What do you see as a problem, when a motorcycle rider drives between moving cars on a freeway?

It is illegal. It is a problem because cars cannot see the motorcycle, and it could result in an accident.

It should be illegal, as it is dangerous. If he doesn’t mind dying, fine, let him die, but the dude better not scratch my ride!

It’s not illegal in California.
We call it lane-sharing.
I have no problem with it. Why should a motorcycle have to sit in traffic despite the small profile of their vehicle?

I think there’s a prejudice against bikers. If there’s not already a word for it, I propose we call it “Bikeism”.

I get so pissed off. I try so hard to be motorcycle aware. The majority of bikers try to be good drivers I’m sure. But I was going down the highway yesterday, speed limit is 60, I’m doing 65 and this biker flies past like he was shot out of a cannon, weaving in between cars and crossing lanes.

I hope he’s signed his donor card.

Yes, in California, it is legal. But, what if you are preparing to change lanes and start over and here he comes. You hit him, who’s fault is it?

It should be illegal, because it is difficult for the person in the car to anticipate the motorcycle being there, since he is not supposed to be there, and he is a small moving vehicle. It is simply dangerous. The motorcyclist is relying on the people driving the cars around him being perfectly aware of everything around them. Staying with the speed of general traffic is safest.

@Rangie I was wondering the same thing?

Here is the law in Calfironia:

“Here’s the text (verbatim) from the CHP’s site: “Lane splitting by motorcycles is permissible under California law but must done in a safe and prudent manner.” The text used to also include “The motorcycle should be traveling no more than 10 mph faster than surrounding traffic (without exceeding the speed limit) and not come close enough to that traffic to cause a collision.” but has since been removed. Perhaps they wanted to give cops more latitude to interpret what they thought was safe so they removed it.
If you lane split, avoid weaving between the two lanes and don’t exceed traffic speed by more than 10 mph. The former could get you a ticket for changing lanes without signaling while the latter could get you a ticket for reckless driving.
Your odds of getting ticketed also increase if you lane split between the carpool and fast lane. A double yellow line divides the two lanes and those are illegal to cross (with rare exceptions that would never occur on the freeway); I know of riders who have been specifically ticketed for crossing the double yellow while lane splitting between those lanes.
Lane splitting on surface streets is probably not addressed in city or county laws so I would do this with caution, as individual cops will decide whether or not they like what they see. I split lanes on surface streets if I don’t see any cops, but I stop immediately if I spot one.
There’s a little bit of information on “lane sharing” in the DMV Motorcycle handbook. They say to discourage its practice, but never say it’s illegal.” ”Source

Hey motorists have to be aware of motorcycles.
So many people never look for bikers that it becomes a hazard.
You cant pin all motorcycle accidents on motorcyclists.
There’s plenty of SUV owners who make abrupt left hand turns without even looking for someone in their blind spot.

@Captain_Fantasy Yes, but they come up on you so fast you don’t have time to know they are coming. I have had them almost hit my side view mirror. They scare the heck out of me. I agree that they have a right to be on the road, but none of us want to be the one that hits them. Personally, in my big 1 ton dually, I try not to stay in anyone’s blind spot.

Keep your eyes out then. There’s bikers out there.

@Captain_Fantasy Yes, I know, and I do, I have such a fear of hitting one of them. They don’t have much protection around them. When I worked in the hospital, we use to all them murdercycles. Most of our patients that were injured while riding their bikes, died of either internal or head injuries.

@Captain_Fantasy Of course the motorists have to be aware of everything on teh road, but if you come up much faster than general traffic you might get missed. Maybe it is the person in the cars fault, but if you are dead or lost a leg does it really matter who’s fault it is. It is about being a defensive driver for youor own safety and for others. When I see a motorcycle I keep a little more distance, for their safety. If the motorcyclist is creating a situation of less distance, well then, they are taking a chance.

@Rangie I always hear ER people call them donorcycles.

