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Distancing graphicHow much distance should you leave to the cyclist ahead in a time of pandemic?
If you're still riding your bike outside, either for transport or for exercise, you need to stick to the Government's rules on social distancing, and also bear in mind that you're going to enter other people's airspace – where there's the potential for picking up COVID-19, or coronavirus – much quicker than if you were walking.
(NB – Since we published this piece, engineers and aerodynamicists at leading universities in Belgium and the Netherlands have published a rather more academically rigorous examination of how much space you should leave - find out more here).
As we all know by now, the UK Government requires us to stay at home, except for very limited purposes.
You should only leave the house for one of four reasons:
• Shopping for basic necessities, for example food and medicine, which must be as infrequent as possible.
• One form of exercise a day, for example a run, walk, or cycle – alone or with members of your household.
• Any medical need, or to provide care or to help a vulnerable person.
• Travelling to and from work, but only where this absolutely cannot be done from home.
Any of those could involve cycling. You might need to cycle for transport to essential work, to the supermarket, or to help a vulnerable person. You might also decide to go for a bike ride as your daily exercise.
Many cyclists are passing up the opportunity to go out on the bike, choosing to stay indoors and ride the turbo trainer or rollers instead, or to do some form of cross training – a weights session, for example, or a treadmill run.
Others don't have any of those options, or prefer to cycle outside.
"Even when doing these activities, you should be minimising time spent outside of the home and ensuring you are two metres apart from anyone outside of your household," says Government guidance.
For most of us that means riding solo. Cool, that's simple enough and we all know what two metres looks like.
However, things get a bit more complicated when you're on a bike and moving forward at speed.
According to the World Health Organization, "The disease can spread from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth which are spread when a person with COVID-19 coughs or exhales. These droplets land on objects and surfaces around the person. Other people then catch COVID-19 by touching these objects or surfaces, then touching their eyes, nose or mouth. People can also catch COVID-19 if they breathe in droplets from a person with COVID-19 who coughs out or exhales droplets."
We're assuming that you're not going to touch much besides your bike when out on a solo ride so it's this last section that's most relevant to cyclists – breathing in droplets from a person with COVID-19.
The issue is that if you're out on the road and riding fairly close behind another cyclist, you'll quickly arrive in the airspace that they've just vacated. Even if you're more than two metres behind them, you could be in that exclusion zone just a fraction of a second later.
> Here's how to cycle responsibly in a time of pandemic
Say you're travelling at 10km/h (6mph). That's 2.8 metres per second, so if you want to stay outside the two metre zone of where the rider ahead was a second ago, you need to drop back to around 4.8 metres.
Double the speed to 20km/h (12mph) and you're looking at 5.6 metres per second, so that would be 7.6 metres.
Even at that distance, you're going to be at exactly the same point in the road as the rider ahead just 1.3 seconds later.
One quick final illustration: if you ride right up to the edge of another cyclist's two metre bubble at 30km/h (19mph), you're going to be passing through air they left just 0.24 seconds ago.
No one here at road.cc is a virologist, but logic would suggest that's not good!
The distances mentioned above are minimum suggestions. You may be more comfortable leaving more space, but let's not get too caught up in the numbers; the point we're making is simply that staying two metres away from someone when you're on a bike isn't the same as staying two metres away from someone when you're standing still.
Anyone who has caught a faceful of snot when the rider ahead decides to clear their sinuses will attest to that.
Speaking of this, snot rockets should definitely be off the agenda in these times of crisis. Even if you have no Covid-19 symptoms, you could be a carrier. You're just going to have to carry a hanky, sneeze into your sleeve or something! We all have to make sacrifices!
Spitting? Forget that too. You're not a footballer!
And if you're going to overtake a rider ahead of you, make sure there's no motor vehicle coming up behind, move out early, pass them with as much space as possible and at least two metres,and don't pull back in sharply.
So the take home messages are these:
• Leave way more than two metres between you and any rider ahead.
• Pass any other rider as wide as is safely possible, and avoid cutting in.
• No snot rockets and no spitting.
Credit to road.cc reader Richard Sturt for pointing out the implications of two metres of social distancing when cycling.
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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32 comments
I think this article should be revisited given the knowledge gained over the last six months or so, particularly as we head towards second lockdown and the article is being linked to again.
