lane sharing/splitting/filtering

[kirby1923]

I apologize for the length of this but it was sent to me today by a friend copied from a Long Beach news paper. As a long time "lane splitter", I totally agree with the conclusions. Some may find it interesting!

FWIW


Ear-splitting lane splitters are here to stay
By Thomas D. Elias
You’re sitting in a traffic jam on one of California’s busiest freeways — perhaps the 5 Freeway in northern San Diego County or the 10 Freeway in Los Angeles or the U.S. 101 Bayshore Freeway south of San Francisco — listening to classical music to calm jangled nerves or just thinking. Maybe you’re not stopped, but merely crawling along in a slow-and-go.
Suddenly you hear an earsplitting  roar from behind and  a motorcycle rips past with leather-clad rider and mere inches between your car and the rider’s bike.
The noise quickly dies down as the rider moves ahead, and you are left to muse: What if you’d twitched to that side or started into a lane change? Would that rider have splatted onto the pavement? Were you inches from a serious accident?
Never mind your feelings at that moment, or those of many others. What that motorcycle rider did, known as lane-splitting or lane sharing, will become legal in California — and nowhere else in America — on Jan. 1.
The reason: a UC Berkeley study that concluded in spring 2014 that motorcyclists are actually safer if they lane-split than if they sit in traffic, waiting out jams alongside the cars and trucks with which they share freeways and other roadways.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, they are far less likely to be sideswiped while speeding between stalled lanes of traffic than if they’d gotten in line behind the cars and trucks and risked getting rear-ended, often a far more injurious event for a motorcyclist than for the driver of a larger vehicle.
Said Republican Assemblyman Tom Lackey of Palmdale, a retired California Highway Patrol sergeant and co-author of the new law, “This is a huge win for roadway safety. We are now giving riders and motorists clear guidance on when it is safe.”
That specific guidance has not yet come, but rules will be handed down by the CHP and, presumably, widely publicized before the law takes effect. The CHP notes that driving dangerously — as determined by its officers — is always illegal.
The idea of legalizing what many consider a dangerous practice began with that Berkeley study, which examined motorcycle accidents statewide between June 2012 and August 2013.
The researchers, led by Thomas Rice of Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research & Education Center, studied 5,969 collisions, of which 997 involved lane-splitting. Lane-splitting riders were more likely to be traveling on weekends, rather than weekdays, and were less likely than others to have used alcohol or carried a passenger.
They suffered fewer head injuries  than other motorcycle riders involved in accidents and were only one-third as likely to suffer fatal injuries.
Only when lane-splitters went over 50 mph did injury incidence among them reach the same levels as for motorcyclists injured in normal traffic patterns.
Wayne Allard, vice president of the American Motorcyclist Association, noted that lane-splitting cuts motorcyclists’ exposure to distracted drivers in stop-andstart situations: “Reducing a motorcyclist’s exposure to vehicles that are … accelerating or decelerating on congested roadways can reduce rear-end collisions for those most vulnerable in traffic.”
In short, a single study from one academic center has now produced a major change in California highway rules, with little or no consideration for the majority of drivers, who are in cars, not on cycles. The new rules may not be specific yet, but don’t expect to see many lane-splitters ticketed in the near future. For unless they are being obviously reckless, their seemingly risky practice has been legalized.
Which means other motorists can expect more and more loud, flinch-inducing moments that just might translate into better highway safety. Or the reverse. Only time will tell how that works out.  Thomas D. Elias is a writer in Southern California. tdelias@aol.com

[tris]

.....and the sad message that many non bike riders will be one of "ear splitting" noise

I hate being stereotyped 

[Huzo]

It's now legal here in Victoria (Australia), but I only tend to do it if the vehicles are stationary or damn near so.

[Mr Pootle]

It's not illegal in the UK, but either the biker or the driver might find himself charged with driving without due care and attention, depending on the circumstances.

[unclepete]

Lane splitting is not new in California . Seems it is transitioning from being ' not illegal ' to ' legal with a list of conditions ' .
Loud pipe / noise emission laws have been on the books for many years ; don't see anything being done about that .
I wonder if the motorist in the article would be less startled if passed by a whisper quiet bike splitting lanes .
To avoid having his reverie shattered , the motorist might consider paying attention to his surroundings rather than trying to relax .
 

[Lannis]

"Suddenly you hear an earsplitting  roar from behind and  a motorcycle rips past with leather-clad rider and mere inches between your car and the rider�s bike."

I don't agree that those two things will be "legal".   "Earsplitting Roar" implies an illegal exhaust, and "rips past" implies a dangerous speed differential.

Posers (I didn't say motorcyclists) doing those things will ruin it for everyone, but they won't care.

Lannis

[thomas]

The Hurt report of the 1980's said exactly the same thing. Do a google for it.

cheers
Thomas

[HDGoose]

The Hurt report of the 1980's said exactly the same thing. Do a google for it.

cheers
Thomas

And gets validated continually!

