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Comment by markbnj | Hacker News Reader

As an experienced bike commuter, I wonder how you feel about an issue that bugs me. When I was young I was taught to ride against the flow of auto traffic so that I could see cars coming. When I taught my kids I told them the same thing, but that has been countered by every other authority they have come into contact with, all of which instruct them to follow the same rules as cars, including riding on the same side of the road. I do all my riding on a trail, but my personal feeling is that if I were riding on a road I would not ride with car traffic. However I know people who have been ticketed/warned about riding against. If you really follow a rule that you're invisible when riding, then it would be hard to justify riding with auto traffic, rather than against, wouldn't it?

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It might seem counter-intuitive, but you are much safer riding with traffic than against it. Drivers are conditioned to look in the direction of traffic and they aren't going to expect someone coming the other way. This ends up causing a lot of accidents at intersections and parking lot entrances.

In my area, [these accidents](http://bicyclesafe.com/#wrongway) are way to common. I almost hit a biker like this the other day because they were riding against traffic past my apartment entrance.

[Here is a stack exchange question with some more stats on the topic](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/9033/why-is-it-s...)

The way it was explained to me was that drivers have a harder time estimating the speed of fast-moving objects that are differently sized than an automobile, such as bicycles and trains.

Meanwhile, bicycles that go with traffic will (relatively) approach the driver at a much slower speed, giving the driver more response time.

If anything, riding against traffic in the lane of traffic freaks out drivers and their reactions to it aren't always good (there are bunch of contra flow dedicated bike lanes in DC, so I'm not talking about those). I find the drivers are actually worse at gauging distance on drivers side of the car and will drive past you dangerously close. It may also be illegal outside of dedicated lanes (not to say that I don't regularly ride one-ways the wrong way, but that takes a different level of awareness).

The other issue with it is that it severely reduces your options. When riding with traffic, you can take the entire lane if necessary, something I have to do several times on my commute because the traffic flow around me is dangerous if I don't. Riding against traffic means you're stuck riding the gutter, somewhere I actively avoid on city streets if only to save my tires.

I don't ride with headphones, and shoulder check constantly to maintain awareness of what is behind me. My hearing has saved my ass several times (nothing quite gets your adrenaline going like hearing the roar of cabbie flooring his Crown Vic behind you in an attempt run your ass over).

Bicycling, like motorcycling, requires constant vigilance and awareness, it's naive to believe otherwise. It's tough to do and lapses happen all the time, but on a bicycle you don't have 5,000 lbs of metal and electronic nannies, just your wits and senses. And a U-Lock if it comes to it ;)

The rule of thumb that I've heard is to walk against traffic if there are no sidewalks or dedicated space, but always to ride your bicycle with traffic if there are no bike lanes. You might be practically invisible to motor vehicles, but as you've noticed, traffic regulations often consider bicycles the equivalent of cars for all intents and purposes. Until the tide changes for cyclists and dedicated infrastructure improves, I think people are stuck with the cards they've been dealt for traffic regulations.

One reason to ride with traffic is that you give the driver more time to react to you. If a driver is going 40 mph and you ride 15 mph, if you're going the same way the speed delta is 25 mph. Going the other way makes the speed delta more than double (or 55mph).

This is true, and a reasonable point, although it still puts the outcome nearly completely in the driver's hands, which is the part I have a hard time getting past. Given the number of people I see talking on their phones or otherwise distracted and weaving a couple of feet here and there, it wouldn't really take much to end up a hood ornament.

Riding with traffic doesn't put the outcome in the drivers hands, your still responsible for paying attention to cars behind you and not, for example, pulling out in front of them. Even if it was completely in the drivers hands, I'd would rather they have more time to deal with it. And if nothing else, I'd rather become a hood ornament at 25 mph than at 55 mph

If you ride on the wrong side so you can jump out of the way in front of a car to survive, some drivers will expect you to do exactly that. This is a game much more dangerous than vehicular cycling.

Edit: also, don't expect other cyclists to endanger themselves by swerving into overtaking cars for an against the flow rider. They might even consciously chose a good head-butt with the other rider over ending under a car. In other words: you should be _really_ ready to jump.

The problem with against-the-flow is that it's unexpected to cars that are making a right turn.

The other day, I was coming out of an alley, turning right on to a one way street. I'm turning right, so I expect all road traffic to be coming from my left. That's the direction I'm focused on in making my right turn.

Now, I always check to the right, but I never really expect to see anything. When I did actually see a cyclist zinging up from my right, it kind of gave me an adrenaline jolt. He was never in any danger, my car was fully stopped and never moved: but it was so unexpected to see him there, that i kind of went "oh god, I almost ran him over".

Point is: if safety is your concern, then probably the safest thing you can do is to follow the same laws cars do. Be where a driver expects to see another car.

When I as a child, I was struck by a car while riding my bicycle. I was riding against traffic, and the car that struck me as making a right-hand turn from a side street. They were looking left at oncoming traffic, and not to the right, where I happened to be at that moment.

It's ingrained in drivers to pay attention to the source of traffic in such cases, a sort of optimization tree for their merging decision. If you're traveling against traffic, you're an outlier not considered in others' equations, and you're at risk of injury.

"Ride like you are invisible" is a philosophy, not legal advice. As you say, it is illegal in every jurisdiction in the US that I know of to bike against traffic (baring contra-flow bike lanes, which are quite a different thing). I have been hit once in 20 years of riding cautiously (but speedily) with the flow of traffic, and that was an inattentive driver, not anything about my style of riding (I was stopped at stop sign, ironically enough).

In most places I'm familiar with, when you are riding on the road, you're a vehicle. That means riding with traffic. (How do you ride against traffic if you're "taking the lane"?)

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