Most of the time, cycling is good for your health.
There are moments, though, when it can raise your blood pressure, especially if you ride in traffic.
In such a moment, you might be riding as far to the right as you can in the traffic lane because there's no shoulder or bike lane. It's night, and someone drives close enough to tear off the back of your glove. Oh, and that car has it's high-beams on. And the driver honks repeatedly.
If the driver acknowledges you, it's usually with a gesture they don't teach in etiquette classes or words they don't teach in basic English or Spanish or whatever-language classes.
If Dani Motze hasn't experienced that exact scenario, I am sure she's experienced something just as scary and irksome. The 28-year-old Reading, Pennsylvania resident says she's been harassed, followed and run off the road in 11 years of pedaling her city's streets. Oh, and she's been hit by a car. Another time, she was "grazed"--ironically, when she was on her way to a meeting about cycling.
So, a year ago she took to wearing a sign:
Her objective, she explains, is not to crusade for the right to ride in traffic. That's already canonized the laws of Pennsylvania, as in most other states. Moreover, the Keystone State has a "four-foot rule", designating the berth drivers must give cyclists when passing them. What she wants, she says is to "educate" motorists as well as cyclists.
Motze, who is a social worker and online magazine editor as well as a cycling advocate, says that what she wants is to take the lane in cities and towns, not on highways with 60 MPH speed limits. That, really, is about as good as we can hope for in the absence of physically separated bike lanes with provisions for turning and crossing intersections.
She sometimes drives a car she shares with her husband. But most of her commutes and errands are done on her bike, and she sometimes rides for pleasure.
How have drivers responded? Some well, some not so much, she says. But, for them most part, in the year Motze has been wearing the sign, "people have been passing me with no issue," she says.
There are moments, though, when it can raise your blood pressure, especially if you ride in traffic.
In such a moment, you might be riding as far to the right as you can in the traffic lane because there's no shoulder or bike lane. It's night, and someone drives close enough to tear off the back of your glove. Oh, and that car has it's high-beams on. And the driver honks repeatedly.
If the driver acknowledges you, it's usually with a gesture they don't teach in etiquette classes or words they don't teach in basic English or Spanish or whatever-language classes.
If Dani Motze hasn't experienced that exact scenario, I am sure she's experienced something just as scary and irksome. The 28-year-old Reading, Pennsylvania resident says she's been harassed, followed and run off the road in 11 years of pedaling her city's streets. Oh, and she's been hit by a car. Another time, she was "grazed"--ironically, when she was on her way to a meeting about cycling.
So, a year ago she took to wearing a sign:
 |
| "May Use Full Lane--Change Lanes To Pass" |
Her objective, she explains, is not to crusade for the right to ride in traffic. That's already canonized the laws of Pennsylvania, as in most other states. Moreover, the Keystone State has a "four-foot rule", designating the berth drivers must give cyclists when passing them. What she wants, she says is to "educate" motorists as well as cyclists.
Motze, who is a social worker and online magazine editor as well as a cycling advocate, says that what she wants is to take the lane in cities and towns, not on highways with 60 MPH speed limits. That, really, is about as good as we can hope for in the absence of physically separated bike lanes with provisions for turning and crossing intersections.
She sometimes drives a car she shares with her husband. But most of her commutes and errands are done on her bike, and she sometimes rides for pleasure.
 |
How have drivers responded? Some well, some not so much, she says. But, for them most part, in the year Motze has been wearing the sign, "people have been passing me with no issue," she says.
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