Have you driven a motorcycle or a high horsepower car with a stiff clutch in stop and go traffic? I developed leg problems from my Cobra a decade ago. Sitting in traffic was absolutely miserable. Same with bikes, except there you're also covered in sweat the entire time so it's even less pleasant.
My DCT BMW was also annoying in stop and go traffic and I didn't even have to manipulate the gears.
I still find shifting to be fun, I mostly drove my BMW in manual DCT mode (dual clutch). But in traffic? I don't want to go near a manual.
I'd just caution against doing this in some areas.
A member of a group I used to ride with decided to stop riding when someone opened their door to stop him from splitting in PA. He smacked into the door, was physically okay, but ended up getting charged with something like "illegal lane change", had his insurance prices skyrocket, and decided to stop riding as he had to drive for his job, and he was worried that another 3-point ticket would get him a 30 day suspension and he'd basically lose his job.
The driver who opened their door is very lucky nothing serious came of it. Many motorcycle riders would treat that as an attempt on their life and react accordingly, probably not working out well for the car driver.
As a bicyclist, I was surprised by the sheer number of drivers who seem intent on punishing bicyclists, often for actions that are not illegal. So, given this experience I am not surprised to hear the same is true for motorcyclists.
I've had people do very close "punishment passes" on me because they thought I was going far below the speed limit when in reality I was going roughly 17 mph in a 15 mph zone. This is not some sort of isolated incident. I've spoken to several of them and it's rare that I get an apology for it.
Add on top of that the people who pass me closely while yelling things like "get in the bike lane!" when I'm riding in the sharrow lane and there is no bike lane.
I’d say it probably wouldn’t work out well for anyone.
Where I live, ~50% of motorists are armed and no permits are required to do so. Road rage never ends well for anyone involved here.
The moral of the story is: be respectful of others. If you’re a motorcyclist in a state where it’s illegal to lane split, don’t do it. If you’re a driver in a state where it is legal, don’t be a dick to motorcyclists if they are lane splitting.
I’d also like to add that I think lane splitting is wildly dangerous and dread driving in California. Surely motorcyclists die from this every year?
>I’d also like to add that I think lane splitting is wildly dangerous and dread driving in California. Surely motorcyclists die from this every year?
So it's a bit contentious, but from what i've seen, it's safe as long as it's done safely, which is a dumb sentence, but let me explain:
There are really 2 things that people talk about with "lane splitting":
* Filtering - moving up between stopped cars at a light to the front of the pack, and then driving away when the light turns green. Generally you aren't passing other moving vehicles when filtering, or if they are moving it's a few mph at most.
* Lane Splitting - This is when you are driving between lanes passing other vehicles that are moving.
Filtering is considered to be safer than not filtering. It reduces rear-end accidents (people tend to "look through" bikers, and will pull up behind the car in front of them like they aren't there, there's also your "normal" rear-end accidents, but they are much worse for the biker...), it reduces traffic (bikes accelerate faster, so getting them out front is helpful to reduce the rubberbanding traffic), and it's obviously nicer for the biker as they get where they are going quicker.
Splitting on the other hand is contentious. On the one hand I believe there have been studies done that shows it reduces fatalities. But at the same time it does actually increase accidents, but those accidents tend to be much less dangerous. Since a splitter should only be going 5-10mph faster than the cars, any impacts should be kind of like 10mph impacts, and are much less dangerous (obviously still dangerous, but much less than being rear-ended, getting left-turned into, or rear-ending something, etc...). And it greatly reduces low-speed rear-endings while sitting in traffic (a fairly low-speed fender-bender can be a lot worse when a small bump can throw you backwards off the bike and onto the ground!)
But splitting does have other benefits other than safety. It's obviously much faster for the bikers, reduces traffic for everyone, and therefore reduces environmental impact in many cases (less cars AND bikes idling in traffic). And there are also second order benefits that it encourages more people to ride bikes, which just increases the above benefits even more.