@JLeslie These days I can see that name. Back when I worked in the hospital, there wasn’t much talk about donors. I knew one that passed a car on a slight right curve and smacked in to a small car head on. He flew away and hit his head. He was wearing a helmet, but even those can take only so much. He wound up with a plate in his head, and was never the same after that.

Actually,it’s allowed in my country. They’re even over-crowded all the streets. I don’t like when they mix car and motorcycle in one same street. As others have said it’ll be harmful for each other. I really need to add that I really don’t like all the air pollution produced by those cars and motorcycles. It’s harmful for our health and our nature.

what part of this is not problematic?

Motorbike drivers are little more than organ doners.

@beautifulbobby193 of course they are, You don’t get what we are saying. It is not that we don’t like them, we fear hurting them.

I 100% agree with @Rangie My husband has owned and we sometimes rent motorcycles, and we have many friends who ride.

@Captain_Fantasy I vote we call ‘em “Anti bike-ites”

@Trillian on interstates I would vote for the term “rational drivers”.

I have no problem with bikers, and I do try to look out for them. But if they come up on me too fast for me to see (since most of my attention is necessarily focused forward) and put themselves in my blind spot, then there’s really not much responsibility that I can take if I’m doing ‘normal’ driving within my lane and dodging occasional road hazards.

Nothing new here but I must agree it is dangerous. I respect motorcycle riders and always look for them and regular bikers when driving (there are a lot of regular bikers where I live). But because motorcycles are so tiny your blind spot increases exponentially and if they are going fast in and out of lanes you have little chance to react appropriately if you did miss them b/c of your increased blind spot.

There is a good chance they will be annihilated by a car.It’s not smart to do that.

i ride and i legally lane-split. the greatest danger, in my experience is drivers that don’t signal before making a lane change.

#1 cause of motorcycle accidents? vehicles entering a rider’s right-of-way.
(source: CA DMV Motorcycle Handbook)

#1 cause of car accidents? distracted drivers.
(source: American Automobile Association)

@unique I think we all can share in the blame here. If it is legal, then it is legal. Maybe the cycle rider can come up a little slower, or give a wider berth, providing there isn’t a car in the lane beside me.
Nobody wants anybody to get hurt. Nobody wants to blame anybody more than the other. We just need to understand each other and be very considerate of one another.

It’s stupid.

In a gridlocked freeway, I’m not bothered- good for him/her!

However, if we’re all traveling at a reasonable speed and the biker’s taking a risk with both our lives because we’re not going “fast enough,” I take issue with it. They’re usually the young and stupid bikers anyway.

you see him in your rear view mirror swerving and weaving in and out of traffic. he thinks he is invincible and clever because he can do what you cannot. you immediately prepare your mind for what will or could happen when the idiot motorcycle buffoon passes your “just washed and un-dented” truck or car.

he whizzes by you, extremely close to your front bumper and stupidly continues on his way. if he keeps it up, he will die this way. he (or even she) is a highway bug that suddenly splatters head-on a windshield not knowing WTF just hit him.

I’m a big proponent in the Darwin Awards, so anyone who voluntarily takes themselves out of the gene pool is welcome to it.

Wow aggro bikeist crowd in here.

@Captain_Fantasy Like I said, I have nothing against people that like to ride a bike. I just don’t want to be the one that hurts them. I couldn’t live with that. I just thought there could be a better way of maneuvering around. Love you guys.

@Captain_Fantasy Not me, I read and believe the statistics – so realist is the word I would use. I have nothing against bikeists, but when they whiz by me in traffic, it often causes me to jerk the wheel, and is very dangerous.

