Even Worse than Cagers

When I taught Minnesota’s MSF classes, I would often caution my students that “cagers aren’t out to get you, they aren’t that competent.” The wannabe bikers who took those classes, from the Beginning Rider Course (BRC) to the Advance Course, would always claim that cagers “are out to get you” and I enjoyed ridiculing that delusion. I did regularly remind my classes that, “It takes them 4-wheels to balance, how competent can they be?” and that always got a laugh. My argument to this day is that if cagers were trying to kill us they’d be way easier to predict than if they are nothing more than random-motion-generators with entirely unpredictable and irrational results.

My last six years stuck to bicycling has not improved my opinion of car drivers. However, living in a Mississippi River town that pretends to be a tourist destination has done nothing positive for my opinion of motorcycles, in particular “bikers.” 

All summer, I’m forced to watch these goobers wallow through stop lights, because they are incapable of stopping without falling over, in a parade of noisy morons is a weekly exhibition of incompetence. Their regular demonstration of white-boy-entitlement (occasionally white bimbos, to be fair) flaunting traffic laws and disturbing the peace with no part of their smog machines meeting EPA/DOT emissions standards proves that we are a lawless failing empire. Never mind the rot at the top demonstrated by half of the country that is willing to elect a felon with a history of rape, fraud, tax evasion, and treason, we get loud and proud demonstrations of the capriciousness of our “law enforcement” every time a biker fires up his blubbering junkmobile. 

Toward the end of my southern California stint, in 1991, I started to see a lot of illegal motorcycles on the road. Like today’s hippomobile riders, the California smog machines were mostly ridden by fat, patched and badged, and tattooed white bozos either being gangbangers or doing their best to look and act like gangbangers. Like every other state in the country, the California cops suddenly started looking the other way when those undisguised criminals blubbered past. The 80s were known as the “greed is good” decade, but they were really about the beginning of lawlessness and top-down criminal behavior.

So, now my opinion has shifted slightly. The only thing I despise more than incompetent cagers are incompetent bikers. The cagers, at least, often have the good sense to try to hide their incompetence with modern driving-assisted vehicles. And, let’s be honest, it doesn’t take much of a computer to be smarter than the dumber-50% of humanity. Bikers are going the other way. Since they feel compelled to compound their noise-making by traveling in herds, they con weak “lawmakers” into passing foolish legislation like Minnesota’s “road guard” idiocy. Three hours of remedial training (pushing the intellectual limits of biker gangbangers) and $30 and a total numskull “authorizes motorcycle road guard certificate holders to stop and control traffic for motorcycle group riders. Drivers of vehicles stopped by a flagger may only proceed if instructed by a flagger or police officer.” Yep, people actually making a useful contribution to society can be held up by a pack of useless numskulls out to violate noise and air pollution laws and get drunk at every tavern on the way.

This year’s lame legislators caved to the gangbanger crowd with about the dumbest “lane-splitting” law yet considered in our rapidly decaying empire. The law slithered into the 2023-2024 Budget Bill, HF 5247, believe it or not. I have no problem with lane-splitting and, in fact used that ability almost non-stop for 10 years living in Southern California. I do have a problem with Minnesota’s penalizing incompetent motorcyclists with, “An operator of a motor vehicle must not intentionally impede or attempt to prevent the operation of a motorcycle when the motorcycle is operated under the conditions specified in section 169.974,”

Now, here is the badshit crazy part of this new rule:

(g) A person may operate a motorcycle and overtake and pass another vehicle in the same direction of travel and within the same traffic lane if the motorcycle is operated:
(1) at not more than 25 miles per hour; and
(2) no more than 15 miles per hour over the speed of traffic in the relevant traffic lanes.
(h) Motor vehicles including motorcycles are entitled to the full use of a traffic lane and no motor vehicle may be driven or operated in a manner so as to deprive a motorcycle of the full use of a traffic lane.

