Cycles of all sorts

The concept of negotiation is an important part of traversing across one or more lanes of traffic. The basic idea is to negotiate for the right-of-way in the adjacent lane, move into that lane, and then repeat the process for any additional lanes. This is an important vehicular cycling skill because it allows the cyclist to merge in with the flow of other traffic instead of cutting across at a right-angle (as a pedestrian would).

The first step in traversing across a lane is looking back for traffic that may be overtaking in that lane. When there is such traffic, the cyclist needs to either wait until that traffic has either passed or explicitly yielded the right-of-way (by slowing down to let the cyclist in). Simply looking back is often all that is required to signal the cyclist's intent, but sometimes a hand signal is helpful in getting overtaking traffic to yield right-of-way. Once right-of-way has been acquired in the adjacent lane, the second step is for the cyclist to move into that lane.

If there is another lane to traverse, the cyclist repeats the steps until there are no more lanes to traverse. The key to the process is that the cyclist merges into traffic lanes as per the rules of the road, one lane at a time.