My understanding is that it is now accepted that the risk of infection is much lower outside - although spreading may be via micro particles from an infected individual the likelihood of these remaining suspended whilst outside, unless in perfectly still conditions (perhaps even then) seems pretty remote.
If the risk can be managed by ensuring that your riding 'buddy' is not symptomatic at the time of the ride then the risk of infection whilst riding in accordance with the rules seems tiny. I'm not an epidemiologist though - so it would be interesting if Road.cc could corroborate or counter this perception from a professional.
Looking at the famous supermarket dispersal model I wonder if even the distances suggested would fully reduce the risk. But as has been highlighted the 2m rule was a guideline for being in close proximity to a non-coughing infected person because it increased the likelihood of some exhaled droplets reaching you - perhaps on an air current caused by a passing co-worker, airconditioning breeze or touching a shared surface. It's a compromise number because you could pass within less than 2m just as they coughed and you might be worse off than being near them for 15mins. One thing people seem to have missed is that the issue this article addresses is not so much being within too close proximity for a brief period but the situation where you sit 2m off someone's wheel for an extended period, riding through a cloud of their exhaled vapour.
Also worth noting that dispersal of droplets of exhaled vapour etc equally applies to cars driving along with their windows down... Though reduced risk from any individual car as unlikely anyone would be in their wake continuously, except maybe another car and aero effect would likely flow much of it past rather than into THEIR open windows.
This point has just been clarified by an expert on a BBC news piece. 2 meters distance is for static extended proximity ( you're stood with / near someone for an extended time) it is not applicable to passing at speed, as long as you're not coughing, spitting or sneezing at the time. The experts don't think that a very short exposure is a problem, and even then the chances that one is breathing out, just as the other is breathing in, at passing speed, are minuscule at best.
Tell that to the idiot farmer in Cornwall.
Indeed, the duration element seems to have been largely forgotten about by the "social distancing" police. It was there originally, 15 minutes. So two people passing, for example on a Cornish footpath, within 2m - not a problem.
https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/04/coronavirus-covid-19-...
There is now a Belgian-Dutch scientific study confirming Road.cc's assumptions above:
https://medium.com/@jurgenthoelen/belgian-dutch-study-why-in-times-of-co...
They are suggesting even greater separation when following, and when passing, another cyclist:
"On the basis of these results the scientist advises that for walking the distance of people moving in the same direction in 1 line should be at least 4–5 meter, for running and slow biking it should be 10 meters and for hard biking at least 20 meters. Also, when passing someone it is advised to already be in different lane at a considerable distance e.g. 20 meters for biking."
Original paper (pdf): www.urbanphysics.net/Social%20Distancing%20v20_White_Paper.pdf
Snot rockets or nostril gobbing as I call it, should always be a no no, time of crisis or not. It's disgusting, always has been, always will be. Your bodily fluids are your own responsibility and if you have to expel them publicly then make sure you keep them on you, in a tissue, on a glove and dispose of them responsibly and carefully when you get to a bin or home. The only time any bodily fluids should be shared is with a consenting adult or adults. You can't get full consent from everyone to share your snot or gob in a public place. Rant over
If the cyclist in front breaths out droplets then those droplets will be travelling at the speed the cyclist is doing plus the speed of their breath/cough. They won't suddenly freeze in the air and wait for the person behind.
No idea how long they would take to drop below breathing height and I suspect that, outdoors, the wind is a big factor.
No, they'll very briefly be ahead - before rapidly decelerating and meeting what ever's behind (modulo wind).
Those droplets travel at your "traveling speed" for a fraction of a second, and decelerate almost immediately due to lack of mass and the fact that your body isn't propelling them forward. Just picture spitting directly to the side as you ride or out a car window... the spit doesn't stay perpendicular to the bike/car. If you've ever had your car windshield splashed with cleaner fluid from the car in front of you at highway speed... it's the same principle.
Wind is definitely a factor... passing people in strong crosswinds has been a big concern of mine.
It's also not just about "breathing height". If that spray hits your hands, your handlebars, or any part of the bike you end up touching, guess what? Or for that matter, the front wheel which is kicking stuff up toward your face all the time.
I don't have experience in aerodynamics, nor virology, but the distances given appear to be purely based on volume of air, not on how air and particles pass.
As we know, when you slipstream the air passes over and under you. Of course some of it hits the first person and the second person - air doesn't just disappear, but the majority of it will be pushed off a rider trailing in an effective slipstream.