So, motorcycles can occupy another vehicle’s lane at will but other vehicles have to give motorcycles “full use of a traffic lane.” How the fuck can you rationally follow that law if you are in a car? The moment a motorcycle enters your lane, you are in violation of part (h) of the same law. And the law provides a traffic violation for that moment! If the state wanted to find a way for the 99.999,,,% of road users to begin the process of banning motorcycles from public roads, I think they may have hit the jackpot.

Maybe you’re under some delusion that Minnesota motorcycles are particularly competent? [Pardon me while I laugh so hard my guts hurt.] Maybe you think that, even though they dress like Outlaws and Hells’ Angels and flaunt federal and state emissions and noise laws as if they don’t exist, they are really nice people (probably dentists and grade school teachers) who will make every effort to obey that “no more than 15 miles per hour over the speed of traffic” up to “25 miles per hour?” Maybe you believe in the Easter Bunny and Superman, too?

Buy some popcorn and find a safe place to sit back and watch the trainwreck next July. It’s gonna be . . . exciting, as long as you aren’t on the road when it happens.

Putting Putting Last Things First

In it’s usual half-assed, half-cocked way, the Minnesota legislature is considering motorcycle lane-sharing/splitting in an amendment tacked on to Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 169.974, subdivision 5. The new sections are 1) “Only if the operation of the motorcycle does not exceed 40 miles per hour and is operated at no more than 15 miles per hour over the speed of traffic, a person may operate a motorcycle (1) abreast of, overtake, or pass
another vehicle within the same traffic lane, or (2) between two parallel lanes of moving or stationary traffic headed in the same direction . . . and 2) An operator of a motor vehicle that intentionally impedes or attempts to prevent any operator of a motorcycle from operating a motorcycle as permitted under paragraph (e) is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.”

I have no significant objection to the first article as it appears to be a reasonably competent copy of the California lane-splitting/sharing statutes that have been in place since the 80s. The second half is an extension of the entitled, cowardly Minnesota motorcycle attitude that it’s everyone else’s job to watch out for incompetent, reckless and careless motorcyclists. We’ve been here before in my column, many times in fact. Not only do motorcyclists imagine themselves to be free from having to bother with noise and emissions regulations, because of their incredible self-importance, they imagine that “right of way” traffic laws should always assume the motorcycle has the right of way. Lawyers are going to have a field day with this nonsense, but motorcyclists are risking everything putting this horse before the cart.

I love splitting lanes, even though I have rarely done it since I left California in 1991. I feel confident that I would be able to continue that practice, even in less-skilled and passive-aggressive Minnesota traffic. However, I have experienced the aftermath of following one of our many grossly illegal biker gangs in both Cities’ traffic and on rural roads. After those clowns have passed a few motorists (or the motorists have suffered the risk of passing them) most everyone on the road is in a mood to swat a motorcycle. Recently, a friend tried to justify this nonsense by claiming a weird relationship, “loud pipes, which many riders find naturally enjoyable, same as playing a musical instrument loudly, which many musicians naturally enjoy.” I suspect I might find it enjoyable to take potshots at noisy vehicles, but I suspect my enjoyment ends when the bullet hits the target? Who cares what 1% of 1% of the population “enjoys” if that impinges on the peace and quiet of the majority of the people in hearing distance? Not to mention the fact that it is illegal in Minnesota and most states to modify either the exhaust of intake of a modern vehicle. The fact that cops are too lazy and/or cowardly to mess with that crowd does not justify the noise or make that behavior legal. The idiotic “road captain” nonsense is making enemies for motorcyclists every time that privilege is exercised on top of the noise that always comes with that crowd.

