Lane Splitting bill re-introduced as HB1571

If you are interested in lane splitting being legal in the books start burning up the phone lines to Austin.

http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=82R&Bill=HB1571

The way people drive in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, there will be a road rage rash all over the roadways. The cages will be pissed that your "cutting" in line and hurt someone.

Good Luck with that.

I don't live in Texas, but I sincerely wish you luck. If a state or two did it I think there'd be a landslide of support. WA was very close... but no

I' lane split on a semi-regular basis and have experienced no more animosity than folks in CA deal with. Every now and then I get a honk or a curse and exactly two times I've been "squeezed" by folks trying to close the opening in the center of the lane. That didn't work out either time because they didn't notice me till I was passing them. And I split on a FJR1300 lol.

And that stuff absolutely DOES happen in CA. Is the fine not very big in TX? When I moved to WA I was astonished at how difficult it was to not split... It just makes no sense after riding in CA for a while.

The act of lane splitting isn't legal or illegal here. It largely depends on the mood of the cop I guess. I've split right past cops before and didn't hear sirens chashing me lol.

There are other laws they can hit you with such as failure to maintain you lane and failure to signal but I've only heard of a handful of people who have gotten cited for it.

Interesting, I though CA was the only 'vague' state, I thought it was expressly prohibited everywhere else. Thanks for the info

PLEASE!!! Let it get through this time. I think it's been on the table the past few sessions but always stalls at one stage or another.

I'm all for it but.... when I first got my bike I tried a bit of lane splitting and on two separate occasions people actively tried to hit me with their vehicles, it was pretty obvious. I still do it when I get really pissed and when I think I can go by before people see me.

If the public is educated I will go for it. I am a very aggressive rider and I hate everyone who drives cars (even myself when I drive my civic on rare occasions).... but it seems too risky in DFW

Bottom line is this, no matter what YOU do, it's not legal for people to try and kill you with their car. Moreover, I'm pretty sure it's 'unsafe' to try and 'block' ANY vehicle.

Then again, I'm not in TX. on the couple of times it happened to me in L.A. they lost a $200 mirror. (also illegal i know I know)

Hehe... I thought lane splitting was legal in TX.
Just came back from San Antonio and on my way through Austin I sneaked through a major traffic jam this way. Only one old Suburban filled with large girls () tried to cut me off.

stupid law,plan and simple. what,your in to much of a hurry that you have to put your life and the lifes of Innocent people on the line just to get to where your going 5 min faster? the next thing you know, some of you will be pissed when someone gets killed doing it. just cause you think it cool doesn't mean you have to do it. we motorcycle riders already got a bad name as it is.

Well, as a person who has been rear-ended TWICE on motorcycles I respectfully disagree. When I am on I-5 in Los Angeles in wall-to-wall traffic the only SAFE place to be is beside two cars, because cars do not move sideways

Any-time there is an opening cars will lunge into the other lane, and not look for bikes. But again cars don't move sideways into each other, AND at least in L.A. 80-90% of people on the freeway actually do look for bikes BECAUSE of splitting, as they do in MOST of the world. I think that splitting actually makes people MORE aware of bikes in general.

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PS, 5 minutes!?:huh in LA my commute was 20 minutes on the bike and nearly 2 hours in the car.

Air cooled shovelhead choppers in the summer heat do not do stop & go well. Nice to be able to keep moving, even if on the side of the road, Even a parade in winter will overheat an air cooled engine.

I don't trust citizens to split lanes on a regular basis but I don't out here but summer in the city, would be nice.

Not everybody is water cooled yet and young folks are always in a hurry, let them go. You don't have to lane split if you don't want to.

Kinda like helmets, ATGATT, and other rights & freedoms that one might not want to do but no need to keep others from it.

YMMV

It's a pretty safe practice.

kind of astonishing that no-one has actually studied it scientifically.

People would much rather look at issues like this with emotion instead of logic. If you think about it and how it's done SAFELY it doesn't make sense to not allow it lol.

First, I'm not opposed to the filtering bill.

There is a body of evidence showing that filtering is a cause of accidents and the science is out there for those willing to look. Just googling "Filtering accidents" brings up websites offering legal advice and actual studies done by real researchers is available as well if you select site:.gov or site:.edu. Below is the link to one example. I'll leave it up to the others to debate statistical significance, threats to validity, etc.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives..../rsrr/theme5/indepthstudyofmotorcycleacci4784

I'm not comfortable filtering myself and will use it judiciously, if at all, if the bill passes. It is generally too easy to find other routes in the first place.

Anything we do on the road is going to cause an accident eventually when speaking of the whole population. If the govt. started to require people to require people to juggle bowling balls while driving it would be the cause of accidents. The simple act of driving a motor vehicle is the cause of accidents.

According to that study Right of Way Violations still account for a large portion (38%) of accidents.

I'll take my chances between the cages.

Like I said. Go for it. I'll hold the beer.