@CyanoticWasp I stopped and rendered aid to a biker once coming back from DC. He and a whole pack of others riding crotch rockets were weaving in and out of traffic. Must have been about thirty of them. He hung back just before the HRBT then shot forward. My daughter and I both looked at each other, I said: “I have a bad feeling about this”. Coming out of the tunnel, I could see that there had been a crash. I stopped and got down to where he was, over one of those concrete stopper things. He had done a wheelie, broke his axle and flipped it. His stupid friend had put a tourniquet on his leg which I removed, another had already taken his helmet off (yikes!). I had the guy hold C-spine, did a head to toe. His left femur was sticking out of his pant leg, but not much blood. I told him my command, and he said (here’s the funny part) that he was Norfolk PD. Ambulance was there in record time, and I never saw him again. I always wondered if he quit doing stupid shit like that, and I thought it was very polite of me not to mention that I and my fellow EMT’s call his type “organ donors”.
That said, I don’t want to hit any one, bike or otherwise. This was the only time I’ve ever witnessed unsafe biking, aside from the no helmet people which I will not address here. So I don’t have negative feelings about bikers in general. I’d rather be comfortable in an air conditioned car, but I’m old.

I have been on a highway where cars do the same thing as the bikes you are complaining about. That is not a biker issue, when it is weaving in and out of moving traffic. That is a stupid driver issue. The sharing lanes with a responsible biker is not a problem. None at all.

@Keysha No…they’re not talking about changing lanes. They’re talking about motorcycles riding between two cars going in the same direction. A car can’t physically do that. It can try, but….that’s usually called a major accident.

@Val123 I know what they are talking about, and I reiterate: That is a stupid driver/rider issue. Sharing lanes with a responsible biker is not a problem. Unless the doorslammer makes it so. (Not a biker, but have family that are, and Aris is.

@Keysha Yes, it is a stupid biker issue. And there are stupid car driver issues. But the question was specifically about something that only bikers can do, and that is driving between two cars that are side by side, going in the same direction. The question wasn’t written for smart bike drivers, and certainly wasn’t targeting ALL bikers. Just the stupid ones.

If they want to risk it, then by all means go ahead.

@Trillian I agree with what you’ve said.

I’ve got nothing against (most) bikers. Live and let live; if they ride responsibly (and don’t act stupidly on any of my roads while I’m around) and if they don’t intentionally make noise (those asshats I want to shotgun) then I don’t much care what they do.

But I find it ironic—silly, even—that we make such noises about “Clickit or ticket” (seat belt enforcement) ... and yet we allow motorcycles on public roads at all. One or the other, safety nazis: either we go after “safety” and ban motorcycles (and bicycles, too, I suppose) from public roads, or stop trying to enforce seat belt laws. (Though I would never drive any more without a seat belt tight across my hips.)

And as for riding without a helmet, I’m all for it… for others. I guess we’ll be paying for their health insurance soon, too, won’t we? Oh, goodie.

I see someone getting killed as a problem.

@thriftymaid of course. “People getting killed” is always a problem. But we can’t resolve all problems through legislation. If we could, then no one would ever die, would they?

@thriftymaid I once asked a guy about his reasons for not wearing a helmet. He said that if he was going to die, he wanted to go out with a bang. I asked him; “Yeah, but what if you don’t die? What if you end up in the hospital, brain dead and on life support?” He didn’t really have an answer for that, but maintained that it was his right not to wear a helmet. I maintain that it is then his right to fucking crawl to the hospital. I’ll go on a run and save someone who did not choose to put himself in harms way. That’s why I’m not an EMT any more.

@CyanoticWasp You are right. We can’t legislate stupidity out of society.

@Trillian It’s not his right if there is a helmet law. Some states do not have them—even Florida (unless it’s recent) doesn’t and that’s motorcycle haven. A person driving a motorcycle between two cars puts not only the cyclist in danger, but the people in the surrounding vehicles.

@unique You are making my point. Motorist can be idiots and drive horribly irresponsibly.

@Val123 I’m aware of that, but if you read some of the responses in this thread, they speak of swerving in and out of traffic. I flat out saw a car doing that one time. pushing between lanes, swerving to the shoulder, zipping around (small sports car), doing things I’ve never seen a motorcycle do. They went several miles of doing this, before about 8 police cars finally yanked him off the road.

Not only is lane splitting legal in California… it is relatively safe. And furthermore, it contributes to better traffic flow.

