Saturday, June 6, 2015

Riding Notes

Yes, it's legal to split lanes
Log Item: SPLITTING LANES - The cure for hate is forgiveness. The cure for outrage is humility. The cure for sorrow is thankfulness.  The cure for envy is buying your own motorcycle. The video (here) of a bike splitting traffic on an LA freeway and another one of a wreck witnessed by a lady on a bike (here) while splitting traffic are instructive if you don't know what I'm talking about.

In the Los Angeles Area, the one constant is traffic. For you east-coasters take the Leesburg (VA) pike in traffic, or sit on the freeway between Manhattan and Long Island, and you will feel the pain as well. 

To get to the meat, it's interesting to see how motorists react to a motorcycle spitting traffic. Most give you extra room to get past. Some do not.

I was in Pasadena on Friday, dealing with issues associated with a company that I helped found that is presently not doing all that well and a meeting that started at 1pm, sadly for me, ended at 5pm. That means a three hour drive home in a car with LA traffic, or an hour and twenty minutes on a motorcycle, splitting traffic...such are the advantages.

Log Item: The kid with the Ducati Monster  that I reported on May 23rd has been conspicuously absent from the streets, riding without helmet, gloves or boots. I walked down to his grandparents home and rang the bell. His grandmother explained that he crashed his bike into a curb/tree/block wall (no motorcycle license) a bit more than a week prior and it put him in the hospital. She ushered me up to his room where he was recovering from a broken leg and broken arm. It could have been worse.

2 comments:

  1. I guess you could say that I'm slow when I lane split. I don't exceed the cars by very much higher speed. If traffic is running close to posted, I stick in the lane. I've seen too many cars change lanes too quickly.

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    1. Don, when I split I have a limit of 30 - 40 mph max, at that point, I slip into the flow of traffic. I think that my lane splitting is much like yours, with keen attention to the cars on both sides ahead. To be fair, we're always coming up on their blind spots.

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