Tailgater, Stale Green, Creeping Left-Turner
You are westbound on a four-lane divided arterial in town at 40 mph in the right lane during the evening rush. A lifted pickup has been about 15 feet off your rear fender for the last half mile, and its headlights fill both mirrors. Ahead is a signal that has been green since you first saw it 200 yards back, so you cannot tell how long it has been that way. On the opposite side, a silver sedan is first in the left-turn lane, and its front wheels are already turned left, crept a foot or so past the stop line. Your lane is clear for 100 yards past the intersection. The right shoulder is a curb, a narrow grass strip, and a fire hydrant on the corner.
1. How do you handle the pickup behind you, and what makes braking to warn it a bad idea?
Read the worked answer
At 40 mph you cover roughly 59 feet per second, so 15 feet is about a quarter second of following distance. That gap is shorter than your reaction time. Any hard brake application by you ends with the truck in your back, regardless of who was at fault.
The response is to take that option away from him: open up your own following distance ahead to four seconds or more. That is not for your braking, it is for his. With a large gap in front, you can slow gradually, using engine braking and light brake pressure, and the truck has to match a slow change rather than a sudden one. Signal every change early. If a safe gap opens ahead, signal, move to the right side of the lane, and wave him past; a tailgater in front of you is a problem you no longer have.
Brake checking is the wrong answer twice over. It is illegal in most circumstances and it can be treated as aggressive driving, and physically a 15-foot gap means you get hit. Speeding up is the other trap: he matches you, the gap stays the same, and now you are both going faster into the intersection.
2. The light is stale and the sedan is creeping. What is plan A, and what is plan B if the wheels keep rolling?
Read the worked answer
Plan A starts with a question, asked early: can I stop comfortably? If you are far enough back to stop smoothly, ease off, cover the brake, and prepare to stop. If you are already inside the zone where stopping would mean a hard, sudden brake with a truck on your fender, then the decision is made: proceed through, but proceed prepared.
While proceeding, watch the sedan's front wheels rather than the driver's face. A driver can look straight at you and still pull out, but the wheels tell you what the car is actually doing. Cover the brake and the horn.
Plan B is defined before you need it. If the wheels begin to roll, your escape is the hard, straight-line brake, because the right shoulder is a curb with a hydrant on the corner and the median side is the truck's lane. That is exactly why the lane position matters: keep a straight braking path open. If the left lane is genuinely clear, moving left buys distance from the turning car, but only if you check the mirror first and the tailgater is not already there.
3. Where do you place the bike in the right lane through this approach, and why is there a trade-off?
Read the worked answer
Default position is the left third of the right lane. It puts you where the pickup's driver is most likely to see you in the mirror, it keeps you out of the gutter debris and away from the curb, and it gives you the widest view into the intersection.
But this intersection changes the calculation. The threat is a car turning left across your path from the opposite side, and that car is approaching from your front left. Every foot you move right widens the lateral gap and adds a fraction of a second, so as you close on the stale green, drift toward the right-center of the lane.
The trade-off is the hydrant and curb on the right corner. You are buying distance from the left-turner and spending your right-side escape route. That is acceptable only if you have already decided that your escape is straight-line braking, not a swerve right. Do not drift so far right that you are in the gutter, and do not let the drift turn into a habit: the left third is the default, and you leave it deliberately, for a reason, then return.