Originally Posted by
OddDuck
I followed another rider over the Rimutaka Hill today and observed quite a bit of rider frustration going on... slow cars held him up.
His method was to ride right up their bums - following distance of two bike lengths or so, give or take - and I saw him point to the left once as well. Lots of visibly angry body language. Nope, no dice, nobody pulled over to let him through. It was kind of horrifying to watch, frankly. We weren't going that fast, obviously, and yet if the car had put its brakes on for any reason he'd have been straight into the rear bumper and then off, or knocked sideways off the right quarter and into the oncoming traffic, head-on and out of control. He was following right on their six or their four, ready for immediate passing, which he did on the yellows at least twice.
Yeah. High risk. None of the aggro worked. I did get left behind by him at the base of the hill after the crossing, but otherwise kept up quite happily with decent following distance and legal-only overtakes in passing lanes. There wasn't an advantage to what he was doing, in short.
Confession time: I used to do the aggro riding thing a bit as well, lots of anger and swearing inside the visor. After about six months of increasing frustration I finally just let it go. Things have changed. The Rimutaka Hill is busy these days, especially on summer weekends when we want to go riding. It isn't a turn up and go for it Sunday morning GP any more.
The other thing is that drivers have slowed down and got a whole lot less competitive. I'm completely OK with that, by the way. I don't want cars slipping out on corners and coming at me head-on, or aggressively tailgating me. The issue I have is the amount of pull-over-never going on... who knows why but there are people who just don't seem to do it yet.
So: the technique. Brace yourselves... I've noticed over the last few months that if I come up behind cars at my happy pace, but then respectfully follow at a decent distance instead of tailgating, then they seem to have much less of an issue pulling over for me.
It's not guaranteed by any means, I'd say the success rate is about 80% during the week and around 40% during weekends, but it does happen. People indicate left and enter slow lanes, people even use the stopping bays. I haven't had the chance to canvass the drivers concerned, but I think there might be two things going on:
1) I haven't pissed them off by crowding them, and
2) It's possible for them to slow down without me running into them, so they can actually get into a stopping bay safely. They don't have to race into the bay at full road speed.
I always try to positively reinforce it if a driver lets me past, even if it's been a while following and I've gotten frustrated. I always wave a thankyou. Hopefully they'll remember that and repeat the courtesy for the next rider.
As I said, it doesn't always work, but these days I seem to be a lot happier taking a chilled-out attitude.
Anyway... thoughts?
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