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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2026
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This depicts a two lane road with no bike lane.
The cyclist should actually be in the middle of the lane or even slightly left of middle to avoid motorists trying to squeeze by them in the same lane, like in the comic, which creates a dangerous circumstance for the cyclist, having fast moving vehicles passing inches away.
It's funny how often you see drivers taking a right turn and they are terrified of scraping their tire on the curb, so they have a several foot gap. But we should trust them to know where the right side of their car is when squeezing past a cyclist? I admit they can see better in that situation, but the risk is all on the cyclist.
The safest circumstance for the cyclist is if there is a car behind them who is not passing. But most motorists like to go faster than a bicycle.
The motorist should pass the bicycle in the same way they'd pass any other slower moving vehicle, by using the oncoming lane in a passing zone.
Of course, that creates its own sort of danger because inattentive drivers may come up onto the bicycle too quickly and then they won't have a place to swerve to at the last moment.
And all of that is simply about the safety of the cyclist. Obviously, some places will have ridiculous laws that force cyclists into dangerous situations.
But realistically, with the attitudes and complete lack of driving skills of most drivers, cyclists are taking risks just by using roads like that.
In Spain drivers are required to leave 1.5m gap when overtaking a cyclist. In my experience 99% of them respect that. It's way more common for them to leave a gap and force the driver going in the other direction to slow down than to pass to close to me. Overall drivers suck here (worst in Spain) but this one rule they do obey.
Same rulein France. 1.5m on rural roads, 1m in town. However, in my experience, about half of drivers overtake with less than a 50cm gap.
Yep, they do the same everywhere. Pretty much everyone knows that French drivers are the worst.
So.. they're like Massachusetts' drivers then. Ooooo. Matched only by drivers from Maine who tend to be slower than the Second Coming of Christ.
It's good they're respecting that. We have a similar law in Québec that requires drivers to leave 1,5m when overtaking on a fast road, and 1m in towns and urban environments. It's unfortunately not very respected.
I can't find the article back but some police forces bought tools to measure that, but they thought it was too dangerous to send police officers on bikes to use that tool and fine the drivers not respecting the law. They just gave up.
EDIT: Is the police enforcing this in Spain? I'm guessing there are fines?
I ride mostly on secondary roads where you almost never see police so it's pretty much impossible for them to actually see someone breaking this law. No idea if they would stop someone passing dangerously close to a cyclist if they saw it. Honestly, I don't know why most drivers respect this rule. They don't care that much about other rules.
In America, I think drivers don't know how to drive around cyclists, so quite a few will drive frighteningly close. I wouldn't care to guess about the percentage.
But even 1% is a lot of people. A bicycle even on a short trip will be passed by 10s of cars. So, if you bike everywhere, that might be 1 close call a day. So, I'm guessing that Spain is not actually as dangerous as 1% and you were just picking a large number.
I don't think about each time a driver passes me a closer than 1.5m as a "close call". Once I went off the road and fell right into 1.5m deep ditch. Now that was a close call... I still don't know how I didn't hurt myself. I did get fired next day but it was unrelated.