Badge Kids › Road Badge › Section 7 › Lesson 7.3

Ages 11-16 · Road Badge · Section 7

The speed on the sign, and the speed for right now

Say what a posted path speed is and is not, adjust your speed to the conditions in front of you, and refuse a pass you cannot see through.

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Step 1 of 10

1Watch

The bend with the hedge on it

Film

The bend with the hedge

A rider comes up behind a jogger on a narrow paved path approaching a blind left-hand bend with a tall hedge on the inside; the rider moves out to pass; the frame freezes at the moment the rider is alongside and the far side of the bend is still completely hidden.

18 seconds

Whatever is round that hedge has now got a jogger and a rider filling the whole path. Neither of them chose that, but one of them arranged it.

2The idea

What a posted path speed actually is

Many shared paths post fifteen miles per hour. Guidance written for towns suggests fifteen on busy paths and twenty on quieter ones. Whether a number is posted where you ride, and what it is, comes off the sign at the top of that particular path.

But here is the sentence that matters more than the number, and it comes from the same source as the number: regardless of the speed limit, adjust your speed based on conditions. A limit is the fastest you may ever go on that path. It is not a description of what today is like.

3Look

Same path, four days

The same fifty metres of shared path shown four times: empty and dry in the morning; wet with low sun straight down it; busy on a Saturday with prams, dogs and a running group; and half covered in wet leaves under trees. — Four conditions, one path

One posted number covers all four of those. Only one of the four is the day the number was written for, and it is not usually the day you are on.

4The idea

Your machine is very good at the thing the sign is worried about

On a pedal bike, going quickly on a path takes effort and you can feel yourself doing it. On this machine it takes nothing. Assist holds a speed for you on the flat, uphill and into a headwind, and it does it without the noise, the breathing and the effort that used to tell you how fast you were.

And the ceiling is high. In the US, anything still legally a bicycle can assist up to twenty-eight miles per hour — getting on for double what a busy path posts. Nothing on your machine stops you at the path limit. The only thing between the two numbers is you deciding.

5The idea

And the rule about corners, which is a refusal

The path rule about blind corners is written as a prohibition rather than as advice: do not pass others unless you have a clear view of oncoming path users to judge when it is safe to pass. No clear view, no pass. It is not a judgement call about how likely something is.

You already have this idea from the road, where you learned to hold the lane through the bit nobody can see past and release afterwards. This is the same rule with the vehicles swapped. The bend, the hedge, the underpass, the bridge, the tunnel of trees: those are the places you sit in behind somebody and wait, and the wait is about eight seconds.

6Decide

You have been stuck behind two people walking abreast for a hundred metres, and there is a blind bend coming.

Yes, and it costs you almost nothing. A hundred metres at walking pace is under a minute, and the pass on the straight afterwards is one you can see the whole of. The rule is not do not pass, it is do not pass blind, and the difference is about eight seconds of patience.

Both of those solve the wrong problem. Rushing the gap before the bend puts you alongside exactly where somebody could appear, and that is the one place on the path where you cannot go anywhere. And passing on the right breaks the one thing every other user is relying on you to do, which is come past on the side they expect.

Pick one to carry on.

7Say it

The question you ask at every bend

Say it out loud on the approach

“Can I see the far side? Then no.”

Ask it out loud on your next ride, at every bend, bridge and underpass. Two seconds each. It turns the corner rule from a thing you agree with into a thing you actually run, which are very different.

8Find them

Which of these mean today is slower than the sign?

Tap the ones that count.

Find all 4.

9Your turn

What the hedge is hiding

Interactive

Round the bend

A path bend with a hedge on the inside, seen from the rider's eye. A slider sets how far round you can see. Move it and the game shows what appears and when, at the speed you set: a dog on a long lead, a group walking abreast, a rider coming the other way, or nothing at all. Try to pass at each setting and see which attempts finish safely.

Set the sight line short and try to find a passing speed that works. There is not one, which is the whole point of writing the rule as a refusal instead of as advice.

10Do it

Before you leave this page

Walk the path you use most, with an adult, as far as the first three bends, bridges or underpasses. At each one, stand where you would be riding and say out loud how many metres ahead you can actually see. Then say what speed would let you stop inside that distance. Whoever is with you writes the three numbers down.

Tick it when you have done it.

Lesson done.

The sign is a ceiling, not a target. Conditions set the rest. And you do not pass into a corner you cannot see round.

Next lesson: People do not travel in straight lines

Section 7 · Paths and People

7.1The person you hit is hurt worse than you are 7.2Keep right, pass left, and the half everybody skips 7.3The speed on the sign, and the speed for right now 7.4People do not travel in straight lines 7.5Six of you is a different vehicle ★Section check

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