I've lane-splitted or lane-filtered for years, decades, now. It's literally the only way to live when you have a motorcycle in Los Angeles. I'd hazard it's the only way to live in Los Angeles, period, as I detest sitting in traffic for hours upon hours just to go five miles.
But in that time, I've had my fair share of close calls. I had a few near misses. One clear bang with an inattentive Camry driver. And one annoyed soccer mom in a van who didn't appreciate I wasn't burdened by the same traffic she had to sit through. She's allegedly missing a mirror after she allegedly tried to crush me into a work truck.
Allegedly.
And while I'm a proponent of the practice, and big advocate for states to adopt such laws as to allow either splitting or filtering, as attested above, I understand the dangers. One of the chief concerns is that incident stated above, but in the context of the video below, i.e. where it's not a Honda Odyssey doing the crushing, but two semi-trucks. Watch the truly terrifying footage.
A single miscalculation can lead to significant consequences
byu/xoxoSweetheart-0 indashcamgifs
Now, here's where I'll state unequivocally, the rider didn't have enough room to split. Those trucks look to be merging to one lane and the rider wanted to cut through instead of waiting or going around. And given semi-trucks don't have the best blind spots around, I don't put an ounce of fault on the semi drivers themselves. This one is completely on the motorcycle rider.
I mean, this is essentially the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the boats are splitting the massive tankers and the bad guy boat gets crushed and explodes for no particular reason. It was always going to end up this way.
But it's situations like the above that makes the rest of the general public not like motorcycle lane-splitting or filtering, as one dumb-ass on a sportbike making an incredibly dumb decision turns the tides against us. Like other groups, i.e. hunting, fishing dirt biking, UTVing, we should be policing our own and calling them out when we can in order to discourage others from doing similarly idiotic stunts.
Luckily for the rider, they're OK, but I doubt they'll be pulling that move again any time soon. Which, honestly, good.
