My Sunday riding group are a great bunch of guys and girls but their group riding skills are mostly crap. You can start 4th on the left and end the ride 8th on the right having been 5th on the left and 7th on the right - you get the picture.
A couple of the guys are plain undisciplined and find any opportunity to zoom past the ride then cut back in. Others are clueless and don't get it and just can't seem to ride staggered with 2 seconds from the bike in front etc. Then they fall behind and somebody will move into their place. Then nobody knows what position they are supposed to be in. A couple of guys lag far in back.
There is lots of grumbling from the guy that leads the ride that we are a GROUP but these go unheeded.
He sends a weekly email out and is begging everybody to stay in line but each week it falls on deaf ears and generally, the same people do the same stuff. He has had individual talks and arguments but no real changes.

I really like the group and we socialize a lot out of riding. We have each others backs when they have family problems, bike and car issues, medical problems. You could call any of them at 2am needing a jump start and somebody would show up to help. So yeh I could stop riding with them but would rather find a solution.

Is there a definitive website that we can send out to all riders? I've googled and found a few but they don't cover everything. Some just do the 2 and 1 second rule but what we really need is a good explanation of the whole group riding formation. Maybe some of your riding clubs have written one of their own and we could use it?

 

http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com/...oupRiding.aspx

Our chapter has a group riding class every few months for new members and riders. It very similar to what is written on this page.

 

I hear what you are saying. We have the same problems that your group has.
My husband and I went on a two day ride with a group of long time friends last week end. I told my husband I love having our friends with us when we stop on the ride, but riding with some of them can get aggravating. We have the ones that want to go 10 miles under the speed limit, a couple that won't stay to the right or left in their lane, they are all over the place, and the ones that lag a mile back. They are all great friends so making a issue of all of the things some of them do is not going to happen.We just ride by our selves sometimes to get back in the zone.

 

How about having the group leader lay down the law. Explain the way he wants everyone to ride and if they continue to cause safety issues, tell them they're not invited back. It's as simple as that.

 

Our Southern Cruiser Riding Club has a list of guidelines but they may be a bit too organized for some folks as we have pretty close communication among the group with Road Captains front and rear and an emphasis on safety. Following is a link to our guidelines for use as desired: http://www.midtnscrc.org/r_guide.html

Some people are not of the personality that they need to be riding in a group.

 

I only ride in formation with a couple old school brothers that i trust with my life and that's basically what your doing... trusting them with your life.

It's no game... I would crack the whip on their *** or not ride with them. period.

 

Your idea of what a group ride is all about would make me want to give up riding if I had to do it. So you ride all day, and you hold the same position in the group?
You are pretending that your in a military marching band? What fun is that? How could one learn to ride if all you are doing is following the person in front of you? It would be like driving in rush hour traffic all day. How could you ever learn to hit the next curve at a spirited pace and then accelerate out of it? The whole idea is to be free as a bird and do your own thing, have fun.

 

I'm with Oldskewl on this. A chain is as strong as it's weakest link, and a ride as safe as the worst rider.

If I get hurt on a bike I want it to be my fault not some ******* riding near me. I don't ride at all in large groups, I choose carefully the friends I ride with in very small groups and in 47 years of riding, I would only ride next to one person, my old patrol partner. It's that serious.

 

A group to me is 2-4 bikes. Anything over that and I will meet you at the next stop or the destination.

The final straw for me was riding in a Veteran's Day Parade a few years ago. A sport bike started banging his bike off the rev limiter (damn, but I hate that sound) and then doing burnouts. Yup, it got away from him, crashed/flipped on both sides of the bike and came to rest four feet from me.

That was it, no more group riding, no escorts, no parades and I still get my 15000+ miles per year.

Bwana

 

A group ride shouldn't be the way you describe and I'd have bailed on these people LONG AGO. Sometimes, regardless of how many times you tell them or direct them to an official group ride web site, they're not going to change anyway. If they refuse to change and you still want to ride in a group, then nix the "troublemakers" and ride with the rest. That's what I did.