Late to the thread and being an mid west / east coaster all my life, I've never had the opportunity to lane split. But I understand that it was the CHP that endorsed the practice initially because of the reduction in rear end accidents to motorcyclists in heavy rush hour traffic. Any truth to that?

 

Well race day traffic in Vegas is MUCH worse then any other day of the year. So as long as the time is an aberration....

 

Not sure if there's any truth to that or not.

I know that it's always important to leave yourself an escape route when in traffic (lane splitting is one way of doing that) and keeping an eye on what's going on behind you so you have time to escape between the traffic if you're about to get rear ended.


On another note,
This is just an assumption and don't know if it's already been covered, but I think one reason they have passed this law is so they have something to go by in court if a Leo decides he wants to write you up for riding in an unsafe manner. As it stands, they have had no laws to go by. It will be interesting to see the final write up on this new law.


Unrelated info.
My first post other than introducing myself.
Been splitting traffic for 41 years in California. There is definitely a safe way to do it and I find myself moving out of the way of other motorcyclists that feel they got it wired.
One thing for sure, you can't treat it like a video game.

 

Also late to the thread but I too am a huge proponent of lane splitting. Had I *not* been doing so on the 405 one day in Carson I would have ended up wadded up between a Scion xB I'd been following until traffic slowed up and the Dodge Ram pickup that rear ended it. That made a believer out of me!

I have two bikes, and I won't lane split as often on my Triumph Rocket 3 Standard due to its width. My other bike is a left-side/tank-shifted hardtail with foot (not rocker) clutch, no front brake and the throttle on the left side of the handlebars so I have to really "turn up the amp to 11" when it comes time to lane split.

As an aside, I too noticed that LEOs on bikes tend to "part the water" when they lane split. I have two helmets, and I've found that cars are more apt to move aside when I'm wearing a 3/4 face helmet with visor and aviator glasses than when I'm wearing my full face helmet. Intriguing....

 

So the only people in the Bay Area to get from point A to point B are on a motorcycle?

 

There isn't a day at some point when I'm stuck in line at the red light when I don't think to myself, 'If I was in Cali, this would be so much easier'!

We'll get it in Georgia once I get so old that I'm on a trike!

 

I couldn't imagine not being able to split lanes. Got stuck on a Vegas freeway on my old bike when there was a bomb threat (backpack on the freeway, obviously a bomb, let's shut down the freeway), couldn't split, and bike started popping, farting, just not running right. Got over to the shoulder and had to wait for it to cool down in 100 degree heat to get to the hotel without blowing it up...not just a personal safety thing, these bikes do NOT do well in traffic. That being said, I've had similar experiences as TRacer, on the same freeway funny enough, where I would have been roadkill sitting behind someone. That being said you still get the morons drinking their coffee while texting and not looking when they change lanes that you still have to watch for. Still worth it IMO. I'm a huge (yuge?) proponent of lane splitting (when done safely).

 

In rush hour traffic.....Yeah pretty much.

 

Definitely the same in Orange County, if you want to actually get to point B the same day...

 

I gotcha, I was being funny.