Teaching of Proper Road Etiquette....
I am sure I will open a can of worms here but after this weeknds trip I must make a comment about teaching new riders proper road etiquette.
While on my weekend trip to Arkansas I experienced what I call poor road etiquette by some Cruiser/Wing riders. I am all for a group ride, but when the group gets bigger than 8-10 riders there needs to be some thought put into your effects you force onto other riders or drivers.
While traversing Hwy 123 in Arkansas this weekend we came upon a LARGE group of riders on cruisers and Wings. When I say Large I estimate that there were roughly 20 bikes in this group on some very nice twisty roads. Not a Bad thing except they were stretched out for close to a 1/4 mile and myself and a fellow rider were forced to make a choice of following them for roughly 10-15 miles of excellent road or make what I would call a couple of dangerous passes (poor road etiquette on our part).
When it was all said and done we were at a gas station in Jasper when I come out to the pumps to see one of the Wing riders lecturing my fellow rider. Granted i did not here the whole conversation but he was basically upset that we had made these passes on there group and that my riding buddy had made the passes on three seperate ocassions because he had gone back to find a rider from our group and passed them getting back to us.
Then he had to pass them again because he was waiting for myself and another rider and they passed him while he was sitting on the side of the road. When this wing rider honked at a stop sign my buddy thought it was the guy we were looking for since he was on the same color wing, so he allowed him to come past him only to realize that it was not our buddy.
Needless to say I came out while he was lecturing my buddy and I had to comment to him that it was basicaslly BS that we were even forced to pass a group of that size on a twisty mountain road because we wanted to ride a more brisk pace. His response to us was that they had NEW riders with them and that we could be freaking them out due to us having to cut into their group because we could not make the pass without doing so. He says there is no place to allow us to pass on a double yellow road. I told him that this is BS cause they could have pulled to the right of the lane and allowed the faster riders to pass.
I have had to do this many times to allow riders faster than me to pass in a safe manner rather than endangering us with some crazy pass. If you are teaching NEW riders you should start with proper road etiquette and that would include being aware of your surroundings including what is behind you. We as a group never ride in groups larger than 10 bikes and we watch our surroundings and if someone faster than us comes up behind us we pull to the right and wave them past. We teach this to all our NEW riders and if you are not teaching this you need to keep your mouth shut on some ride and just deal with it when you force other riders and drivers to endanger you and your fellow riders because you think you own the road.
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