On Sunday, I went out cycling with Fran and a friend.  I've mentioned before that I'm quite an aggressive rider when I'm with Fran, in the sense of I ride in the middle of the road so drivers can only overtake when appropriate.

She's only little and there have been too many near misses, when motorists overtake when there really isn't enough space.  For your information, if you wouldn't overtake a car or a horse, you shouldn't squeeze past a cyclist.  We might wear a helmet but hitting your head on a kerb at speed can still be fatal.

Fran left us at the half way point and my friend and I continued out in to t he countryside around Brinklow and Birdingbury.  Staying on pretty wide roads.  And there lies the problem.

A caravan tower overtook us and didn't factor for the fact that his caravan was wider than his car.  He was driving along with a big rear end, it was a near miss but fortunately for us, we're both reasonable at bike skills and managed to stay on 2 wheels.

Please be careful and courteous when passing a cyclist, you may only be held up for a few seconds longer and it means we get to go home at the end of the day.

It works the other way too.  If you are a cyclist and ride in a group, please be courteous and go single file or pull over on the little lanes if a car is behind you.  

If we all lose the ego and rage, it makes the road safer for everyone.

No road user has more rights than any other road user, we need to get past that argument.

Knowing the size of your rear end will be helpful too :)

When I was at Uni, I was involved in an body awareness experiment in our physiology labs.  

We took anthropometric data (a fancy term for measured peoples hip width) and placed 2 chairs at equal distances away from a straight line down the lab.  The participants then had to walk down that line and we recorded what happened.

EVERY female participant, turned her hips to the side when walking between the chairs when they were moved as close as 2 full widths apart.  In English, that means that every single girl that took part didn't think her bum would fit through a space twice as wide as it was.

The guys just barged through even when there wasn't really enough space.

I guess that's why the man in the caravan nearly clipped us, he thought he had plenty of room.  Maybe only women should drive caravans :)

The other side of this is that girls, your bum really isn't as big as you think it is.

Darren 'Big Booty' Checkley