Safety

You are responsible for your own safety. Use your judgment, and don't go anywhere you shouldn't, even if the route does: a road that's too busy for your experience, or anywhere that's closed to the public. If you're new to riding in traffic, move the route onto bike paths and quiet streets before you go.

Check the route before you go

RouteDoodle puts how the route looks first, so it will use paths that weren't designed for bikes. Adjust the route by hand until it's safe and enjoyable as well as beautiful. Look over anything doubtful in the satellite map style, or go and see it in person, to decide whether the route is safe to follow.

Watch the road, not your screen

Pay more attention to the road than to your navigation device. To check your progress on a screen, get off the road first. Better still, use a phone app or GPS device that reads turn-by-turn directions out loud, with bone-conduction headphones so you can still hear traffic.

When the route goes against traffic

In Bike Mode, RouteDoodle avoids — but does not completely prevent — sending you the wrong way down a one-way street, against traffic. Cyclists call this salmoning. If the only way between two points on your route goes against traffic, RouteDoodle takes it, and the directions say "salmon" there. Change the route to avoid it, or get off and walk your bike on the sidewalk for that stretch.

When part of the route turns out impossible

Sometimes there's no safe and beautiful route. Or the map makes it look like there's a good path between two points, but when you get there, that stretch turns out impossible or unsafe. While planning, switch that stretch to Bird Mode, which draws a straight line. On the ride, use the pause-and-resume trick: pause your recording, go around the safe way, and resume where the route picks up again.

Don't risk your life to make art.


Loading RouteDoodle...

If you still see this, then the map didn't load properly. Perhaps a Javascript error occurred. info@RouteDoodle.com.