Monday, August 10, 2009

what do you think?? road rage and how to deal with it


one of our groups this past Saturday encountered a bad road rage incident, the ride leader got the license and a picture of the drivers, this ride leader

had 14 riders in his group, I had a similar size on Saturday around 14 or so, i had no idea i had that many as they must have come in late to Hot Foot and when i looked back a few blocks into the ride, i thought, where the heck did all these folks come from?

what to do?, do we ride with this many or do we split on these tights roads as Providence is?

and then regroup later in the ride on quieter roads?

my group went towards Glen Mills, i was a Nazi keeping everyone single file, it was nerve wracking as we were on roads that were like Providence, narrow, little shoulder and traffic, Westtown, Cheyney and Creek

but I felt my group was too large, i ran a figure 8 ride and we lost 8 rides for the 2nd leg making it much easier, just 6 of us

do we ride in large groups or should we lesson the chances for road rage by making our groups smaller on these busy roads

i have ridden on Providence, it is a busy road and seems to attract high speed cars, so maybe this should be addressed

as a club, we do nothing for our rep when we are in those large groups, it is hard to pass a group this large

i do know we have every right to be on the roads, but pulling over and splitting the group is just courteous

i constantly monitor the cars behind me and if on a busy road if we have a line, i look for a spot to move over so the cars can get by

i realize many of us are out and are cycling at high speeds and do not want to do this

but for saturday club rides, it is not a competition and this kind of courtesy might be what we need to do

high speed competition rides can be done but maybe the groups should be smaller for this type of riding

lucky for me Chick rides tend to be small so this is not a problem and obviously we are not riding at high speeds

but with the large group i had on Saturday, i can see the side of the drivers as i felt like a parade and it was tough for cars to get around us

what is your opinion, should clubs run large groups taking off together and then staying together even on busy roads and roads with no shoulders???

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