When riding the tandem on the 6:00 morning ride we discuss tons of techniques to deal with urban riding. One of the jobs of the stoker is to watch out for cars and to alert me when it is safe to change lanes. Since Cynthia is relatively new to riding on a tandem she is learning how to judge the safety window that we need to be able to maneuver.
At first, whenever she would see a car coming from behind she would say it wasn’t safe. I would wait and wait and finally realized that the caw was very far away and the second she saw a car she perceived it as a threat and looked away.
The solution, I told her, was to look and when a car was spotted, look again to judge the closing speed. It takes quite a bit of practice to accurately judge these closing speeds but this makes the difference between a safe lane change and one that is dangerous.
Overtaking traffic - probably not going too fast.
If you have had trouble judging overtaking traffic please feel free to comment. I am interested in your techniques for judging closing speeds as well.
