Ready Kids › Getting Around Without a Car › Badge 2 › Lesson 2.2
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Being predictable
Signal, hold a straight line and position yourself so drivers can tell what you are about to do before you do it.
1Watch
The rider who kept vanishing
The rider who kept vanishing
From a driver's seat, following a rider who tucks into every gap between parked cars and pops back out into the lane. A side road is coming up on the right. The rider is in a gap. The driver starts to turn. Freeze.
24 secondsThe driver has not done anything wrong yet. Watch what they can see.
2The idea
You are not asking drivers to be nice. You are asking them to be right.
A driver cannot slow for a bike they have not seen, or move over for a turn you have not shown. They are working from a guess about what you will do next, and they make it two or three seconds ahead. Your whole job is to make that guess easy.
Predictable is not the same as careful. A careful rider who swerves round every drain is a surprise every twenty metres. A predictable rider is boring to follow. Boring is the aim.
3The steps
Line, signal, look
Line: straight, about a door’s width out from parked cars, held past the gaps.
Signal: arm straight out on the side you are turning, well before you slow. Arm down and out for stopping. Then both hands back on the bars for the turn.
Look: over your shoulder before every move out into the lane.
The order matters when you move out: look first, then signal, then move. A signal you give while already moving is a description, not a warning.
4Worked example
Turning left across traffic
Fifty metres before the junction, look back over your left shoulder. A car, but a way off. Left arm out, held for a couple of seconds so the car sees it. Move to the middle of the lane in a straight line; the car slows behind you. Arm out once more at the junction, both hands on, turn.
If there is no gap when you look back, you do not turn. Stop at the corner, get off, cross as a pedestrian, ride on. It is not a failure. It is the other route.
5Look
The door zone
The door zone
Top-down drawing of a street with a row of parked cars. A dotted line shows a rider's path a full open-door width out from them, dead straight, not dipping into the gaps.
Every parked car is a door that might open. About a metre out from them is the line. Dipping into the gaps means you reappear in the lane every twenty metres, and every reappearance is a surprise.
6Decide
You need to turn right at the next side road. When do you signal?
Pick one to carry on.
7Your turn
The junction
The junction
A four-way intersection from above. A rider on the right side of the road wants to turn left. Tap the moves in order: look back, signal, move to the lane, signal again, turn. Wrong order and a car icon fills the gap you left.
Left turns across traffic are the hard ones. If it looks too busy, there is always the other option: stop at the corner, cross as a pedestrian, ride on.
8Find them
Which of these make you easier to predict?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Say it
The order, every time you move out
Say it in your normal voice
“Look. Signal. Move.”
Three words, in that order, before you leave your line for any reason.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Ride one junction near home with a parent watching from the corner. Look, signal, move, turn. Then ask them one question: could they tell what you were going to do before you did it?
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Drivers can only avoid what they can anticipate. Straight line, signal early, never disappear between parked cars.
Next lesson: People on footBadge 2 · Where You're Allowed
2.1Roads, paths and pavements2.2Being predictable2.3People on foot★Badge Challenge