Feb

Motorcycle Lane Splitting California

Motorcycle Lane Splitting California is legal!

Heading out of the bay .. I left at the wrong time…there were some breaks in traffic but not much..it started clearing up outside of Vacaville…. longest session yet!

Assembly Bill 51, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, for the first time legally defines lane–splitting, the practice of motorcyclists riding between lanes to move quickly through traffic.

Personally, and most probably because I’ve been riding motorcycles for over 40 years, I try to avoid lane splitting whenever possible. naturally here in Southern California, when you’re riding in the air-cooled bike sometimes lane splitting is unavoidable to prevent damage to your engine.

But, with that said, there’s been many times when I’ve been invited to ride from San Diego up to LA and have declined just for the fact that I knew it would entail lane splitting in super-heavy LA traffic. I’ve seen my share of distracted drivers here on the California roads, and really don’t want to increase my odds of injury by splitting lanes on the congested freeways.

Driving a car here in San Diego, on a number of occasions, I’ve been rear ended by an inattentive driver. Luckily, there were never any injuries and only some fender damage in each case. Now, keep in mind that if the same accidents occurred while I was on my motorcycle, the outcome would have been totally different. Read more