Here is what a trail authority actually writes, and it is worth having in the words they use: small children and dogs are unpredictable, so leave a comfortable space of a few feet when passing. That is the instruction. A few feet, every pass, not just the passes that look tricky.

And that is where the sources stop. We went looking for authoritative guidance on what a toddler or a dog specifically does and could not find any, so this course does not invent some. What you get is the general rule, which is well supported, plus the thing you can observe yourself.

You counted this yourself at the end of the first lesson in this section. A person walking is not on rails. They drift towards the middle, they step round a puddle, they turn to talk to somebody, they stop dead to look at a phone, and they change their mind about which side of the path they are on. None of that is them being careless. That is what walking is.

So the space is not politeness. The gap you leave is the amount of sideways movement you have already forgiven them for. Pass close and you have decided they will hold a line, which the drawing at the top of this lesson says they will not.

A path seen from above with a person walking on it and a rider approaching from behind. Drag the rider's passing line closer or wider, then press go and watch the pass run several times with the walker drifting a realistic amount each time. The game counts how many of the runs end with contact at each width.

Run the close line ten times before you run the wide one. The point is not that a close pass usually goes wrong. It is that it does not have to usually go wrong to be a bad plan.

Every path authority checked writes this one down and almost no rider does it: move off the path when you stop. Not slow down at the edge. Off it — onto the grass, the shoulder, the gravel, the parking lot — and your machine with you.

A stopped rider on a path is a parked vehicle in a traffic lane. Everybody coming round the bend behind you now has to go round you, into the side other users are coming down, exactly the manoeuvre the last lesson told you not to make blind. Phone call, drink, message, chain, waiting for a friend: all of them happen off the path.

Pick every one that is right, then press Check.

Find all 4.

Two habits, one line, and the second half is the one nobody does. Say it every time you reach for your pocket on a path, because that is the exact moment the rule is for.

Pass a walker ten times, without moving them.

Chalk two lines a few feet apart on a quiet bit of ground and get somebody to walk along one of them, drifting a bit, the way people actually walk. Ride past them ten times on the far line, calling out first. They tick a run only if they never had to change what they were doing. Then do it once at the width you normally pass at, and ask them which one they preferred.