[Chuck in Indiana]

"Suddenly you hear an earsplitting  roar from behind and  a motorcycle rips past with leather-clad rider and mere inches between your car and the rider�s bike."

I don't agree that those two things will be "legal".   "Earsplitting Roar" implies an illegal exhaust, and "rips past" implies a dangerous speed differential.

Posers (I didn't say motorcyclists) doing those things will ruin it for everyone, but they won't care.

Lannis

Sounds like the person that wrote that article was just a grump. I've done a *lot* of lane splitting in SoCal and the only bikes I've seen "ripping past" at high rates of speed are squids. Darwin sorts them out soon enough. Most of the loud pipes save lives crowd bikes are too wide to lane split, anyway. I don't split as fast as some of the natives, so I have to monitor my mirrors like a hawk while splitting at about 20 mph faster than traffic. Just pull in and wave them on. <shrug> I feel *much* safer between cars than in a line with them.
That said, making it "legal" will probably open a can of worms. With legality will come rules for enforcement..

[ITSec]

Sounds like the person that wrote that article was just a grump. I've done a *lot* of lane splitting in SoCal and the only bikes I've seen "ripping past" at high rates of speed are squids. Darwin sorts them out soon enough. Most of the loud pipes save lives crowd bikes are too wide to lane split, anyway. I don't split as fast as some of the natives, so I have to monitor my mirrors like a hawk while splitting at about 20 mph faster than traffic. Just pull in and wave them on. <shrug> I feel *much* safer between cars than in a line with them.
That said, making it "legal" will probably open a can of worms. With legality will come rules for enforcement..

The rules for enforcement already exist - as noted, any LEO may determine (in virtually his/her own discretion) that a rider is operating in an unsafe manner. The guidelines being drafted (actually, they were previously published by CHP then removed from the web) are just that - guidelines for both riders and LEOs. You could be within the guidelines, but if a CHP believes the circumstances are wrong, you can still be ticketed.

I regularly lane split when I visit California on my Norge. With the stock exhaust, it's not what I'd call ear-splitting - and with its size, I certainly don't go 'ripping past' slow or stopped traffic. I have seen others, on all sorts of bikes and with all sorts of riding styles, do both of these things. The majority of lane-splitters I've seen in California are reasonable.

Now, if we could just convince riders here in Las Vegas that lane-splitting is NOT legal, we'd be set. I wish it were legal, but till it is I get very upset with riders who lane-split or ride the shoulder (illegal everywhere) - they give us all a bad name!

[Pancake]

I think it is insane to sit behind cars in traffic. I was in California in 1996 and saw a bike sitting in traffic behind a line of cars and just didn't understand why the rider didn't just overtake and go to the front. Obviously I now know that it was illegal for the rider to do so, but it just seemed absurd to me.
I live in London and motorbikes and bicycles just filter between stationary and slow moving traffic. Drivers learn to look and and so do bikers. It would be interesting to find out if there were any studies done on accident consequences for this practice over here.

I believe there was talk of bringing in a ruling to prevent filtering in France, so the bikers did a protest, and didn't filter for a day. Each bike on the road now took up the space equal to one car. Well that stopped the law in its tracks because it almost doubled the traffic on that day.

[Scud]

I believe there was talk of bringing in a ruling to prevent filtering in France, so the bikers did a protest, and didn't filter for a day. Each bike on the road now took up the space equal to one car. Well that stopped the law in its tracks because it almost doubled the traffic on that day.

That is a great way to protest and demonstrate.   

I filter, split lanes, etc. regularly. I'm glad that we (Californians) are specifically permitting it.

[Arizona Wayne]

Out West, the only place I don't lane split is if the traffic is moving fast enough my air cooled or w/c motor won't burn up.  Have yet to get a ticket. 

[Tom H]

As mentioned, even doing it in a safe to you manner, can be unsafe to a cop.

One time I thought I was getting pulled over while splitting on the freeway, nope, I was going too slow for the cop and he wanted to get by me.

As long as done in a safe manner in conditions that have been mentioned, it should be legal everywhere.

Tom

[Arizona Wayne]

As mentioned, even doing it in a safe to you manner, can be unsafe to a cop.

One time I thought I was getting pulled over while splitting on the freeway, nope, I was going too slow for the cop and he wanted to get by me.

As long as done in a safe manner in conditions that have been mentioned, it should be legal everywhere.

Tom

1 time years ago east of L.A. we were all doing 75 mph when a CHP bike passed  us splitting lanes doing at least 80 mph w/o lights/siren on. 

[ITSec]

1 time years ago east of L.A. we were all doing 75 mph when a CHP bike passed  us splitting lanes doing at least 80 mph w/o lights/siren on. 

Just BTW, certain calls are answered with lights only, or with neither lights nor siren. In many jurisdictions, this includes things like domestic disputes, active armed robberies (i.e., bank alarms, etc.), and sometimes