Cycle

My husband and I bicycle most places.

For my husband, an urban planner and developer, destinations include construction sites and weekly meetings of the volunteer city planning board of which he is a member. And big box stores. He has an electric cargo bike with a bin big enough to haul home loads from Costco.

He's out on the streets on his bike daily. Less so in my case. I work full-time from home for Reuters, for the most part relying on phone calls and Teams meetings to make assignments and shape stories. I occasionally report and write stories for Reuters, and will hop on my bike -- which is the old-fashioned, non-electric variety -- to go to my neighborhood library to collect books I've reserved for research. Most of the reporting I do is out of town, so I don't often cycle to interviews.

I ride to meet friends for coffee or to visit a museum. I am inordinately pleased to have found a dentist I can reach by riding to the train station nearest my home, hopping on the train with my bike, and getting on my bike again at the stop nearest the clinic.  But mostly I ride to do errands. Lacking my husband’s bin and the electricity boost to handle it, I rely on a saddle bag. When I pick up drycleaning I am careful to pull the clothes from my saddle bag and shake out the folds as soon as I get home.

We live a short ride northeast of central Denver. My husband and I regularly ride downtown together for evenings out at our favorite jazz club and other date nights. No Lycra for me – I’ve cycled in gowns and faux fur to fundraising galas.

Our kid has grown from riding to elementary school to cycling from an apartment near the state capitol to classes at the University of Colorado's Denver campus and to a job in the zoo's education department.

I am aware that the norm for our family can be stressful to people behind the wheels of cars. Some drivers are unsure how to share the road and see a growing network of bike lanes as a taking of their space for driving and parking.

A recent conversation about tensions on the streets inspired me to do some reading. I started with the driver handbook published by the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles. I don't think I'd read such a manual since I got my license as a teenager in California.

This passage in particular intrigued me: "The law states who must yield the right-of-way, but it does not give anyone the right-of-way."

I read that as advice to focus on my responsibility toward others when I am on the move, whether on foot, on bike or behind the wheel.Cars don't take precedence because they are bigger and faster. The driver's manual cautions drivers "to be alert, actively look for bicyclists and be cautious when approaching or passing bicyclists because bicycles are smaller and bicyclists are more vulnerable than people inside of motor vehicles. Like motorists, bicyclists have different levels of experience and skills, and some bicyclists are children. Keep these characteristics in mind as you look for and approach people biking."

Bikes don't take precedence because they are nimbler.  As the handbook points out, car drivers and bike riders alike must yield by slowing down or stopping for pedestrians crossing the roadway within a crosswalk. No swerving around them just because you can. 

I also read advice on cycling safety from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has noted an increase in bike riding across the country. According to administration, "bicyclists failing to yield the right of way was the highest factor in fatal bike crashes, followed by bicyclists not being visible."

I'm a defensive cyclist, which means I ride like I don't expect car drivers to see me. And I take steps to be visible. My helmet, for example, is equipped with lights I can turn on during those rides home from the jazz club.  

My husband and I sometimes ride side-by-side, which, as the state manual says, helps us be more visible and is allowed if it does not impede "the normal and reasonable movement of traffic." Besides, according to the manual, it means it takes a car driver less time to pass us.

The NHTSA defines defensive driving as being "focused and alert to the road and all traffic around you; anticipate what others may do, before they do it."

All this reading was set off by a friend's essay – he called it a rant -- about safety for children on bikes. The opinion piece published on Colorado Public Radio’s Denverite website was directed at car drivers and said in part that at intersections:

"Just because you’re nice and wave someone on does not mean other drivers are paying attention. They can easily run down a child you let pass through the intersection. Breaking the rules — even to be polite — can actually endanger people by breaking predictable patterns."

I posted the piece on my Facebook page, leading to a lively conversation with friends. One had the most defensive cyclist comment ever: "Most times I won't go through even if they wave me through. I wave them through. I just don't trust them."

When we're cycling together, I often watch my husband try to educate drivers that they should not be waving us through intersections out of our turn. Street corners don't strike me as the place for lessons on the rules of the road.

A driver posted in our Facebook conversation that he's been having conversations in real life -- he did not mention whether they were while he was on the streets -- on traffic safety and "learning that being polite can be dangerous in some cases."

Another friend posted that she, like my husband, is angered when she's on her bike and drivers wave her through an intersection when it’s not her turn. She says she tries to tell drivers about the safety issues each time that happens.

One of the aspects of my regular cycling is the opportunity for human interactions.

During a visit to Copenhagen, where commuting by bike has been normalized,  I could overhear parents chatting with children as they passed me on my borrowed bike, the parents pedaling,  the children in the ebikes' human cargo boxes.  In Denver I greet pedestrians as well as others on bikes. Pedestrians have called out compliments on my fashion choices. Fellow cyclists direct even more compliments at my bike. Years ago my artist friend Minerva Spencer painted and embellished my ride with metal flowers she welded.

Perhaps some of those drivers  waving at me from behind their windshields crave interaction. But I suspect drivers, no doubt focused on errands similar to my own, don’t have time or attention to spare for an impromptu lecture on the rules of the road.

I'm hereby sharing my friend's piece in hopes of sparking neither rants nor lectures, but conversation, either on or off the road.