But mixing pointless hearing-damaging noises and anti-social behavior with a driving tactic, that is as risky and depending on tolerant behavior as lane splitting, is gambling with lives (on both sides of the obvious crashes that are going to happen soon after this law goes into effect). I admit some of those lives are dirtbags, but too often the dirtbags bring down useful and decent people, which is where the “operator of a motor vehicle that intentionally impedes or attempts to prevent any operator of a motorcycle from operating a motorcycle as permitted under paragraph (e) is guilty of a petty misdemeanor” portion of this law is going to do damage in the best of cases. Since many traffic cops are going to default to assuming the cager caused the crash, even though statistics makes that pretty unlikely, ordinary drivers are going to punished for motorcyclists’ bad and/or incompetent behavior. After that happens a few hundred times, the majority of road users are going to object to being responsible for the irresponsible crowd.

Attracting the attention of the majority of road users and taxpayers is likely to backfire on those to imagine this law is going to be a good thing for Minnesota motorcycling. When taxpayers realize that absolutely nothing about allowing motorcycles on public highways can be economically justified, they will likely start considering the obvious and logical solution: relegating motorcycles to the “recreational vehicle” category and removing the damn things from public roads. And I am here to say “I told you so.” If we made the slightest effort to reduce the public nuisance aspects of motorcycles before introducing lane splitting, I think it might be possible to introduce the practice to Minnesota highway users. If whoever is driving this dumb idea ignores that fact, there will be blood.

Save Me from Myself

I'm always entertained by the fact that so few of the "bikers" in these PSAs don't even make the minimum attempt to protect themselves. The idea that is the 99.999…%’s responsibility to look out for the 0.00001% is pretty hilarious. Good luck with that pipedream.

A Smart Helmet

The question is, would you wear a smart helmet? Another question might be would you buy one? But here’s an opportunity to go one step further and build your own:

Protect Your Smarts, Build a Smart Motorcycle Helmet

#142 Dumb Laws for Stupid Products

All Rights Reserved © 2013 Thomas W. Day

On my usual mid-week trip to the library, I got stopped by a Ramsey County Sheriff's Deputy. As usual, he asked, "Do you know why I stopped you?" I did not.

"You crossed the white line to pass that van on the right." Fortunately for me, the deputy was a good guy (and a motorcyclist) and he let me go with a warning. All the way to the library and through the rest of my day's errands, I thought about what kind of goofy state has a dumbass law like that. Keeping in mind that I believe every state in the nation, except California, is barely sophisticated enough to bang the rocks together in a primitive attempt to communicate -- because of the national ban on filtering and lane sharing. Holding a motorcycle behind a stopped vehicle seems outrageously and unusually primitive.

I can just imagine our hillbilly state representatives creating this idiotic law and including all vehicles in it because one of their inbred offspring blasted by a stopped vehicle that suddenly turned right and tagged the passing vehicle. The obvious "solution" is to create another dumb law to regulate all of the stupid products (cages) and every other vehicle on the road because you never know when the next "special" child will take himself out of the gene pool.

It makes sense to hold cages to the no-passing-on-the-right rule because the damn things are too fat to fit in that small space, even on the freeway. But motorcycles and scooters? That's just stupid. If I'd have been on a bicycle, that would have been the lane I'm supposed to riding in. Does the law insist a bicycle stop in the same situation? The last place I want to be is stuck between a cage sandwich because some hillbilly lawmaker can't tell the difference between a motorcycle and a cage.

Like the ban on filtering and splitting, the fact that a rider can get a citation for saving his own life when one braindead cager slams into another on the freeway or any other place designed to stack up traffic irregularly, this is a dumb law. Aerostich's Mr. Subjective optimistically would like to believe that laws only reflect what the majority of the public is already doing, but anyone who observes traffic in neighborhoods where the "no left turn on red" or various misplaced stop signs have been randomly distributed without rhyme or reason knows that laws are self-perpetuating and lawmakers are a species unto themselves.

In case you're confused about this rant's title, the "stupid products" I'm referring to are cages, cars, single-passenger four-wheeled fuel-and-space-wasters. I have always believed the passenger car is one of the dumbest, most wasteful, most harmful inventions in human history. Anyone with rudimentary mathematics skills has to despair at seeing miles and miles of single-occupant, gas-guzzling cages stacked in congested parallel lines, draining our children's futures and destroying this version of the earth and current life forms for no good reason other than we all dislike each other and can't be bothered to use mass transit. Cars are for people who aren't competent on two wheels.

