Ready Kids › Road Badge › Badge 5 › Lesson 5.1
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Keep right, pass left
Hold a line on the right side of a shared path, pass only on the left, and give way to everyone slower than you.
1Watch
Coming up behind two people
Coming up behind two people
A rider closes on two people walking along a shared path with a gap of open surface to their left; the frame freezes with the rider still behind them and the gap still open.
18 secondsNothing has happened yet. Everything that decides how this goes is in the next three seconds, and most of it is about which side.
2The idea
A path is not a road and it is not a sidewalk
A path carries two directions of travel on something narrower than one traffic lane, and nothing on it is painted, signalled or enforced. There is no centre line telling anybody where to be. There is one convention holding the whole thing together, and everybody on the surface is relying on it.
All users keep to the right side of the path, except to pass. Walkers, runners, riders, everybody. That is the entire system. It is what makes a path work with people going both ways on four feet of usable width.
3The idea
Which is why passing happens on the left
If everybody is holding to the right, the space that is left free is the left. Passing there is not a preference or a style. It is the only side that is empty by agreement, and it is the side the person ahead of you will check if they check anywhere.
Pass others on the left. Going up the right of somebody is going through the gap they will step into. They have been holding right all day, and the moment they drift, wobble or move aside for somebody else, they move into exactly the space you chose.
4Look
The path from above
Two directions, one surface
A shared path seen from directly above: walkers and riders travelling both ways, each group holding the right side of their own direction, with the middle of the path open and one rider out in it passing.
Two streams, one surface, and a strip up the middle that only gets used for passing and then given straight back. Notice how little of the path anybody is actually entitled to.
5The idea
Faster yields to slower, all the way down
The rule is one line: faster users yield to slower users. Not the one who was there first, not the one with the most expensive machine, not the one with somewhere to be. It runs strictly by speed, and it runs the same way every time.
On a path with a motor under you, you are almost always the fastest thing on it. Which means yielding is not something that occasionally happens to you. It is your normal condition on that surface, and the time it costs you is measured in seconds.
6Decide
Somebody is walking towards you on your side of the path.
Pick one to carry on.
7Your turn
Hold the line
Right side, and back
A stretch of path seen from above with walkers, runners and riders moving both ways. Steer your line along it. The card marks every moment you were out of your own half without passing, and every moment you were still out in the middle after the pass was finished.
Most riders lose it on the way back in. Going out is a decision, coming back is a habit, and only one of those two gets practised.
8Find them
Which of these belong to the path?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Say it
The sentence for every path you get onto
Say it under your breath as the wheels touch the path
“Faster gives way. That is me.”
You will need it on the day you are late, because that is the only day it is hard. Say it at the entrance and it stops being a decision you have to make again further along.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Take your machine to the nearest shared path and ride a hundred metres at walking pace, holding a line about an arm's length in from the right edge. Notice how much room that leaves on your left, and how far from the edge you normally ride.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Keep right, except to pass. Pass on the left. The faster user yields, and on a path that is you.
Next lesson: The pass