A public service announcement for UK cyclists
Yes, you, hugging the kerb so a Qashqai can get to the lights half a second sooner. Get in the middle and stay there.
Explain yourself ↓You're riding through the drain covers and the broken glass, a foot off the kerb, so the bloke behind you can get to the lights slightly sooner. He was always getting to those lights. All you've done is make yourself invisible and easy to squeeze past.
Rule 72 of the Highway Code tells you to ride in the centre of your lane. Not suggests. Tells you. On quiet roads, in slow-moving traffic, and coming up to junctions and pinch points.
That's been the official advice since January 2022, and half of you still ride like you're trespassing. Nobody is doing you a favour by letting you use the road. It's your lane. Use it.
"Ride in the centre of your lane, to make yourself as clearly visible as possible … on quiet roads or streets … in slower-moving traffic … at the approach to junctions or road narrowings where it would be unsafe for drivers to overtake you."
What riding in the gutter actually gets you:
In the middle of the lane you're in the windscreen. In the gutter you're something a driver clocks halfway through pulling out. Drivers hit things they haven't seen, and from down there, they haven't seen you.
Rule 72: visibility is the whole point
One day someone is going to swing a door into your path without looking. Rule 67 says ride a full door's width out from parked cars, about a metre. If that puts you in the middle of the lane, then that's where you ride. A car door at 15 mph will break your collarbone.
Rule 67: a door's width from parked cars
Drivers owe you 1.5 metres when they pass, and they will take exactly as much room as you leave them. Ride in the gutter and someone will have a go with 40 cm to spare and a bus coming the other way. Ride in the middle and they have to do a proper overtake or hang back. Most of them hang back.
Rule 163: minimum 1.5 m passing distance
Left hooks happen because you left a gap on your left. Ride in the middle through junctions and roundabouts and there's no inside for anyone to chance. This one is straight out of Rule 72, word for word.
Rule 72: centre of the lane at junctions
You're not holding anyone up. You're traffic, going somewhere, the same as everyone else on the road. Nobody stuck behind a bin lorry thinks the bin lorry should be riding in the gutter.
The Highway Code's hierarchy of road users (Rule H1) is blunt about this: the more damage you can do, the more responsibility you carry. The car behind you can kill you. You can, at worst, scratch some paint. It's on them to pass you properly, not on you to get out of the way.
And the delay you're so worried about causing is what, ten seconds? They'll lose more than that at the next lights while you filter past them, and somehow you're the one who feels bad about it.
Nobody ever got a thank-you for riding in the door zone. Give it up.
Yes, alright, Rule 72 has a second part. On busy roads, with traffic moving faster than you, you let it overtake where it's safe. Nobody's arguing. But read the whole thing before you scuttle back to the kerb:
"When riding on busy roads, with vehicles moving faster than you, allow them to overtake where it is safe to do so whilst keeping at least 0.5 metres away, and further where it is safer, from the kerb edge."
Half a metre from the kerb. Minimum. That's you on your absolute best behaviour, waving the traffic through, and the government still thinks the gutter is too far left for you. There is no version of this rule that puts you in the fucking drain. So stop treating "letting cars past" as permission to ride somewhere the Highway Code never sends you.
(No swearing in this bit. You're fine. Come in.)