If you sit further back the air pushed out by the first rider more likely to smack you in the face than if you're riding close behind.
Etiquette, coronavirus or not, should be that you pop to the back or pull out if you're 'clearing out'.
Following a ride cleaning your bike is always a good practise.
Can cyclists also think about pedestrians. I've just witnessed several fellow cyclists whiz by pedestrians who were on the pavement at a lot closer distance than 2 metres, more like less than a metre.
Everyone needs to do their bit, these cyclists are being incredibly selfish, they could quite easily have moved into the primary position and if that means hanging back until it's safe to do so, then so bit it!
I've switched to my MTBs, slower so more time to react.
Don't be selfish idiots and make us end up in total lockdown
Can pedestrians think about pedestrians, too. Why is it that I feel like I'm the only person who walks out into the road, if necessary, to distance from approaching (usually staring at a phone, but that might be confirmation bias) strangers?
Noticed that too when using shared use paths, with most people I'll move far left, they'll move far less but then there's always one who's too engrossed in their phone to even know other people are approaching.
I find myself thinking joggers are the worst. They run right at you or close pass you from behind (when pedestrianising), refusing to deviate one inch left or right.
And then there are the dog-walkers....
And the people who insist on going for walks in groups of three or four and walking abreast of each other across the entire pavement.
But...then I wonder if I'm doing the same thing drivers do with cyclists - noticing the bad behaviour of a minority and doing that outgroup-homogeneity thing and fuming at an entire category of people.
As with China and the US spitting hate at each other over 'who started it' and what nationality the virus is, it seems to me that humans react to the presence of an outside threat by immediately breaking into factions and picking fights with each other. It's how we roll.
Doesn't make the minorities actions right though
Here's a suggestion - how 'bout everybody think about everybody. Quit with the damned segmentation and us vs them thinking. It does nobody any good.
Well at least one 'selfish person' has seen my post!
Read it:
https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/04/coronavirus-covid-19-...
"This typically means spending more than 15 minutes within two metres of an infected person, such as talking to someone for instance."
So, not just whizzing by.
MPH please. I dont use kph, this is the UK
6'6" will do for distance
The same UK that teaches the metric system in schools? At least they did when I was there - and that's a looooong time ago.
Think about us old ones! I'm over 60 so I haven't used those old measurements for five decades (the last time they came up was in primary school when I was 10). Frankly, I've forgotten them. And think about those younger ones (50 or less) who have never used them!
Anyway, ain't no such thing as kph. Kilo pica hour? You must be in your dotage
Someone fix the graphic, please.
km/h
The distance generally deceases until, with a brief hello, I pass them and then it increases until they are out of sight
I hope you're missing an "r" there.
I concur, do what we've always done: pass the guy ahead and let him worry about the problem.
I don't understand where the two meters come from. Who's guidelines says 1 metre. Moreover, the virus is not airborne - will that not affect the analysis here?
I would imagine it's the distance at which you can reasonably expect not to get coated in droplets if the other person happens to cough / sneeze in your direction. There won't be an exact number, because coughs and sneezes are variable in force (and therefore projectile power), but the further away you are, the lower the risk will get, so it would come down to what distance you consider to be a reasonable risk.
There may also be an aspect of building in a reasonable buffer, on the basis that not everyone's very good at estimating what 1m or 2m looks like, and other factors may unexpectedly force you closer than you had intended to pass.
People can also catch COVID-19 if they breathe in droplets from a person with COVID-19 who coughs out or exhales droplets."
"Exhales droplets"? Yes, I read that also in the WHO blurb, so it has good provenance. But is is it actually a thing? Breath in front of a mirror and it mists up, but that's from condensation. Talk close in front of it, yes, most people - even if it is not on the Roy Hattersley scale - do spit a little, it just happens.
Also, this 2m thing, originally it came with a time duration (15 minutes in the UK gov site). Now that has been dropped, I guess to keep the message simple.
So now people worry just about passing people in the street, cyclists going by close to the kerb, etc. These are momentary approaches, very different from spending 15 minutes together.
Standing around chatting, as people do even whilst respecting the 2m distance, for both of the above reasons, to me seems more hazardous than passing someone on the pavement or a cyclist sailing by.
I'm waiting for the first close pass of the day to feature another cyclist.
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