Passes & Canyons Blog

I’ll take a break from recounting the latest OFMC trip today because this is timely and really flagrant.

Lane filtering becomes legal in Colorado this week, on August 7. As a surprise to no one, I picked up several articles addressing this change and “informing” the readers of what it means. I put “informing” in quotes because all three pieces I saw, including one from the Colorado State Patrol (CSP), were clearly written by someone who does not ride motorcycles and who fails to understand the entire procedure. More importantly, they were just flat wrong.

Because the other articles seem to have been written based on what CSP put out I’ll go right to the source.

“The rider must pass on the left and not enter the oncoming traffic lane.”

What’s wrong here? Picture this. You have two lanes of traffic going each way and you are a rider in the left lane. You “must pass on the left”? I don’t think so. That would have you partially encroaching on the oncoming lane of traffic, which is strictly prohibited. Your only choice is to pass between the two lanes of traffic going your direction, which in this case would mean passing on the right. Either that or else if you’re in the left lane you are not permitted to filter. I’m pretty sure that’s not what is intended.

What the law actually says is this: A PERSON OVERTAKING OR PASSING PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION (3)(b) SHALL NOT OVERTAKE OR PASS:
(A) ON THE RIGHT SHOULDER;
(B) To THE RIGHT OF A VEHICLE IN THE FARTHEST RIGHT-HAND LANE IF THE HIGHWAY IS NOT LIMITED ACCESS
(C) IN A LANE OF TRAFFIC MOVING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

So that pretty much stipulates that you have to filter between lanes going your direction.

The CSP piece also said this: “The lane must be wide enough to fit the vehicle and motorcycle while passing.”

Now, not very many lanes anywhere are wide enough to allow a car and a motorcycle to fit comfortably side by side. The motorcycle needs to ride down the stripe separating the lanes. The law states filtering is permitted if “THE DRIVER OF THE TWO-WHEELED MOTORCYCLE IS ON A ROAD WITH LANES WIDE ENOUGH TO PASS SAFELY.”

Notes the plural there: “lanes.” And nothing about staying in the same lane as the car you’re passing.

I think part of the confusion may come from the wording of the law where it says “THE DRIVER OF A TWO-WHEELED MOTORCYCLE MAY OVERTAKE OR
PASS ANOTHER MOTOR VEHICLE IN THE SAME LANE AS THE MOTORCYCLE IF . . .” Maybe whoever wrote this piece read it to mean you can pass another vehicle only if you stay in the same lane that it is in, when in fact it should be read that you can pass another vehicle THAT IS in the lane you are in but you don’t have to stay completely in that one lane in doing so. A significant difference of meaning. So the law could have been written a bit more clearly.

So anyway, reading through the law again I spotted one thing this time that I did not notice previously. This is item B in the list above. “SHALL NOT OVERTAKE OR PASS: (B) To THE RIGHT OF A VEHICLE IN THE FARTHEST RIGHT-HAND LANE IF THE HIGHWAY IS NOT LIMITED ACCESS.”

“If the highway is not limited access.” Does this mean that they are specifically allowing you to overtake or pass on the right of the vehicle in the farthest right lane if the highway IS limited access? As in, if you’re on the interstate you can pass on the shoulder? It had not been my understanding that that was the intention of the Legislature but that does seem to be the logical reading of that rule.

At the same time, it also says this: “(III) A PERSON OVERTAKING OR PASSING PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION (3)(b) SHALL NOT OVERTAKE OR PASS: (A) ON THE RIGHT SHOULDER;”

This seems contradictory. If anyone can clarify this for me I would appreciate it.

I think there are some kinks here. I suspect that there are going to be some amendments needed. But get ready because filtering will be here this week.

Biker Quote for Today

I don’t love the people driving fast, that’s the reason why I overtake them.

How quickly we went from “Is it so cold that if I ride I’ll freeze my butt off” to “I might like to go for a ride but I really don’t want to roast.” But Sunday was very nicely cool so what better thing could I do?