Likewise, the existence of handicapped parking is irrational. Everyone who drives a car is, obviously, handicapped. Those flags we hang from our windshield mirrors are just identifying those who are incredibly handicapped as opposed to those mostly handicapped. I know that from experience: for three months post-hip-surgery, I used one of those special parking permits because I couldn't get from the bedroom to the bathroom without a walker, crutch, or cane (in that order as my healing progressed). I was trapped in my cage, with my wife driving for most of two months, because I was incapable of riding a motorcycle. Now, I'm better and I don't need the damn car. If we had a civilized public transportation system, I wouldn't own one of the damn things. For those rare moments when I need to carry stuff larger than my side-cases, I'd rent a car or take a taxi. I hate being required to own a cage and am about 90% of the way convinced to move somewhere I won't need a car.

But what really twists my chain is being limited to the handicapped center-lane on a motorcycle because the dimbulbs who make the laws can't tell a handicapped vehicle from a motorcycle. Making the rules the same for all means of transportation is as stupid as punishing everyone for the sins of a few. It would be really nice to be a member of a society that makes laws to reflect what the public does, but I don't see that happening here or many places. A couple of years ago, a kid who was a wannabe cop asked me to list laws that I thought were irrational. I named about a dozen in the few minutes we had to talk. A day later, I emailed him another couple-hundred irrational laws that came to me after we'd talked. A few weeks later, my list had grown so large that I had to give up the whole project because it was taking over my life. Our legal system is downright depressing, when you take time to think about it. It long since has given up pretending to be a justice system and, now, just masquerades as a police state employment-bureau-for-the-mentally-handicapped while exercising its primary function as a tax collection system. 

When I move into my cave in Montana, you're going to hear the verse from one of my favorite Bobby Dylan songs coming from dim light that will be my gas lantern. "You ask why I don't live here? Man, I don't believe you don't leave." There will be only one law enforced from the entrance to my cave: "Get the hell out of my yard unless you want to be picking rock salt out of your lame ass!"

MMM Winter 2015

The Crap Just Keeps Comin'

This damn argument just gets dumber. The only motorcycle magazine I read from cover-to-cover (sometimes) is Motorcycle Consumer News. The editor, Dave Searle, usually pisses me off and his pro-hooligan attitude is not much different than the rest of the motorcycle press, which defeats the best purposes of MCN. This month's issue started well and turned to crap by the letters to the editor. Bad timing on someone's part. My subscription is about to run out and I still have 2-3 back issues I haven't been able to stomach. Now, I might just read the damn thing at the library on the rare occasion I need to know what Mark Barnes or Ken Condon have to say. I was so pissed off, I sent this letter to MCN's editor:
_____________________________________________
From:     T.W. Day [mailto:twday60@comcast.net]
Sent:    Monday, February 18, 2013 9:32 PM
To:    'editor@mcnews.com'
Subject:    Misuse of Statistics

I was pleased to see Dave's "Open Road" this month. It's unusual for a motorcycle magazine to advocate any sort of safety gear and, when they do, it's usually as unscientific and "freedom" biased as crap from the NRA. It didn't take long for that pleasure to turn sour, though. In a grossly incompetent and statistically misleading response to a readers letter on the NTSB's universal helmet law recommendations, the editor wrote, "the number of motorcycle fatalities in the US has been on a sharp decline over the past few years despite the fact that the number of miles ridden has increased. The decline in fatalities is not because more states have instituted mandatory helmet laws--they haven't."