Still, it's my opinion that both Splitting and Filtering should be fully legal everywhere. It doesn't really impact drivers or those who don't split to have it be legal beyond a possibly slight increase in small accidents (there's an argument that if it is much more dangerous then it could increase healthcare costs for everyone too), and those who are okay with the risks can do it.
And obviously at no point should anyone ever be flying between cars going 20mph+ faster than the cars around them. That's not safe splitting, and that's not what I want either.
I appreciate the in depth reply and hadn’t considered the different types of splitting.
> And obviously at no point should anyone ever be flying between cars going 20mph+ faster than the cars around them. That's not safe splitting, and that's not what I want either.
I think this is what I’m mostly referring to. We can definitely agree here! It seems to happen all too frequently when I’m driving in CA (mostly LA and SF, some SD).
I thought it was a pair of motorcycles side-by-side according to mutual prior agreement. That would be understandable.
Those other things are crazy. Unintentionally, I will kill you. I hope the law would agree that it is 100% your fault, because I would want to sue your estate for damages both physical and mental.
This is not how the law works in most countries and in California. You are also more likely to unintentionally kill me if I don't lane split.
Anecdote: a motorist lost control of his vehicle at highway speeds far ahead of me, causing everyone to brake suddenly. I split into the braked cars and slowed down.
The car I had been behind was rear-ended violently. If I had not lane split, I would have been rear-ended violently. I will take an unlimited number low-speed side scrapes over being hit from behind by a two-ton car going 30 mph faster.
I'm paying attention to the road ahead, so I wouldn't rear-end anybody. On the other hand, I have huge blind spots to the side and anyway my attention is mainly to the road ahead. I barely fit in the lane, and would easily crush you with my 3 to 5 tons. Recently I was driving with about 4 inches to the adjacent vehicles on each side. You don't fit in 4 inches; this is not a scrape. That came up unexpectedly, as the lanes narrowed and other large vehicles were beside me.
And lane splitters are paying attention to the road ahead, and are watching to make sure they have enough space, that they have an escape, that there is nothing in the way, and that nobody has a turn signal on or has room to suddenly change lanes. And if any of those isn't true, they stay in their lane and don't split. Lane splitting sounds terrifying if you've never done it, but it's actually very straightforward and boring.
You as a 4-wheeled vehicle driver have to do nothing differently to accommodate lane splitters, they will go around you when it is safe, and as long as you follow the other rules of the road (use your turn signals, and don't suddenly jerk around wildly within your lane), everyone can be happy.
And if you live in an area where lane splitting is legal, and you want to be nice while you are sitting in traffic, you can stay to one side of your lane matching the other drivers ahead of you, so that while you are mostly still, bikers can continue past.
If you had an escape, it wouldn't be lane splitting.
Picture four lanes with four vehicles. You decide to go right down the middle. The outermost vehicles change, being replaced by larger vehicles, but the innermost vehicles haven't seen you. The innermost vehicles move inward to have more distance from the outermost vehicles. The resulting space is physically too small for your body.
There is no escape. You go crunch.
I wouldn't mind if this only affected you, but it isn't harmless to me. Now I have to pull over and wait for the cops, ruining my schedule. I'll need to get my van repaired. I'll need to sue your estate for damages. If things go very badly, I may be wrongly blamed for your crash.
Stay in your lane. We mark lanes for a very good reason.
>Picture four lanes with four vehicles. You decide to go right down the middle. The outermost vehicles change, being replaced by larger vehicles, but the innermost vehicles haven't seen you.
This might be part of the disconnect here. You aren't "sitting" next to cars, you are passing them. If you aren't actively passing cars, you aren't splitting and should get in your own lane.
A rule of thumb is that you should be passing cars in about a second or so. So any "crunching" would have to happen within that second of time, or the motorcycle will be out in front by the time any contact would have been made.
But in reality that just doesn't happen. Mirrors stick out, and it is extremely rare for 2 cars to get close enough for their mirrors to touch, let alone have a mirror touch the other car.
But also cars just don't go from driving straight to instantly swerving toward another car in the next lane, they have "tells", they start drifting from the driver not paying attention, they act erratically, they have turn signals.
A safe lane splitting scenario that I do is like this.
