At bikesafe on Tuesday night, the guy doing the presentation that evening was talking about positioning. I asked him his thoughts on using the whole of the road, which he said I shouldn’t do. Don’t bike cops do it? Yes, but we won’t suggest you do it. So we got into a bit of a discussion about it.
Using the whole road is something I do a lot, I’m very confident doing it- obviously I’m not talking about going round blind bends on the wrong side of the road to get a better line, but if its safe, using all the road that’s available.
To a lesser extent I also use the other side of the road, i.e just over the white line, when I know that when a car comes into view I’ll be back on my side of the road again.
The bike cop argued against all of these, saying “what if there’s a police car coming towards you doing exactly the same thing, what happens then?” and went on to say bike cops are perfectly safe doing this because they have radios and know if there’s a police car coming the other way. This seems like a load of bull to me.. I used a few examples of fen roads around here, where you can see for miles ahead- if its clear, what then? Still no…
What thinks you?
I didn’t like him, he was very elitist.. At least next week we have the nice one again 