California motorists are not strangers to the practice of lane splitting. Think back to the last few times you were navigating a significant flow of traffic on one of the Golden State’s many crowded freeways. At any point, did you encounter a motorcycle? Did that motorcycle happen to travel between you and the vehicle next to you, even though the vehicle next to you was already traveling in the next lane over? This practice is referred to as lane splitting. For decades, the California Highway Patrol and other law enforcement officers have implicitly allowed motorcyclists to lane split, especially under certain conditions. In fact, a great [...]

Just north of Los Angeles, a motorcyclist nearly got into an accident with another motorcyclist. Now, we know that’s not exactly the most thrilling bit of a news. In fact, you may not even consider it news at all. However, there is one element involved in this near-head-on crash that caught our eye — and it will certainly catch the eye of the motorcycle community. Here’s what happened: one of the motorcyclists was riding properly in his lane as he drove through the mountains on a seemingly open road. But another motorcyclist coming from the other direction swerved into the lane of the first motorcyclist, causing [...]

There is an inherent danger to many of the activities we participate in every day. Most of us acknowledge but refuse to worry about most of these dangers, such as the risk of getting into a car accident. If we constantly worried about such risks, we would be largely unable to live productive lives outside our homes. But for motorcyclists, the calculation of risk is different. Those who primarily ride motorcycles understand that the risks of death or significant injury are much higher than they are for individuals who drive in cars or trucks. Motorcycles offer less protection in the event of an accident, which means [...]

Chances are very good that as you’ve sat in one of the innumerable traffic jams here in Southern California that you’ve seen motorcycles navigating their way between the rows of stopped vehicles, a practice known as lane-splitting. While your automatic reaction might be to think the practice is unsafe and even illegal, this is not necessarily the case. Indeed, public safety officials have gone out of their way to raise public awareness about the legality of lane-splitting, which statistics show currently sits at only about 61 percent. […]