“If I’m freaked out on a road, I’m riding on the sidewalk”: Lance Armstrong claims “distracted driving” has made cycling more dangerous and says he “avoids long, straight roads like the plague”

Lance Armstrong has claimed that distracted driving has become increasingly common in recent years, making cycling on the road more dangerous in the process, saying he avoids “long, straight roads like the plague” due to phone-using motorists and that, if he becomes “freaked out” by dangerous or erratic driving, he will simply ride on the footpath.

In a recent interview with health and fitness journalist Michael Easter on his ‘The Forward’ podcast, the disgraced former seven-time Tour de France winner also shared his own unique set of tips for staying safe while cycling, including seeking out traffic-free routes on Strava and even avoiding roads altogether by riding a gravel or mountain bike.

Speaking about the physical and mental benefits of exercising outdoors during the lengthy podcast interview, Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour titles in 2012 following USADA’s anti-doping investigation into the US Postal team, said: “A lot of people ride indoors now – a lot of them have no choice because it’s cold in the winter.

“But then a lot of others are scared of cars, and the risk of that, so they choose to ride Zwift indoors.”

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Easter, the former fitness director of Men’s Health magazine, then asked Armstrong about his “take on cars and cycling”, including motorists who speed and use their phone at the wheel, and whether it’s “changed over time”.

“Has it got more dangerous?” the health and fitness journalist asked.

“Yeah, I think it has changed,” Armstrong said. “It’s distracted driving, is what it is. I’ve been hit by a couple of cars – but not by distracted drivers. You get scared when you’re out riding when somebody comes close to you.

“I think it’s becoming more and more common, but there are ways around it, I think, to safeguard against [distracted driving], for anybody who wants tips on this.

“Firstly, I ride mostly on my gravel bike, so I can ride on anything. If I’m on a road and I’m freaked out, and I’m on a gravel bike, if there’s a sidewalk there, I’m riding on the sidewalk. Or if I see there’s a little path, I‘ll just ride on the little dirt path.”

Lance Armstrong on Mont Ventoux, 2002 Tour de France (credit: Photosport International)

He continued: “I always try to avoid straight roads. Anytime the road is long and straight, people get distracted. You put people on a twisty, turny road, a very technical road, they tend to get less distracted – because they have to focus on driving, they have to turn, they have to manage what they’re up to.

“Those long, straight roads, I avoid like the plague. When I ride here in Austin – I moved here in 1989, it was pretty chill, but it’s just not like that anymore.”

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Another Armstrong-patented road safety tip focused on using modern technology to seek out the most bike-friendly routes, while the Texan also – somewhat bizarrely – pointed to a future filled with driverless cars as the key to keeping cyclists safe.

“We’ve had things that have come along to help the average cyclist avoid traffic, primarily the heat map on Strava,” he noted. “You see the routes other cyclists are using, and they’re using the routes that have less traffic and that they feel safer on.

“And once we get to the point of self-driving cars, if we ever get there, those cars will not hit a cyclist – in a perfect world.”

The former world road race champion must have missed our story from back in 2023, when a Cruise self-driving taxi, which didn’t even have a human being inside, made a left turn into a cycle lane in Armstrong’s home city of Austin.

The car then continued to travel in the infrastructure along the next stretch of road, prompting one local to comment on social media: “Perfect! These are completely safe autonomous vehicles.”

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Reflecting more generally on distracted driving and the current state of the roads in Texas and the US, the former Discovery Channel leader concluded: “Yeah, it scares me.”

Lance Armstrong (credit: NBC)

“Even if you’re not on your cell phone now, cars have Apple Play,” interjected Easter. “Basically you just put the cell phone interface right on the screen, and you can tap away. But it’s also distracting.”

And it’s that point in the interview at which Armstrong, famous for his addiction to his Blackberry (or Crackberry, as he called it during his, and the phone’s, 2000s heyday) decided to undermine his entire argument about distracted driving – by admitting he also gets distracted by the screen in his car.

“I love it,” he said. “And I know we’re all guilty of that. Yeah…”

Of course, Armstrong isn’t immune to bouts of bad driving himself. In 2015, the retired pro was fined $150 after pleading guilty to careless driving, related to an incident which saw him drive into two cars in a snowy ski resort car park in Aspen, Colorado, before initially letting his now-wife Anna Hansen take the blame.

“You know the best solution to all this?” he continued on his podcast. “It’s to ride the mountain bike. In the summertime when we’re in Colorado, I bet I ride 95 per cent of my cycling is on a mountain bike.”

So, the best tip for staying safe on the road as a cyclist… is to not ride on the road at all. Cheers for that, Lance.