The governor of Oregon has decided that riding a motorcycle 20 miles per hour between nearly stopped cars is just too dangerous to be legally permissible here in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Seriously, I don’t think any issue in motorcycling reveals the worst side of U.S. attitudes like lane splitting. I’ll explain, but first the news.
Riders in Oregon have been trying for years to get a bill passed to make lane splitting, or at least filtering, legal. (I’m defining lane splitting as when a motorcycle is moving between two lanes of traffic moving in the same direction, and filtering as doing the same thing when traffic is stopped, such as moving to the front of the line at a stop light.) Previous attempts failed, but this year the legislature passed a watered-down law by broad margins, by 42 to 14 in the House and 18 to six in the Senate. By “watered-down” I mean that it would have been legal for motorcycles to lane split only when traffic was going no more than 10 miles per hour, the motorcycle could go no faster than 20 miles per hour, and only on a multi-lane road with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour or higher. In other words, we’re not talking about condoning squids doing wheelies past your car door at 60 miles per hour in city traffic. The veto leaves California as the only state to allow lane splitting while Utah allows filtering.
Despite the restrictions in the Oregon bill (which would have meant the practice was very limited, in real life), Governor Kate Brown vetoed it, saying lane filtering was too dangerous.
Think about that. It’s too dangerous to ride a motorcycle 20 miles per hour between stopped or nearly stopped traffic.
Let this motorcyclist filter to the head of the line at a stop light and as soon as the light turns green he’ll be out of these car drivers’ lives for good. Make him sit in line and he just backs up traffic one spot further. Everyone benefits from lane filtering.
What our laws say about us
In these hyper-polarized times, just about everyone tends to look at any political issue as left versus right, but in this case I don’t think it fits that paradigm. The bill in Oregon passed with bipartisan support. I don’t think the issue is left or right or Democrat or Republican. I think the real problem is American attitudes in general, that span the political spectrum.
First is arrogance. Virtually the entire world allows motorcycles to lane split. Some Asian countries would collapse if it weren’t allowed. Transportation would be paralyzed. Yet the most common attitude in the United States is that if the rest of the world does it and we don’t, then 95 percent of the world must be wrong.
The second attitude is misguided self interest over the greater good. Never mind that traffic flow studies elsewhere show that everyone, not just motorcyclists, gets to their destinations faster when motorcycles are allowed to lane split. Having lived where lane splitting was common, I can tell you this from personal experience. Let me filter to the front of the line at a stop light and once it turns green I’ll be out of your life. Make me sit in a line of traffic, with four or five other motorcycles, and we’ll back cars up just that much further, maybe making you wait through another cycle of the light. Sure, I benefit more from lane splitting than you do in your car, but everyone benefits some. But people are more worried about some guy on a motorcycle “cutting line” than about the real effects.
And that leads to the third negative attitude. A stubborn ignorance of the facts. Although studies in California have shown safety improvements from lane splitting, the car driver who’d “never get on one of those death machines” is convinced he knows best, even about something he’s never experienced. Motorcyclists who lane split are far less likely to be rear-ended, and that’s an increasing danger as more and more drivers are distracted by their phones and more complex in-car entertainment and navigation systems. Anyone on the road today has to see the signs of increased distracted driving, and road users such as pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists are the ones who pay the steepest price when things go wrong.
If our laws won’t allow us to do a commonsense traffic maneuver that’s used daily all over the world, then I wouldn’t say we’re all that free. And if we think it’s far too dangerous to ride a motorcycle 20 miles per hour between lanes of idling traffic, we’re not that brave, either.
Love your columns, but I will respectfully disagree. I believe that the main problem is the “zero sum” thinking that is prevalent. If someone else is getting ahead, that means that I am getting behind. I do not lane split, but I see this thinking frequently. In addition to a motorcycle, I ride a bicycle frequently. and if I pass a line of cars at a traffic light, I’ll get honked at, flipped off, sometimes cars will try to cut me off…even though it makes NO difference to them that I will be in front of them.
I don’t think we disagree at all. What you’re describing is exactly what I was thinking of in the paragraph in my article about “misguided self interest” where I wrote that “…people are more worried about some guy on a motorcycle ‘cutting line’ than about the real effects.” Never mind that it doesn’t hurt them, or that it may even benefit them. Other people just don’t want to see someone else getting ahead of them. Petty and short-sighted.
I think some form of lane-splitting/filtering is long overdue everywhere in America. To me, it is far more dangerous to sit in a jam than to filter to the front of it. It’s about danger and safety and not at all about turn-taking or cutting the line. When riding, I do not sit in traffic jams here in New Jersey, ever. I’ll just get off. I can always find another way home even if it takes longer. Baring an alternative, I’d rather sit it out and wait for the traffic to clear. Instead, we are told that it is better to be sandwiched between two (or up to 4) 3 ton machines many times piloted by the incompetent – but that’s another story… Lunacy.