A tale of two drivers.

The scene - riding North on Grove Street, Healdsburg, Ca. Speed limit, 35 MPH. One lane in each direction, with a row of sparsely used parking on each side.

The parking on Grove presents a nasty issue for cyclists - in the presence of unaware drivers. Generally the road presents itself to drivers as a super wide arterial - because the unoccupied parking makes the lane appear almost double wide. So surely the cyclist should be way over to the right, alongside the curb and out of the way of traffic. The problem with this is when you now approach a parked car, the cyclist has nowhere to go. Technically, you should ride as if there were a full line of cars parked on the road, just as if they were parked there, riding just to the left of the door zone. In practice, if there are no cars parked, I might just ride in the parking area in order to allow drivers unimpeded passing. I consider this being courteous in the lack of a safety hazard.

But if there is an occasional car parked alongside the road, it's important to establish lane positioning early, so that you don't end up approaching the parked car from behind while a driver begins their pass. An aware driver would sense that you will need to move laterally to the left to pass the parked car (with enough room to avoid the door zone) and slow to allow you your pass. In practice, most drivers don't see the upcoming merge that you will be making, and in many cases don't even see that you are there. So you need to establish position early such that the driver sees you.

Of course, just because the driver sees you occupying the travel lane, does not imply they will understand *why* you are "In the middle of the road!" instead of over there in that "perfectly good shoulder" which is not a shoulder, it's a row of parking spaces (a surprisingly large amount of drivers would call this row of parking spaces "the bike lane"). As such, some subset of drivers will get angry at you for being in the road instead of over to the right, oblivious to the fact that "over to the right" is blocked by a parked car.

On a recent trip down Grove, I saw two parked cars roughly 100 feet ahead, did a shoulder check, saw the lane was clear, signaled my intention to merge into the lane, established position, and roughly the point where I was passing the two parked cars, the driver behind me signaled their displeasure by laying on their horn, then making a rapid acceleration to pass in the oncoming travel lane. Anger issues and discourtesy.

On a later trip however, I encountered a very aware, excellent driver. Further down Grove the parking disappears to add a middle lane to allow for turns in either direction off of Grove. Here, I ride on the shoulder but in this case I needed to merge into the middle of the lane and then further left into the turn lane in order to turn left into my health club. I made a shoulder check and saw a car approaching from behind and decided to wait. I looked back again and the driver had slowed - this was a very situation aware driver. The driver noted me do my shoulder check and realized that I was probably preparing to make a left, and slowed to allow me to make my merge across. I signalled, merged, then gave the thumbe up to the driver, who returned the thumbs up as they passed on the right.

Situational awareness and courtesy. Not dead.