* Cars are in both lanes, fairly close together so there is no room for people to try and shoot across to fill a gap in the other lane (if the cars are "staggered" like 2 sides of a zipper, that is a dangerous situation that I don't split in, because that is when people are likely to try and shoot into the next lane without any warning!)
* Cars are traveling about 15 to 30mph in both lanes, and there isn't a large speed differential between them (again, if one lane is going 15, and the other 30, people in the 15 lane are likely to try and shoot over to get in the "faster" lane, and sometimes people in the fast lane will try to shoot in to the slow lane so they can get off the next exit)
* I can see several car lengths ahead of me on my bike (bikes sit higher than cars, so you can often see much further ahead and can see over many cars. This also means that splitting is not okay on curves, hills, or when there are big trucks obscuring your view ahead, or if the drivers ahead are staggered in their lanes blocking a nice clean path)
In that situation, I go about 10-ish mph faster than the cars around me (a rule of thumb is you should be passing a car within a second, that equates to around a 10mph speed differential), and while doing this i'm looking at tail lights 3 or 4 cars ahead to see if anyone is stopping suddenly, turning, has a signal on, or is doing anything weird. if at any point things don't look good for splitting any more, I slowly drift back into my lane, slow down to match speed with that lane, and i'm no longer splitting.
If at any point things go really bad, say someone starts getting over toward me, or there is an accident ahead of me or next to me, I grab the brake and very quickly the bad stuff will pass me. And if it doesn't in time, then I'll get munched! That means yes you'll have to go through the insurance stuff for the scrapes and dents in the side of your car, and I'll probably have a broken ankle or a small neck injury, but i'll be alive. Contrast that with the alternative of not splitting where that same accident happens (because if you are drifting into another lane with another car in that lane and you don't see the biker in time, chances are you aren't going to see the car in time either and will smack into it), and when you slam on the breaks because of that, I run into the back of your car at 30mph and am in a LOT worse shape than i would have been in the splitting scenario.
But just like how we have lane markings for a reason, in many areas we also have laws that allow splitting for a reason, and you can't selectively pick and choose which laws you want to follow!
Your "safe lane splitting scenario" is compatible with my scenario, the one where you get squished flat. It's also not OK to snap off my mirror or gouge a groove in my paint.
I'm not "drifting into another lane". I'm using the space that is rightfully mine. No, I'm not going to signal. I'm not leaving my lane. The whole lane is mine; it is my safety margin.
If a truck on my right gets closer, then I will move left, and suddenly the space to the left of me becomes zero. If the vehicle on my left (not counting you) does likewise, then he isn't leaving you any room either. The gap closes to zero. You die.
You also aren't leaving room for actual emergencies, in which case I may swerve over the line. If you are in the proper position, there will be 4 to 6 feet of safety margin, or double that if you also swerve.
You claim that your behavior is safe, but there is a good reason that 98% of the states in the USA do not support it. You can lane split in Bangalore... and the insane road fatality rate tells the story of how well that works. There are more than 10 times as many deaths per vehicle in India as there are in the USA. Besides the hazard to yourself, you are causing distraction and stress to the other drivers. You may cause a crash and not even know it.
You responded to a very educational comment with this. You should apply your comments to the other user’s decision-making process. Either one or both of the cars in your example will be giving hints that the gap will close, let alone the trucks. If the motorcyclist is behind you, he will see that something’s wrong. If he’s starting to pass, he will brake. If he’s in the middle of the pass, he will clear before the gap closes. In very unusual circumstances, you will be forced into the other car by some sudden circumstances and the motorcyclist might get caught, but you should know from driving much of your life how likely this is, and some aggregated data is also available.
Your other example about arbitrarily using the edge of the lane would be even easier to detect using his framework.
I wouldn't call it educational. It was motivated denial.
It was also unfairly presuming that motorcyclists are more alert/careful/skilled than other drivers. This is clearly not the case.
Just a couple months ago, I suddenly had a 4-inch gap on either side. (confirmed by my son in the other front seat) Perhaps the road was badly designed or built, but that happens.
