Safe Speed Forums

I was driving on the A40 on a Sunday morning between Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield. It's a reasonably wide, rural trunk road with occasional turnings and a hotel along a ~3 mile stretch. 50mph limit although good for more in light conditions. Just outside GX, I caught up to the back of a line of traffic at ~15mph. About 12-15 vehicles ahead of me led by a towed caravan and, ahead of that, a large (40ish at a guess) of bikes in an unbroken group cycling two (I think, maybe three) abreast spread out over a distance of (at a guess) 30-40 metres. Although traffic coming the other way was reasonably light, the caravan was unable to overtake the peloton and the entire line of motorised traffic behind was forced to wait behind the caravan all the way through to the roundabout at Beaconsfield. This obviously caused a reasonably significant delay.

I'd say the caravan should have dropped back to allow other vehicles to pass it and then the peloton. But it also seems to me the peloton should have broken up into smaller clusters to allow motor traffic to overtake more easily (and reduce risk of frustrated drivers overtaking unsafely). What to cycle clubs hold as accepted best practice in these circumstances?

if cars were having difficulty getting passed then the riders should definitely have gone single file.

Now, what would you do if you were stuck 15 cars behind a caravan doing 25mph that refused to move over?

the problem here is that you then have 40 cylists spread over 100-200metres...

some clubs encourage different speed groups and/or spread the riders out a bit into 3s or 4s with plenty of space between.
a club ride of that size i would have thought would warrant two or three seperate groups on different routes.

true, but on a wide enough road the cars should be able to overtake safely without crossing the centre line.


I guess that would be the more considerate option - or at least multiple groups with a few minutes gap between them.