One of the things I’ve done the past two weekends (in addition to a 50K ride, a 14-mile ride, and a birthday party) was take a local League of American Bicyclists-certified Road I class.
The goal of a Road I class is to take any cyclist who can ride a bike and teach them basic-to-intermediate traffic cycling competency (level label depends on your definition of basic or intermediate), both on the legal and practical side, including road skills and emergency maneuvers.
One might ask why I took the class, given that I am already a fairly competent traffic cyclist. Two reasons: 1) I wanted to learn the emergency maneuvers, and make sure I had no gaps in my knowledge; 2) I wanted to find out if I’d like to learn to teach the course.
The class was interesting. I feel like it’s a lot of material to cover, and you have to be extremely organized to teach it in the minimum 9 hours allotted to the class per the manual. The presentation that we had was a little bit disorganized, and somewhat marred by technical difficulties. I don’t want to criticize the instructor too much because as I said, I think it’s a demanding class to teach in such a short span of time.
To some extent, I wonder if it’s realistic to put the entire class into one unit at all. The people in our class really had a big range of abilities and a big range of interests. I think there are some things that everyone should know to traffic cycle even if all they’re planning to do is ride short distances, but other things aren’t so relevant to everyone, like discussing narrow country roads, nutrition and hydration, and cycling clothes — highly relevant for people planning to ride in those conditions or for longer rides, but not so relevant for people who plan to do mostly short-distance city cycling.
I felt that some of the variation in usefulness could have been addressed just by the order in which everything was presented, addressing the essentials first and extras later, and some could have been addressed by keeping certain topics really on the simple side unless there was interest in spending more time on it. Our instructior did some of this — for example, we didn’t spend much time on nutrition and hydration — but we did spend a lot of time discussing parts of the bike and cycling clothes. Certain parts of the bike are really relevant, but spending time talking about the more obscure bits can detract from basics like wheels, brakes, saddle, chain, etc. Likewise, it’s highly relevant for everyone that it’s recommended to wear a helmet, gloves, and glasses, and a rain cape or light, breathable coat if it’s wet (and have fenders if possible), but not so relevant for everyone to discuss wicking clothes and bike shorts — it really varied in our class on how interested people were (and I was probably the most interested and I already knew that stuff).
There was also some material in the slides which I felt wasn’t extremely important, like “Bike only turn lanes” and “Bike only thru lanes” (same slide). Both pictures were of the intersections near Sand Hill and El Camino in Palo Alto (it was fun to see places that I recognize on slides; several of the pictures were areas that I ride regularly) and they’re quite rare situations and it’s normally pretty clear what to do, so I thought that was a bit of extra information which could honestly be skipped since it’s a generalization of principles you learn separately (directional positioning at intersections — stay to the left of right-turn only lanes). Another slide showed a similar but more extreme situation, on Page Mill at I-280, where both right lanes are right-turn only so the bike lane switches from right to left and you have to merge across. This is not a fun merge, but it has the same basic characteristics as any other merge across right-turn only lanes, just more so.
Everyone in our class could ride a bike just fine; there were no ‘true beginners’. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to teach in the alloted time if there were, since as it was we barely covered scanning, signaling, emergency maneuvers, road position practice, and road test in the time we had, and I think the people with less practice still need more practice, though I was very, very impressed to see them all ride on El Camino Real without completely freaking out!
Incidentally, our instructor was trying very hard to deter people from believing that El Camino is a dangerous and unpleasant road to cycle, and I can understand that, because it’s important for being an effective traffic cyclist to not be intimidated by roads unnecessarily. El Camino is not, as multilane arterials go, all that awful in many places, especially if you know how to position yourself correctly and ride assertively. However, I think she should have been more realistic and acknowledged that many, many competent traffic cyclists (like me) don’t ride much on El Camino because it just isn’t enjoyable. I mean really — if I have my choice of El Camino, Alma, Bryant, or Middlefield through Palo Alto, guess which one I’ll choose? Bryant, of course, because it’s the most fun and it’s pretty efficient (and also convenient to my house). The others are all pretty unpleasant, although because El Camino is so wide in most places I probably would prefer it to Middlefield or Alma. Sure, people can choose the others, should have the right to do so, and sometimes do, but realistically most cyclists will avoid heavily-trafficked arterials most of the time.
The most important part for me, aside from emergency stopping and turning, was a reminder about recommended road positioning. I generally ride as recommended by Effective Cycling, the book by the guy who developed the Road I class curriculum, but sometimes I get lazy and I ride further right than I should because I don’t want to annoy motorists, and that’s not safe behavior. My safety is more important than their brief annoyance, and I should position myself and ride assertively because I’m protecting my safety when I do.
On the whole I really feel like the class is likely very beneficial for the people who take it in terms of understanding the theory and practice of traffic cycling, and really gives a strong foundation of skills for riding, thus giving people greater confidence in maneuvering and making them less likely to make common mistakes. I think I’d eventually like to learn to teach it, although I think I’d have to practice a lot so I could be very organized and do it well. I’m also interested in taking a LAB Road II class if any are offered around here, since the instructor mentioned there is such a thing (but doesn’t know if it’s offered here) and it seems to cover the things I really want to learn and definitely don’t know, stuff relating to group cycling and advanced road cycling techniques.