On Salmon and Canaries | Elly Blue @bicyclingmag

Turning around cycling’s salmon problem

By Elly Blue

Could there be a more demonized subset of the bicycling population than those who salmon, or ride against traffic? Everybody rails against them. They are scorned, especially by people who hate bikes, and even people who love bikes shake their heads and click their tongues in dismay.

Salmoning is a serious problem. Riding against traffic is one of the most dangerous things a cyclist can do. Head-on collisions are a rare occurrence; the biggest peril is at driveways and intersections. For example, drivers look right before they turn left out of a parking lot. They don’t see a rider coming from the left and the salmoning bicyclist has nowhere to go. Thus tragedies pile up.

Yes, salmoning is dangerous. That doesn’t make it okay if a driver hits a cyclist because he’s riding the wrong way, or to call all bicyclists reckless scofflaws because of the prevalence of wrong-way riding.

[Keep reading at Bicycling Magazine]