Organising a motorcycle group ride

The real problem with group rides

Riding in a group creates three concrete problems, and none of them is technical. The first is organising it beforehand: everyone needs the same information, and a group chat is the worst possible place to keep it. The second is staying together on the road: at the first junction the group stretches out, and without any visibility you stop every twenty kilometres to count heads.

The third is the most frustrating one: finding people to ride with when you do not already have a crew. Plenty of riders go out alone simply because they have no idea who, within thirty kilometres of them, sets off on a Sunday morning. Rides opened to the community exist for exactly that.

A ride that is genuinely prepared

Posting a ride on Waver takes a minute: a date, a meeting point, and the route you already drew in the planner. Invited riders answer, so you know who is coming and can size the day accordingly. On the day itself every rider has the route in their app rather than a screenshot of a map.

It is also what lets a group ride spread out without falling apart. When everyone has the route and can see where the others are, you can leave proper space between bikes instead of riding nose to tail to avoid losing anyone. That is a safety argument as much as a comfort one.

A community that holds together

Opening a ride to people you have never met needs a minimum of structure. Profiles are public, riders are identifiable, and a reporting and moderation system exists to remove behaviour that has no place on a ride.

The aim is not to build another social network. It is that somebody who has just moved to a new region, or who is spending a fortnight touring one, can find people to ride with the following weekend.

Riding as a group in another country

A group ride abroad fails for boring reasons rather than dramatic ones: the meeting point turns out to be one of three cafes with the same name, half the group has no data roaming, and nobody agreed who was leading. The app fixes the first problem, since a ride is pinned to a point on a map rather than to a place name, and it helps with the second, but it does not fix the third for you.

Mainland Europe rides on the right. If you are coming over from the UK or Ireland, the first hour is where mistakes happen: junctions, roundabouts, and pulling out of a fuel station on the wrong side. Ride the first stretch conservatively and brief the group before you turn a wheel.

• Set the meeting point by dropping a pin, not by naming a place: it removes the spelling and the language out of the equation.
• Put the least experienced rider second, right behind the leader, and give the sweeper the job of never overtaking anybody.
• Live positions need mobile data. Agree a fallback: next fuel station, wait there. Coverage disappears regularly in the mountains.
• France requires approved gloves and a hi-vis vest carried on the bike, and speed limits drop in the wet. Check what applies before you cross, not at the toll booth.