering and doing the u-turn.

Anyway, we should all be able to see the crash in full color on TV soon -






















on a future episode of Hawaii 5-0.

weshigh

Why does it seem stupid? They are all stopped, sounds like the perfect situation for lane splitting/filtering. I would think you'd be holding more people up sitting there in traffic then riding through and getting on.

Keith99

You didn't bother to click the link he provided. did you? Solid wall to the left, solid wall to the right and both lanes substandard. Not unusual for what I'd call an underpass. The place one an filter is between lanes. Which is fine while everyone is stopped.



BUT when the light turns green the cars all take off and you can get caught in the middle.

weshigh

No, I clicked the link and took a look. Obviously if there is no room between vehicles you stop filtering/lane splitting. You also merge back into the lane once traffic is moving again. All the cars don't accelerate from the stop at the exact same time. There is a wave of movement that starts at the front. You keep your eye on the wave so you know when the traffic that you are passing will start moving and position yourself accordingly. If there is room I would note wait under there for 5-7 min for two blocks. I would take my time, be careful and slowly make my way through the traffic.

charbucks

It's the getting caught in the middle thing that scares me. Perhaps saying it's stupid is too strong, but it certainly isn't something I'd like to do. Imagine you're just about caught up to the front when the light changes? I would say that most drivers tend to stare at the light willing it to turn green, and they're certainly not expecting a cyclist to show up in between the lanes. The first two or three cars are the scariest, as they're accelerating the fastest. Besides, how often do they let you merge back in after you've just breezed past them? For every car that's nice and lets you in, there's probably four glaring at you.

In general, I don't like to be where people don't expect me to be. Sadly, that often includes "in the bike lane" or "riding on the street", but surprising motorists by appearing in the middle of two lane traffic doesn't really help my cause of trying to get them to be more respectful.

weshigh

Perfectly fine, and every section of street in every town and city are different circumstances. I have few location locations where I do quite a bit of filtering/lane splitting due to half mile+ long areas of backed up cars. They are very rarely making a super fast get away at the next light and I have not had any trouble. In my experience, I get yelled at/honked at a lot more sitting in traffic taking the lane even if we are all stopped. One of the few times I thought I was actually going to get into a physical argument or get hit on purpose by someone was waiting in traffic while taking the lane. YMMV.

flipped4bikes

CB HI pointed some very good situations to filter- stuck/stopped traffic, moving past traffic accidents, because we are on bikes after all.

And I would definitely would filter past this:

I got get on with my day and plenty more threads to read!

unterhausen

I don't see anything wrong in passing cars that aren't likely to move anytime soon. There have been a couple of instances where emergency crews have finished and are holding up traffic waiting for the doughnuts to show up or something. They usually don't want you riding through that, but getting off the bike and walking almost always works. OTOH, on certain Fridays getting off of campus here is nearly impossible. You could filter, but then you'd be riding past stopped cars for a long, long time. I chose not to do that.

Rimmer

No