Lane Splitting

{Side note: I have done terribly with updating this blog regularly. I have a bunch of links saved or little items typed up that I saved as drafts, but I just never actually posted them. I apologize to anyone who logs on today to see just a myriad of new posts. I'll make sure to post them in the future to the site rather than just save as drafts for weeks a a time.}

When I lived in San Francisco, one thing that never ever ceased to terrify me was lane splitting by motorcyclists. I know that the first day I drove into the city upon moving there, I flinched every single time a motorcycle suddenly edged between myself and another car in what seemed to be rather narrow traffic lanes; this happened dozens of times every hour. You'd be sitting there stopped at a light or cruising slowly in heavy traffic only to watch a blur outside your driver's side window suddenly fly by you. Sometimes when the traffic was really tight or the cars were close together, the motorcyclists would literally extend an arm out and push off against my car to help keep themselves centered between vehicles. I'd hear a gentle "thud" as an arm nudged against my car and then accelerated away.

I was thinking about this earlier and decided to try to find what the actual rules on lane splitting in California are; I don't know that anyone follows them, because based on personal experience it seemed pretty haphazard from where I stood, but nonetheless I thought maybe if rules existed and were followed, this practice would be a little less risky. Here are the guidelines outlined on the California Highway Patrol site:

http://www.chp.ca.gov/programs/lanesplitguide.html

Most of the suggestions or guidelines seem valid enough, but in my mind it is still daunting.

I'm planning on trying to find some academic resources that have statistics on accidents relevant to lane splitting, and when I muddle through some of those I'll likely write a separate post on that topic, but I figured for now I'd just see if anyone had thoughts on the practice or the fact that it is currently only legal in California in the US (though it is common in other countries).