Photos by John W. Adkisson | The Roanoke Times

Beth Deel was part of a group that cycled around Roanoke on Friday with large frames attached to their bicycles to simulate the space that cars take up on the road.

River Laker leads the way down Elm Avenue. "We only take up a tiny part of the space cars do, so if more people were on bikes, there would be more space on the road," Laker said.

James Glass attaches a license plate to the frame around his bicycle before the ride, which looped through downtown Roanoke starting about 5 p.m.

This just in: A bicycle uses less space than any car on the road.

That's what River Laker, better known as the British expatriate on a quixotic quest to live without a car, and a group of his friends set out to show Friday afternoon. He and two others built metal frames around their bikes so they would cover the area of an average sedan and rode a roughly 15-minute, seven-mile circuit downtown.

"We only take up a tiny part of the space cars do, so if more people were on bikes, there would be more space on the road," Laker said. "It demonstrates the close to ridiculous amount of space we take up transporting what is usually just one person in a car."

It was an experiment and a novelty more than an illustration of the obvious. Laker, development coordinator at the Roanoke Public Libraries, tethered blue balloons to his frame. His friend James Glass, a real estate agent, raised a black pirate skull flag above his seat. Joining them was Beth Deel, who wore a wig under her helmet. Could they loop from Campbell Avenue to Elm Avenue without running into disgruntled rush-hour drivers?

They pedaled off at Laker's Car Less Brit Museum, a space for bike culture on Second Avenue, about 5 p.m. and rode east on Campbell Avenue and north on Jefferson Street with a group of bikers sans frames trailing them.

A security guard who didn't know the group told someone waiting for a bus what the group was doing.

"Oh, they're advertising that they're not driving cars," said the guard, who declined to give his name. "They're riding on the street, like they're supposed to. The best part is they're all ready for it with their banners and everything."

On Elm Avenue, a local television news reporter and cameraman waited for the bikers and asked drivers at red lights over the busy Interstate 581 bridge what they thought of the experiment.

Meanwhile, the three bicyclists with frames followed the rules that applied to drivers of motorized vehicles. They signaled with an arm before turning at intersections, and stayed in a single line.

They behaved like motorists, too, speeding up to beat a yellow light before it turned red.

"Bicycles under code of Virginia are allowed to ride with traffic as long as they follow laws that motorists do," said Aisha Johnson, a Roanoke Police Department spokeswoman.

After two laps, a dozen or so bicyclists gathered at the museum. Laker marveled that the experiment had been as smooth as a ride down a tree-lined hill.

He thought cars would run them off the road -- they didn't. He thought cars wouldn't give right of way for an U-turn on Elm Avenue -- and they did.

Jill Elswick, a friend who watched the ride, put it succinctly:

"I thought there would be angry drivers," she said. "It was kind of a nonevent, actually."

And Laker said it in other words via Twitter later that night: "Car drivers [were] most courteous."