Safety Tips for Group Riding or How to Avoid Road Rash -Portland Bicycling Club

Safety Tips for Group Riding or How to Avoid Road Rash

Submitted by Eric Hendricks

Our club averages 80 group rides per month, with many thousands of miles of cycling. It’s a tribute to our members that the vast majority of those rides are completed incident free. Unfortunately, one of us occasionally goes down. The goal of this article is to encourage safe riding skills that can minimize, if not eliminate, those unfortunate occasions. Remember, accidents don’t just happen, they are caused. We hope to eliminate the causes that are within our control.

Based on my own experience, the advice of more experienced riders, and research on this subject in various cycling websites, here are some very important safety tips regarding group riding.

1) Don’t overlap wheels with the rider in front. This seems like the gold standard for avoid-ing road rash!  Wheel-to-wheel contact almost inevitably leads to a crash, and a crash almost inevitably leads to injury. Maintain a margin of safety between you and the rider in front of you so you can avoid wheel-to-wheel contact.

2) Follow that wheel – with a little offset. Smart riders follow that wheel a bit offset to one side or the other of the rider in front. Easier to avoid collisions if the rider in front suddenly slows.

3) Ride consistently and predictably, with no sudden braking. Be a smooth, consistent and predictable rider. Signal your changes, such as passing or pulling to the side of the road, with oral or hand signals beforehand. If you must suddenly slow or stop, shout out “stopping” or a similar warning as soon as possible.

4) Communicate hazards. Help that member behind you and signal or call out cars, holes, glass or other obstructions. If you are going to pass a hazard on one side or the other, signal which direction you will take. Be sure to pass these warnings on down the line. The rider three positions behind you may not hear the rider in front of you.

5) Follow the rules of the road. Don’t be the rider who tries to save a minute or two by trying to beat that red light! Use hand signals when making turns. Don’t be a lane hog – share the road and give way to those 4000-pound cars! For leaders, especially, establish in your pre-ride talk which rules of the road you will be following all the time and that you expect every-one in the pack to do the same.

6) Stay relaxed. Relaxed riders with less than a vice-like grip hold on the bars seem to make fewer mistakes in the group.

I’ll add one final lesson, one that I (nearly) learned the hard way riding the RACC in ’16. I was closely following (well, OK I was drafting!) a rider for a distance. We descended a hill, then started up an incline that steepened quickly. The rider I was following slowed very suddenly as the grade increased. I narrowly missed hitting the other bike.

My lessons from this narrow miss? See lesson #2 again – follow the rider in front offset to one side or the other. Also, increase your following distance as you begin climbing. Anticipate the increased grade and shift to an easier gear (down shift) as the grade increases to avoid a sudden loss of momentum.

Among the many sources I found in researching this article is this one: https://road.cc/content/feature/218370-6-tips-riding-group-how-be-safe-peloton-speeds – which is directed toward race condition riding.

Ride safely and see you on the road!