What Soccerdad said.Soccerdad1995 wrote:I doubt you will find too many people who disagree with the part that I bolded. The problem arises when irresponsible bikers lane split while travelling at speeds which are significantly greater than 5 mph over the speed of other traffic, as happens in places like California. I am envisioning somewhere like Houston on the Westpark Tollway where you have frequent elevation changes in the roadway and resulting blind spots just after each one. A motorcycle would have to be going at a pretty low speed to safely stop if a car was in the middle of two lanes just over that ridge (as frequently happens while trying to change lanes in stopped traffic). If bikers overall are going to be responsible with this, then I think it is fine. But I have personally seen a not insignificant number of very irresponsible bikers out there (including the moron who passed me on the right shoulder while I was going 75mph and then turned and pointed a camera inside my car).bnc wrote:I can see opponents of this bill using the "blood in the streets" argument, which is as silly here as it is with gun laws. Splitting lanes when traffic is going 20mph or less and the bike is going no more than 5mph above traffic is perfectly safe and quite tame.
Net-net, I would be in favor of this law with the restrictions noted (20 mph max speed, and a differential of 5 mph or less), and a presumption of liability on the biker who is doing this for any collisions with vehicles.
I lived in Southern California for a decade. Worked in Long Beach, lived in Irvine. I have a great deal of firsthand motorist experience with lane splitting.
The problem I see? It will be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to enforce the 20mph/5mph criteria. And therein lies the rub.
I will freely admit that I can't cite the California law at the time I lived there, but I have hundreds of thousands of miles logged on Southern California freeways and can state, without reservation, that speeds as low as 35mph routinely saw lane splitting, and that lane splitting at only 5mph above ambient traffic speeds would have been an absolute joke. At 20mph/5mph, the rider would have had other bikers on his tail leaning on their horns for him to speed up. And if he didn't speed up, the impatient rider would cut between the gap you left between you and the car in front of you in order to get an empty...er, semi-lane.
Not hyperbole. Let me repeat: hundreds of thousands of miles of experience with California lane splitting. I don't want to try to equate that to hours spent and lost because the depression might be overwhelming.
One of the worst crashes I was a close witness to was on the 405 southbound around 7:00 p.m. one fall. Rush hour was beginning to thin--as much as traffic on the 405 can ever be described as thinning--and we were moving in fits and spurts from complete stop to 15mph. It was dusk and visibility wasn't the best. We were at a stop when a driver's side door opened two car lengths ahead of me. At the same time I saw the driver toss out the contents of a coffee cup or soda, I heard a rice burner. It happened in milliseconds. The driver's door was starting to close, and the bike smashed into its edge at what, subjectively, seemed a high rate of speed.
I'm sure the bike wasn't going all that fast. But it's relative. If you're standing still and an object moves by you doing 30mph within three feet of your shoulder...well, that will seem fast.
The bike's driver was a young man, and he had a young woman passenger; in their early 20s. They both wore helmets. Didn't help. They were both mangled and dead where they landed. I stayed to give my statement to LAPD.
Is this typical? Absolutely not. But it's something I had to witness firsthand. If Texas legalizes lane splitting will we see the streets run red with blood? Of course not.
But safety in major Texas cities will rest on the shoulders of the bikers. Unless they can employ some cell-signal blocking technology that will kill reception for 100 yards around them, they now will be navigating in an era of almost universal distracted driving. Don't know about the other big cities, but rush hour in Houston is like being on the road with one million intoxicated drivers.
Let me stress two things: I am not at all opposed to Texas allowing lane splitting. I'll support it. Second, I do not expect all riders to uniformly respect the 20mph/5mph law. There will be blood, just not very often.
Last tidbit before anyone blasts me as anti-two-wheeler. I learned to ride a motorcycle when I was 12, was given my first one and let loose when I was 14. Was working on it, gapping and replacing spark plugs, tuning the carb, long before I learned to drive a car at 17. I grew up in the Philippines, and in the constant bumper-to-bumper no-lane driving of metro Manila, a motorcycle was more agile and actually safer because of it. But you couldn't go more than 2- or 3mph faster than traffic: there simply were no lanes to split. Speed governed by constantly expected obstacles.