The argument that motorcycle miles ridden has increased in recent years is doubtful. Until recently, the garage candy crowd has been purged from the road as their rides were repossessed along with their eviction notices. From 2008 to 2011, the only good news about motorcycling has been that fewer of us are on the road and fewer of us are dying because of that. Last year, there was a slight upsurge in motorcycle sales and the early and mild spring put riders back on the road and deaths jumped accordingly. If you look at the states' statistics (http://www.ghsa.org/html/publications/pdf/spotlights/spotlight_motorcycles11.3.pdfhttp://www.ghsa.org/html/publications/pdf/spotlights/spotlight_motorcycles11.3.pdf), you'll see a consistent rise in motorcycle deaths from 1997 to 2008 as states repealed helmet laws and riders took "advantage" of that and splattered themselves all over the nation's roadways.

The future of motorcycling is at risk due to autonomous vehicle development and our out-of-line mortality and morbidity contribution to highway safety and our barely-noticeable contribution to useful traffic. If we insist on pretending that we're getting safer and riding more when all evidence contradicts that, we're shooting ourselves in the foot and will deserve our place along with buggy whips, go carts, and horses in the history of discarded transportation options. The AMA and the motorcycle press are absolutely useless when it comes to promoting practical motorcycling. You should do better than that.

Thomas Day
Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine
http://http://mnmotorcycle.com/
http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/
thomas@motorbyte.com

Still Thinkin' About It

The TC_DualSport group is one of the few motorcycle discussion boards that I follow. Mostly, that's because I really like  these folks and recommend that every Minnesotan who rides a bike that can semi-qualify as "dual sport" be a part of this wonderful collection of rare spirits. Because I'm not a motorcycling homer, I usually find myself pretty much ostracized for voicing heretical opinions like the ones I have submitted below. Since I'm not much of a fan of crowds, organizations, clubs, or even family units, it doesn't bother me much to be slighted by people, but I don't hang around hoping for change either. So, it's saying something that I've been a lurker on TC-DualSport since 2005. Everybody else has either asked me to leave, moderated me into disappearing, or pissed me off so that I left on my own.

So when one of my favorite people on the list, Allon, asked me what I think we need to do to get lane-splitting and filtering legalized in Minnesota, I took his question seriously. As a reality check, please understand I don't expect any of this to happen, but once or twice in my 64 years I've been pleasantly surprised by human behavior and I'm willing to imagine the impossible even if I still believe it's impossible. So, this was my response:

--- In TC_Dualsport@yahoogroups.com, "allonm55344" wrote:
>
> So Tom, how do we change things here in Minnesota? There was a rumor that things were about to  change in favor of lane splitting in Tx a few years back. I wonder what ever happened with that.
>
> BTW, when I took my  advanced riding class in Israel, they taught it based on the curriculum from the California (I believe MSF) motorcycle safety course. They  specifically teach you to  position your motorcycle in between lanes when stopped in a traffic light. They also encourage lane splitting only when the traffic is at a standstill or very slow moving.
>
> Allon 

I'm probably misusing the term when I say "Americans," but Americans appear to be unable to focus on long term results. Maybe it's the 4-year political cycle, but to make this happen here we're going to have to take a consistent long view and one that will be opposed by the US manufacturers.

I think the Texas attempt got squashed in committee, again. I'd imagine that Dayton would oppose any attempt at a similar law here, unless we did a massive education campaign. The money and time that's been wasted on "Start Seeing Motorcycles" should be redirected toward a unified political and informational (propaganda?) campaign to inform drivers of the advantages of letting 1% of traffic move in congested areas. We (all motorcyclists) should stop being highway irritants and hoodlums and accept helmet law legislation, improved licensing requirements, and absolute compliance with federal and state noise laws so that we aren't automatically seen as a pack of gangsters and an overpriced, undervalue highway risk. Like Oregon, we need to start moving motorcycle fatalities toward zero. That will cost bike sales because many of the people currently on motorcycles should be relegated to closed course kiddy parks. To cost them even more, dealers who sell street legal motorcycles to unlicensed buyers should be prosecuted with the same kind of force that falls on liquor stores who sell to minors (and that offense should be ramped up too). When motorcyclists become good citizens and make a productive contribution to traffic, we'll get the benefits of public approval.