I am not a motorcyclist. But I can easily understand what they are doing, and the logic behind it. If they follow the lane-splitting rules of California (such as not doing it faster than 10 MPH over the speed of the cars its passing), they will be safe. Yes, you the car driver cannot see them because they approach in a ninjalike manner. So the burden is on them to watch out for You. And they know this. It just seems dangerous to the car-driver, because the car-driver is offended that he or she has to put up with such a surprise from the motorcyclist.

But forcing motorcyclists to idly put-put behind slow traffic would be far more dangerous. Flow is the key to safe traffic. Not uniform speed, and not slowness.

Computer models and real life statistics have proven this over and over.

We all need to stretch beyond our comfort zones and look at the big picture, which is sometimes counter intuitive.

@Kraigmo I just find that when I don’t see them coming, the sudden roar right next to my car is very disconcerting.

@Keysha Well…I was responding to the question.

If there is a 10 MPH speed limit to the lane splitting, I might be swayed. I’m thinking about it.

@JLeslie Huh?

@Val123 Well, I did not realize that where it is legal there are limits on it. If it is a circumstance where the cars are unable to change lanes, like in heavy traffic, then I see less danger in the motorcycle going between cars, and going less than 10 MPH is not that difficult to perceive oncoming traffic. I think it is still a little dangerous, but seems within reason. The scary thing about a motorcycle is if the bike is in a blind spot and the car begins to change lanes and hits the motorcyclist, but if the change of lanes is relatively impossible for the car, then some of the danger is taken away. I think I would want the law to say it is only allowed in traffic moving less than 40 MPH, or some sort of law like that. I have to think about that also. If interstate traffic is moving at 65 MPH, I see no reason for the motorist to be splitting lanes. What do you think?

@JLeslie I see…but how often are cars on a freeway moving at less than 10 mph? I mean, if they’re at a standstill, which they’d almost have to be to be able to pass them at 10 mph, that’s one thing. That wouldn’t be any worse than getting out of your car and running between stopped cars.

@JLeslie & @Val123 what you both seem to have missed from @Kraigmo‘s post above is that the lane-splitting speed should be within a +10 MPH “difference” of the traffic speed. Not that it can only happen when the biker is riding at 0–10 MPH and traffic is moving even slower than that.

@CyanoticWasp @Val123 No, I got that, I said if traffic is moving below 40 miles per hour. If traffic is moving at 60–80 MPH I see no need for a motorcycle to be racing ahead. At the slower speeds, with a limit that the biker cannot go 10 MPH above the speed of the traffic flow it seems reasonable I think. If the interstate is slowed to 40, that pretty much means there is dense traffic and lane changes are not being done quickly by the cars on the road, because there is not the space between cars.

It is true that the higher the general speed, the more dangerous lane splitting becomes. So it is rational at a certain point and becomes irrational at a certain point. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a high-speeding lane splitter in my life though. And it’s his life that’s in danger, not mine.

If the car motorist always signals and observes blind spots before lane changing, and if the motorcyclist always limits his lane splitting to rational situations, then all will be well.

And usually all is well, even on the busiest freeways in the world, where I live.
As far as car-motorcycle interaction goes anyway.

@Kraigmo Thank you for commenting about the general speed, I was just theorizing, so I am glad to see that someone else sees logic in it. About your second paragraph, again I would just say that car motorists do stupid things on the road all of the time and in the end it is everyone in danger because I crash on the highway can easily be multiple car and cause a lot of headache even if no one is injured.

i watch out for the cars, I never think oh they can see me ,I creep up then whiz past only because i want to get past you as fast as i can .never assume the driver of a car can see you even if you make eye contact thats how you get killed.

@germanmannn You’re sending conflicting signals. Chances are they’ve seen you “creep up” and assume that’s the speed you’re going. They’ll make decisions based on the information you just sent them, such as changing lanes, etc. You suddenly change the rules of the game unexpectedly and THAT’S when you get killed.

Plus, we’re talking about motorcycles passing between two cars that are sided by side, running 70 mph. If you make decisions like that, then I imagine you won’t be around long.

@Val123 i bet you ride every day like i do for the past 20 years huh .