I’m in the ride on the shoulder camp but I’m enjoying the discussion.
Joe
Honestly, I think - with the verge/shoulder that wide - you’re being obnoxious, notwithstanding an entitlement to be up on the road (you asked!). And being six inches off the right side line isn’t really taking up the lane anyway, motorists are going to try to squeeze by at the first opportunity. Plus, three flats in the last year or so is trivial. But yes, mightily annoying.
I still cant grasp the desire to ride anywhere but that shoulder…it is gigantic, and pristine. I wish all our roads around here had a space like that to ride…
At the end of the day, your legal right to do something becomes moot when you’re on the wrong side of a car’s bumper. Blunt, but that’s pretty much where my line of thinking on it ends. I’ve been hit exactly once in my life (while running.) I had the crosswalk and white “Clear to cross,” but that didn’t magically stop the car.
This seems to assume totally attentive and rational people behind the wheel… which some of your relayed experience clearly shows is not happening 100% of the time. I know the rest of us have likely experienced the same or worse to your experiences despite being “in the right”.
I get it, the ideal makes a certain amount of sense but the rest of us are talking about the very real and partly ugly side of life that exists. Your visibility ends the moment someone is tied up with their phone, fighting with their partner, dealing with work frustration or just plain not paying attention for any reason.
That is what I believe is behind most of the reasons we are pushing you to the shoulder regardless of what you have for rights to that road.
To put it another way:
- You can be right everything time, but they only have to be wrong once to make the worst a reality.
A) No matter what we do, we are going to piss off drivers. We need to make decisions that keep us safe.
B) I’m really jealous of that shoulder, jesus. Image below is a local road I ride frequently with a 55mph speed limit.
Get a Garmin radar and move into the shoulder when there’s traffic and take the lane when it’s clear 
Tubeless helps with road debris. Assume cars don’t see you at all, because people on their phones don’t.
I think you need to distinguish “Are you obnoxious to some drivers?” and “What is the safest course of action for me?”
I’d start the discussion from the latter and think less of the former. In my experience, in locales where drivers have little-to-no exposure to cyclists, they often don’t know what rights and duties cyclists have on the road. They want you out of the way, because they perceive you as a slowly moving obstacle. I have had so many situations where drivers would lose their cool in situations where, had I been a car, it’d be a completely normal thing to stop and wait (waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before making a left turn). On the flip side, they know nothing about safe passing. People losing their cool can make you unsafe.
The best combination for me is to combine getting out of the way when safe to do so and getting in the way if it is safer to do so. E. g. you don’t want to hug the shoulder if you want to make a left turn. Or you don’t want to ride on the shoulder if, as you say, it is littered with sharp objects that are just waiting to shred your tires. This might not be something that cars are aware of, but that’s not their problem. (It is really a pity, because the gutter looks great for riding on the pictures, really wide and completely avoids having to interact with cars.)
Another game changer is a Garmin Varia radar. I bought one last summer after hearing everyone rave about it. And it is one of my favorite cycling-related purchases ever. As long as you understand what it does (e. g. it measures relative distances and works on line-of-sight), it really, really improves safety. E. g. it is able to detect two cars that are moving closely together (something I couldn’t detect with my ears or when looking over my shoulder).
Same here, unbelievable the sense of entitlement these car drivers have. Here on a bike you have a right to use the roads on foot or on your bike, you are only licensed to drive and any close passes would see points on their licence or a ban.
My goodness, I’d love a road that cycling friendly with a huge wide shoulder!
Glad that the Garmin Varia Radar got some love above - that would be my solution if you wanted to ride on the nice smooth road some of the time.
Amen. That’s what I’d do too.
If it was the UK there would likely be a pavement and a 4 inch kerb separating the road and path so we’d (usually) have no choice but to ride in the road.
Lot of good comments. I would tend to ride on the left half of that shoulder. Usually much less debris there and you still have lots of room on both sides for evasive maneuvers. I would guess that most traffic will slow a bit and give you some room as well. We all know some won’t.
I am very familiar with this road as both a cyclist and a driver. That shoulder is not fun but I ride it even with my 25s. Personally, I do feel it is a bit obnoxious putting yourself in the lane when that shoulder is there. You know that the car and truck traffic is bad and you know how motorists around here tend to be. They are going to see that shoulder and expect you to be there.
I completely sympathize with your situation. Having to be on this road is not fun and it’s dangerous but I think it’s even more dangerous to be in the lane regardless of whether or not it’s your right.
Stay safe.