Right now, we're mostly a bunch of useless assholes who stage traffic-blocking, noise-making pirate parades all summer long, who crash by ourselves on country roads and whine about "right-of-way violations," and children who dress in gym clothes and pretend straight sections of the freeway are a race track. You have to do some good before you get something good.

My California "history" is anecdotal from a CHP I knew there in the 80s. He said that California did not have a law prohibiting two vehicles (or more) from occupying a single lane. Motorcyclists took advantage of that and, because they have been a significant (at least noticable) portion of California traffic, that law was not introduced. Now, lane-sharing is sort of formally acknowledged and California has always been a little proud of being different (more progressive and adventurous) than the rest of the stodgy US it's a semi-accepted practice and habit. Unfortunately, California squids are no smarter than ROUS squids and they are doing everything they can to piss off the general public and lose that privilege.

Thomas Day
Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine
http://http://mnmotorcycle.com/
http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/
thomas@motorbyte.com
All of the above is my honest opinion; biased and one-sided as it is. Motorcyclists need a representative organization more desperately today than any time in history and the AMA, ABATE, or any of the other gangbangers' "biker clubs" are not going to be it. The closest thing we have to a possibility of a motorcyclists' organization is Ride to Work and that organization appears to be only a little bit organized. Humans rarely see the need to get active until we're approaching a cliff and, usually, we need to be flying off of the edge before we actually get serious (think of the USA in 1932). I don't see anything like this happening with US motorcyclists, but if it does count me in. I'll even "join."

More of the Same

A short burst of comments on one of the off-road groups I belong to fired up the geezerly aspect (90% or greater) of my personality. One of the guys cited ex-Minnesotan Pat Hahn as a source for why Minnesotans wouldn't take to lane-splitting well.

Pat is a good guy, a friend, a serious motorcyclist, and a published motorcycle author. However, his opinion on lane-splitting is mostly inexperienced and anecdotal. Now that he's a west coast guy (Oregon), his opinion has shifted a bit from when he was a Midwesterner and had only experienced lane-splitting from the perspective of the young hooligan who did it, illegally, when he was pissed off or in a hurry. One of the cool things about writing is that you can become an official "expert" purely by research. You don't have to actually know anything. Even cooler, once you write about something and get it published the lazy assholes in the Mainstream Media will repeatedly ask your uninformed opinion about this subject that you know so little about. As long as the rest of us know that media "experts" are nothing more than people in a bar with barely-informed opinions (like the rest of us), their opinions can't do much harm. When we imagine that the lazy assholes who print and broadcast the crap that passes for information in our braindead society are actually bothering to identify and interview real "experts," we're all doomed.

So, when one of the guys cited Pat as a source and justification for his fear of lane-splitting, I posted a pissed-off response. The more I think about it, the more pissed off I am.

I think Pat's attitude has changed now that he's actually had an opportunity to use lane-splitting in northern California. I did more than 100k miles, lane-splitting constantly, in my decade in southern California. I totally disagree that it is a "dangerous" practice, unless we're just applying "dangerous" to any aspect of being a motorcyclist on-road. You can do anything stupidly and many motorcyclists belong in public buses because they don't have the skills or brainpower to safely transport themselves across a padded room.

California has done motorcycles a serious disservice by eliminating/minimizing exhaust noise regulation. Loud pipes and lane splitting do not coexist peacefully. Pick one, act like a hooligan or become part of the transportation system.

Midwesterners are specially poor and aggressive drivers, something I realized  when my wife and I spent the beginning of January in Oregon and northern California. I had almost given up on American drivers knowing how to merge in traffic, manage reasonable spacing, or cope with moving vehicles. As congested and overcrowded as the San Francisco area is, traffic moves fast there. Incapable idiots are not tolerated and will be pulled over and ticketed by the CHP for trying to merge at something under the prevailing speed.

