Ready Kids › Getting Around Without a Car › Badge 3 › Lesson 3.3
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Traffic you can't see
Spot the three ways a vehicle appears where there was nothing, and ride so that each one has time to miss you.
1Watch
The three that get you
The three that get you
Three short clips, no sound. A van signals right and turns across a rider going straight. A parked car's door swings open into a bike lane. A car reverses out of a driveway across a pavement. Each freezes a second before contact.
26 secondsNone of them is a bad driver. None of them saw the bike. That is the thing to hold on to.
2The idea
Nobody is trying to hit you. Nobody is trying not to.
A driver turning right is looking at the road they are turning into. A person opening a car door is looking at their phone. A car reversing out of a driveway is looking in the mirror for cars. You are not in the place any of them is looking.
So you do not wait to be seen. You ride as if you have not been, and you make sure that if you are right about that, it costs you two seconds and nothing else.
3The steps
Three dangers, three covers
Turning across you: at every junction, fingers on the brakes, speed down. Never sit beside a car that could turn across you. Drop back so it turns in front.
Doors: a door’s width out from parked cars, and look for a head in the driver’s seat.
Driveways: any car in a driveway is about to move. Slow and cover the brakes.
Covering the brakes means a finger or two resting on each lever. It takes half a second off your thinking distance, and half a second at 15 mph is about three metres.
4Worked example
The van, done right
You are in the bike lane at 15 mph. Twenty metres ahead a van slows and its right indicator comes on. You are about to be level with its back door. Fingers on the brakes. Speed off. You drop behind the van instead of beside it. It turns across the lane you were in. You roll through behind it.
Two seconds. Nobody beeped. The driver never saw you and it did not matter, because you had already decided it was going to turn.
5Look
Three places to look
Three places to look
A street from above with three zones shaded: the lane beside a signalling car at a junction, a strip beside a row of parked cars, and the apron of a driveway with a car nosing out.
Three shaded zones. When you are in one, your fingers are on the brakes and your speed is down. Most of the time that is all it takes.
6Decide
Car ahead slows, right indicator on. You are in the bike lane beside it.
Pick one to carry on.
7Your turn
Three near-misses
Three near-misses
Each of the three clips from the film replays with a slider that scrubs back through time. Drag it to the moment the rider could still have done something different, then tap what: slow, move out, cover the brakes.
In every one there is a second or two where it was still avoidable. Find it.
8Find them
Where might a car appear where there is nothing right now?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Say it
The sentence for every indicator
Say it in your normal voice
“Indicator on. Drop back.”
An indicator is the one warning you get. Most of the time you get none.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Ride your route, or walk it, and say the word driveway out loud every time you pass one. Count them. Tell a parent the number. It will be higher than you thought.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Cars turning across you, doors opening beside you, cars backing out in front of you. Assume each one every time, and leave yourself room to be wrong.
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