I sort of hate flat tires, but I really hate getting hit by cars/thrown objects. I’d say I’d ride the shoulder, but the truth is this is why I spend most of my time on the trainer and on trails.
I wonder if you could petition for the city/county/whatever to run a street sweeper once a week or something, if that’s an option.
Here in Alabama, there is a website (although it’s sort of hard to find) with a map that lets you suggest places for bike paths and such. I don’t know how much it influences, but I optimistically hope people are studying it, and I don’t have any delusions of quick results.
I mean, even in a city that’s regularly considered one of the top bicycle friendly communities in the US, there are still plenty of drivers who have no clue what rights and duties cyclists have–at least judging by the people who get irate when I do things that are perfectly within the law and that only get in front of their car for a brief time (not riding in the bike lane when the bike lane doesn’t exist for 200 yards, using the right turn lane to make a right turn, that kind of thing). And then there are the passive aggressive drivers who put their right wheels into the bike lane right after passing me. I’m sure that a much greater percentage of drivers know what I can and can’t do as a cyclist compared to your area, but even a small percentage of ignorant drivers can be a danger. We need a huge cultural shift to make sure that bicyclists are safe when we do what the law says we can do–in the mean time, like most everyone here, I ride based on where I feel safe* first and foremost.
*It’s been mentioned before, but I’ll second that, if you’re in the lane, take the lane. It might feel safer to hug the outside line, but you really are safer if you’re closer to the center of the lane.
As an aside, since this was not in my city, though maybe only 15 miles outside of it as the road winds, my favorite story of an ignorant driver who yelled at me. They told me that I was supposed to move over because they were behind me. But (ignoring the fact that I was legally entitled to be in the center of the road) there was no bikeable shoulder on that road (the edge of the road was tiny when it existed at all). What really was infuriating was they felt the deep need to pass even though I was speeding (no, I’m not that strong, it was downhill and the speed limit wasn’t all that high). If I’d been farm/ranch equipment (given the area, such equipment can’t be uncommon), I would have been going slower and they still would have given me more respect as a road user. People like that make me very nervous about cycling, even when most people know better. As much as I’d love to take full advantage of the local rules of the road, I don’t because I want to live to keep riding.
Rear facing Radar - literally cannot imagine riding without it now, and shudder to think of all the years I was on the road prior to this technology arriving.
Also found this super interesting:
DC Rainmaker Overlays of Varia Radar data
Over time this has made me consider what roads I ride on. There are roads where the traffic constantly exceeds the speed limit, and regardless of the 10 foot shoulder more deaths occur on these roads.
This was in the Memes and Jokes thread, but I think about this a lot:
I was nodding all the way when reading your post. I have lived in a bunch of places, including the US and Canada. Your observation that cyclists feel like a hindrance even when they are speeding jives with mine. Just the perception we are costing drivers precious seconds makes people lose their cool.
Another one is that they often have trouble judging how fast road cyclists can be going. Several times a year some energy-efficient lightbulb of a driver hits the accelerator to overtake me/us (= peloton) just to turn into a supermarket parking lot.
Tell that to the first person who’s going 50 mph faster than you, who decides to change the Spotify playlist (which will take about 5 seconds) and is generally guiding the car based on their peripheral vision of the edge of the road and the lane markings, but not fully looking forward, and covering almost 400 feet in those 5 seconds when they run you over because they never saw you.
You said speed limit of 35-55. When it’s 55 on that kind of rural road, often people are doing 70 or more. Think about that.
How visible you are means NOTHING when someone isn’t really looking. You want to be right? God bless you. But IMHO, the odds are high that someday you’ll end up dead. 
Don’t ever think “people will have to X”. It doesn’t work. That assumes a rules-following, deterministic view of psychology which has been scientifically proven false in dozens of ways. They don’t HAVE to. They should and all attentive, rational people would… but some WON’T for whatever reason. And it only takes one of those to kill you.
I’d buy puncture-resistant tires like Gatorskins or René Herse “Endurance Plus” tires. Use wider tires at lower pressures. The puncture risk goes way down. And ride on the shoulder, for God’s sake.
I wouldn’t say obnoxious and you are perfectly entitled to ride out on the road. From the drivers point of view all they see is large hard shoulder and won’t see debris / glass etc. I think this is going to invite punishment passes and aggression regardless of whether you are right or wrong.
Looks like a stressful scenario in either case so I’d be looking for an alternative route for my safety / piece of mind. Garmin varia is a good shout but ultimately safe road selection is my priority particularly if riding it regularly.