If we tossed out the useless and irritating "Start Seeing Motorcycles" campaign and put the same energy into informing drivers that lane-sharing is legal, Minnesotans would figure it out as fast as anyone. A motorcycling campaign to wise up drivers to motorcycle advantages and one that also attempted to civilize motorcyclists might save motorcycles from obsolescence: helmet requirements,
massively tougher training and licensing requirements, relentless exhaust noise and emissions enforcement (for all vehicles), legalized lane splitting and filtering, and state-legislated motorcycle/scooter parking advantages.

Otherwise, autonomous vehicles and computerized traffic will make motorcycles as obsolete as buggy whips. And those things are coming a lot faster than you think.



--- In TC_Dualsport@yahoogroups.com, Needs Information wrote:
>

> I drive the metro area as much as 750 miles per week, from 5AM to 6PM mostly. Commuters can be a very nasty bunch. Some are sneaks that use the shoulders to gain advantage and some are self proclaimed traffic moderators that will block others from not doing as they do. MnDOT has a campaign, not so well promoted, to do the Zipper Merge. The 'moderators' get very very aggressive against this policy despite its official promotion by MnDOT and state law enforcement. It may take a generation to get the moderators off the road, if ever. Their bad attitudes get passed on to their children pretty much.
>
> What has this to do with lane sharing? These same moderators would rather see you crash than be gotten ahead of, and many will do whatever they can to prevent your passing illegally (or even legally if you could ever get the legislators to change the laws) . . .
One reply (abbreviated) noted:

> We're a pretty conservative bunch here, lower case C,
. . . "Minnesotans would figure it out as fast as anyone. " I have grave doubts about that my friend, emphasis on the grave. Just too much anger on the roads. "Midwesterners are specially poor and aggressive drivers" No legislation will change this I'm afraid.
. . .
> Not to throw water on your fire, but I don't expect to see much change going on with lane usage legislation, or cage driver attitudes.
My response is:

No fire to dowse, there. I have no doubt that the whole of the US is too lower-case-conservative (as in timid-to-downright-cowardly) to make any useful changes in any activity. We are a decaying empire that hasn't yet smelled the rot. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to suggest the metric system and we still can't manage that obvious change. National lane-sharing is not likely, but a national ban on motorcycles on public roads is almost a certainty as autonomous cages take over the major roadways (on its way to your town soon). Change or die is the rule of nature and we've probably picked "die."

I think you overrate the "genius" of California drivers, they have girlyman moderator/regulators there, too. I put solid steel wraparound bumpers on my old Toyota pickup to move them out of my merge lane when I lived in CA in the 80's. The 1% are particularly arrogant about holding their space on California roads; Mercedes, Volvos, Suburbans, and the $100k sports car crowd. Those people never go away, but you can make their lives and position precarious enough that they begin to suck it up and keep their stupid ideas to themselves.

Still, most people are reasonable and allow space and even make space for sharing and filtering. You can't eliminate an activity because someone will object to it. Ok, you can, but that's a conservative way to design and maintain a system and it will fail from an inability to evolve.

The cool thing about splitting is it is voluntary. You can wait in traffic if you don't have the skill for it it, think it is dangerous, or don't have an appropriate vehicle. There were times when I thought splitting wasn't the best choice and I stayed where I was. Mostly, I split anytime traffic was moving under the speed limit. Seriously, I suspect I split for at least 100k miles of my 300k motorcycle miles in CA, though. I rarely ever stayed in my lane on PCH between Huntington Beach and Long Beach.




AMA Press Release: "Washington, D.C.: Self-driving cars would be allowed to operate on Washington, D.C., roads under the Autonomous Vehicle Act of 2012 (B-931), introduced by Councilwoman Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3). The bill would authorize autonomous vehicles, which are self-driving cars, to operate on the roads in the district, establish a system for taxing users of autonomous vehicles based on vehicle miles traveled -- 1.875 cents per mile -- require the district Department of Motor Vehicles to create an autonomous vehicle designation for registration, titling and operation permit purposes, and establish safe operating protocols for such vehicles"