The Ride Report

One of the great benefits of riding in California is lane-splitting aka “lane sharing” or filtering or white-lining — in other words, riding the gap between two lanes of cars that are doing the tired old traffic jam thing. It’s illegal in most states, and while it’s not technically legal here, it’s also not technically illegal either. We get to do it here and the Highway Patrol looks the other way. This is a very good thing, because the traffic is so bad that you’d never get anywhere if you didn’t do it.

There are some people who don’t like lane-splitting. I believe they come from one of two camps: jealous cagers or scared riders. Jealous cagers can’t stand to see anyone getting something they’re not getting too. Just as crabs in a bucket will pull back in those making an escape, jealous cagers think that if they’re stuck in traffic, you should be stuck in traffic too. They can’t stand to see you getting somewhere five minute faster than they can, and they don’t realize that the motorcyclist lane-splitting past them is actually helping everyone go faster by not adding one more vehicle to that line of gridlocked cars.

Scared riders think it’s suicidal to lane-split because they don’t have the courage to try it themselves. They don’t realize that it’s actually more dangerous to be sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, waiting to get squashed by an SUV driven by a cell-phone using, make-up applying, kid-wrangling, suburban housewife when she rear-ends the car in front of you — through you.

Me, I love lane-splitting. My friend Slider commented the other day that “Every time we talk about lane-splitting, you smile.” I couldn’t argue — I was smiling at the time. I think lane-splitting is fun. You have to concentrate like hell, be in complete control of your motorcycle, read traffic like a mystic, constantly and instantly judge closing speeds and the size of gaps, and it’s a continuous gut-check. It’s riding at a higher level and I absolutely love it.

Of course, I’ve had some practice. I had a job a few years back where I commuted 65 miles each way 5 days a week through the worst traffic LA and Orange County has to offer, from the San Fernando Valley down to Aliso Viejo. If I hadn’t lane-split it would have taken me hours to get to work. As it was, even with the splitting it generally took about an hour and twenty minutes each way. I rode that commute in sun and rain and wind and darkness and cold and heat and every weird weather pattern Mother Nature could muster. I rode through Sigalerts and construction delays and and even the occasional miraculous day of almost no traffic. And through it all, I was lane-splitting. You do it as much as I did, you’re going to get good at it.

I rode over to my mom’s house this afternoon to do some chores around the house for her, and I got to do some lanesplitting on the way over there. I also happened to have my camera rig mounted so I filmed the ride, then I uploaded it to YouTube this evening. Check it out: