i get such a laugh.
in nevada it is legal to ride with no helmet if you are on a scooter...even on the freeway. as they say it is a safe and sane thing to do.
but lane splitting is unsafe and not sane.
and people laugh and make fun of Ca.
.
i am in reno once a week and i see scooters on the fwy and no buckets on there heads.
i always thought safe sharing speed was traffic speed +15 ...
the longer one spends next to a car the longer one gets exposed to a side swipe! by zooming by, the cagers have no time re/act and do something stupid or spiteful ... by the time they wake up and see you, and re-act, you're already past them!
enjoy,
ferenc
The problem is that legislators like to be able to define everything. "Safe" is in the eye of the beholder.
A bit of an update on AB236. The bill went to the Transportation Committee late last week, which is chaired by Carrillo, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. Writeup and video here. Gnarly quote from one of the opposing legislators, Assemblywoman Carlton: "I’m picturing a scenario, I’m on the highway, we’re going down… 25 miles an hour, I’ve got a kid in the back seat. They roll the window down, they stick their arm out, my kid ends up with a broken arm, the motorcyclist’s guts end up all over the back of my car. Uhm… it just doesn’t seem to me to make a lot of sense. I’m sorry, it doesn’t. It just seems like a very dangerous thing to be doing."
Another disturbing bit: they're talking about adding a something to the bill that would make accidents that occur during splitting the fault of the motorcyclist by default. No details on this yet, and not sure it would actually fly, but Assemblyman Daly said "…on the liability side, talking with people in law enforcement is that if there was an accident, and the lane splitting, that they would cite the motorcyclist anyway, say it was his fault. So we was just looking at it a little more in the… trying to give people a little more peace of mind to say that, if a person decides to do the lane splitting, you do so at your own risk. So we just want to make it clear that, you know, we’re not trying to put anybody on the hook, or get the regular people in their cars to have additional liability ’cause someone else… you know, did something else."
So if that's added and this bill is passed and you’re splitting lanes legally – cautiously and prudently as required by the new law – and a driver hits you, it’s your fault because we can’t have “regular people” (which apparently doesn’t include motorcyclists) being “on the hook” to be aware of their surroundings and check their mirrors to avoid “additional liability” if they hit a rider who’s doing “something else.” Something else being lane splitting, which would be legal. Isn’t not hitting other drivers something all drivers are already on the hook for? No bueno.
Anyway, check out the video and presentations from the meeting here.
AB236 was defeated in a vote in the full Senate tonight, 16-5. Extremely disappointing in so many ways. I had high hopes, given the overwhelming support in the Assembly. Full story and video of the vote here.
One thing I think it's important to take away from this is that we as a community continue to suffer as a result to a minority of riders who ride idiots - whether it's splitting too fast or just riding too aggressively on the streets in general. The progress of AB236 was bedeviled at every step by poor perception of motorcyclists and the reputation of lane splitting in California, where riders supposedly split at 90 MPH and knock mirrors off left and right all day long. We all know this isn't reality, but as DataDan and others said over in this thread and many others, "We ignore public opinion about splitting at our peril."
It was. When I started riding (2009) both the class M test and MSF handbook said 15-20mph over and as long as you don't break the speed limit. I was never aware of any issue coming from the DMV. I see that the DMV is now on board which I guess is great but the "rules" are way more restrictive than before so I'm not really sure if we benefit or not.
Nobody was really. Luckily it got turned around and ended up being a good thing.I was never aware of any issue coming from the DMV.
I see that the DMV is now on board which I guess is great but the "rules" are way more restrictive than before so I'm not really sure if we benefit or not.
If you go "zooming" past cars all the time, they have plenty of time do something spiteful - like ban splitting. The more drivers that are freaked our or pissed off by rider behavior, the more likely this becomes.
It's true that you shouldn't hang out next to cars, but there's a significant difference between "not hanging out" and "zooming."