It's 20 feet from one end of my vehicle to the other. Escaping that isn't so easy.
What a disappointing thread. You two should try harder to understand what the other is saying, rather than just digging your heels in and pretending your words are the only ones in the conversation that matter.
The opportunity for a great discussion was there, because both of you have relevant experience and have thought carefully about the situation. Oh well. Instead you just spent paragraph after paragraph trying to set the boundaries of the discussion in a way that excludes the other.
I think the difference is cultural. I cannot accept lane splitting at high speeds (35mph+) as long as humans still have license to drive. Once we rescind all humans the license to drive, I'm OK with lane splitting.
Think of it this easy. In the four car scenario: how would a bike pass cars that are at the speed limit? By going over the speed limit. Lane splitting by humans (not talking about filtering) ought to be against the law.
Yes, in a scenario where I'm next to 2 cars on a highway and during that one second that i'm passing them they both immediately turn toward the inner edge of the lane with no warning and within a second are as close to that inner lane as they can each get, I will get hit.
But that scenario is insanely contrived, extremely unlikely, and damn near impossible to happen and also not result in any contact without the motorcycle (if you and another driver both move toward the "inner" edge of your lane at the same time as far as you both can without "leaving" your lane, you will collide).
>You also aren't leaving room for actual emergencies, in which case I may swerve over the line. If you are in the proper position, there will be 4 to 6 feet of safety margin
This brings up another cool point that is really counterintuitive at first! Motorcycles who aren't lane splitting shouldn't be in the center of the lane, it's one of the most dangerous areas for them to be! Generally they want to be on a side closest to other traffic, the rule of thumb is to "act like your bike is the left or right side of a car in that same lane".
When a bike is in the middle of a lane, people often try to merge into it and don't see them until it's too late. By riding the inside edge of the lane, you make yourself visible to drivers that would otherwise not be able to see you. The center of a lane also has the most gravel, oil, and other stuff on it. So no, you wouldn't have 4 to 6 feet of safety margin. Hell according to your logic that entire lane should be mine, so you have zero feet of safety margin.
>You claim that your behavior is safe, but there is a good reason that 98% of the states in the USA do not support it.
And 98% of the rest of the world does. Take Norway for example. Lane splitting is legal, and there are 3 deaths per 100k vehicles there (compared to 13 in the US, and 130 in India). And that's not just one country. All of Europe is safer to drive in (average of 19 deaths per 100k vehicles) than the US, and just about all of Europe allows lane splitting. Even the NHTSA says that lane splitting "slightly reduces" accidents.
This is 100% hoss. If it isn't straight out of some "how to lane split safely" guide, it should be. This is literally everything that's going on in my head when I'm riding through traffic.
That isn't about the fuzz. People who live in States/Cities (everywhere but CA, right?) where lane splitting is illegal aren't used to lane splitting. They aren't sitting in their cars watching out for bikers and they'll make abrupt lane changes without even looking for you. That's incredibly dangerous. I moved from FL (lane splitting is illegal but people seem used to it) to TX (no splitting) and doing that is a death wish here.
Obviously you know your areas driving culture better than me but there's definitely places I wouldn't do that. Hell you'll probably just piss off people in TX and they'll run you over out of spite. Territorial drivers.
I've approached the practice with caution every time I've moved. I'm currently in California, and drivers here are more accepting of the practice due to legality, but for every three drivers who move over to give me more room, there's one who's texting and swerving.
Anyone riding a motorcycle who is simply blindly counting on other drivers to see them, follow all the rules of the road carefully, and never do anything unexpected, is not going to last long. Everything motorcyclists do has to be done in such a way that it will still be safe even if the other cars around them are all but actively malicious. Fortunately, motorcycles are extremely agile, quick, and small, so it's easy for the attentive, cautious rider to anticipate and avoid most hazards. The trick is just managing to always be sufficiently attentive and cautious.
My DCT BMW was also annoying in stop and go traffic and I didn't even have to manipulate the gears.
I still find shifting to be fun, I mostly drove my BMW in manual DCT mode (dual clutch). But in traffic? I don't want to go near a manual.