Keep right, pass left, and the half everybody skips

1Look

Four rules, and every path authority found them separately

There is no national standard for how to behave on a shared path. What there is instead is every authority that has written rules arriving at the same four, which is a stronger thing than a standard.

2The idea

The four, in the words the trail authorities use

Keep right. All users stay to the right side of the path except to pass. Pass on the left. Single file, and passing happens on the left. Announce it. Call out before you overtake. Faster yields to slower. The quicker user gives way to the slower one, not the other way round.

That last one is the one riders argue with, and it is in every source checked. Being faster does not buy you priority on a path. It buys you the duty. It is the same trade you already know from the road, just with you on the other end of it.

3The idea

And the half of the passing rule that gets skipped

Here is a path authority’s own instruction, and it has four steps in it, not two: pass on the left by slowing down, giving an audible warning such as calling out excuse me, passing left, and waiting for a reaction before passing.

Waiting for a reaction is a step. Most riders do steps one and two and go. But a call you make is not information until it lands, and you have no idea whether it landed until the person moves, turns their head, puts a hand out, shortens a dog lead or does anything at all. Somebody with earbuds in never heard you and is entitled to be there.

4Say it

The call, out loud, at real volume

Four words, said early and loudly enough to be heard over traffic, headphones and a dog. Practise it now in a room, because the reason riders do not call out on paths is almost never that they forgot. It is that it feels loud.

5The idea

A bell, a voice, and one place where this is law

The sources allow either a bell or your voice. Worth noticing what each carries: a bell says something is coming, and words say which side it is coming down, which is the part the person in front of you actually has to act on. A bell then your voice covers both.

And in at least one state’s vehicle code this stops being etiquette: a rider must give an audible signal before overtaking and passing a pedestrian. That is a statutory duty, in that state, on a sidewalk. It is an example, not automatically your rule — but it tells you how seriously this one gets taken.

6Decide

You call out, and the person ahead does not react at all.

7Build it

Run the pass

There is a fourth outcome the game will not let you button your way out of. That is deliberate, and it is the one you will meet most often.

8Find them

Which of these count as a reaction you can act on?

Tap the ones that count.

9Look

Whose path is it anyway

Where you live, paths and trails are set by whoever owns the path — and that answer belongs to whoever owns each path, not to your town or your state. Path authorities have been adding patrols, and the reason they give is riders passing people badly.

10Do it

Before you leave this page