I figured I’d ride the Honda but I was very interested to see what happened once I started it up. Would it smoke like crazy as it used to? That issue had just miraculously gone away by itself but that means it could come back in just the same manner. And yes, the exhaust did smoke some at first. Not the huge clouds it used to produce but there was definitely some smoke.

And of course that makes me think about how much oil I have. When you’re getting a lot of blue smoke you are, by definition, burning oil and if you burn enough you end up with none. I had almost done this before I took it in to get the smoking addressed. I headed out one day, knowing I needed gas, and by the time I got to the gas station I just felt like it wasn’t running right. So I gassed up and just went back home, where, as a caution, I added some oil.

The next time I rode it was to take it to the shop, and it ran OK with the little bit of oil I had added, but when the shop started giving it the once over they found it had almost no oil at all. I’ve said it before: I’m a bad bike owner. I really don’t give my bikes the care they need. Shame on me.

So now I’m on this Sunday ride and my oil level is on my mind. I will check the oil level before I ride it again.

I hadn’t gone far and I saw something I had never seen before: one of those Tesla pick-up trucks. I’ve seen pictures but I had never seen one in real life and there it was. OK, a first.

I cruised south, to just north of E-470, and looped around the south end of Arapahoe County Airport and stopped to watch the airplanes lined up for take-off. What a mixed bag. All the way from little Piper Cubs up to enormous corporate jets.

On south and a turn onto the road that eventually becomes Main Street in Parker. And to the south of me the southern edge of the city is going up in the form of condos and homes. Jeez, I remember when the south edge of the city was 10 miles north of here.

East on Main Street, then a turn north on Jordan Road. At the intersection of Jordan Road and Broncos Parkway, on the northeast corner–and I mean right on the corner–sits a new condo complex with balconies overlooking this busy, noisy intersection. Just what I would want for a relaxing place to live. Do people really live in places like that voluntarily? If you flicked a cigarette butt from your balcony it might go right in somebody’s car window.

About this time it dawned on me that my test of using safety pins to snug up my fluorescent orange safety vest was apparently working. All this time it had not blown up around my head and it was staying where I wanted it. It occurred to me that I could use a couple more safety pins and just attach it long-term to my mesh summer jacket. Pin it down around the bottom to hold it down securely. I guess I’ll do that. I’d still recommend if you’re in the market that you pay a bit more and get a real motorcycle safety vest from a motorcycle supplier.

Then on home again. It sure is nice to have some comfortable days in July. The OFMC trip is coming up in a little over two weeks and it sure would be nice not to get cooked on that ride the way we did last summer.

Biker Quote for Today

Speed is my language, and the wind translates it into joy.

I’ve mentioned that some of the guys in the RMMRC, particularly Roy, have been putting peer pressure on me to raise my visibility level by use of lights or high-vis clothing. And that I finally gave in to that pressure by buying a safety vest.

Well, that hasn’t worked out quite as I planned. There is an Ace Hardware close to us that I shop at frequently so when I was in there a few weeks ago I picked up an orange vest they had for about $8. No big deal. What do you need? It’s fluorescent orange.

It turns out you need more than just something like this. This vest is presumably intended for outdoor construction workers who don’t want to add weight or warmth. It drapes loosely around you–one size fits all–is airy, and attaches in front by just one bit of Velcro. And if you wear it while riding a motorcycle it wants to climb right up you and would wrap itself around your head if your arms through the armholes didn’t keep it down at least a bit.

OK, let’s see if we can make some modifications. Simple first step: use a safety pin to close it in front a second time down low.

That’s what I did that day recently when I rode over Guanella Pass and you’ll see in that photo that I had it on. It helped, but not nearly enough. The thing still wanted to climb up me, like you’ve seen I’m sure with guys riding with no jacket and a loose T-shirt and the shirt is whipping out behind them and climbing up their back. Plus, the fabric rode right up under my chin so that the somewhat rough fabric was rubbing at my neck in a pretty irritating manner. OK, more is needed.

So now I added a couple more safety pins, this time on the sides. The two side are connected about mid-way down by a cord and I pulled them together and put on a safety pin just a bit above the cords. Maybe while I’m at it I ought to put on a couple more down low. I haven’t tried this out yet so I don’t know just how much good this is going to do.

The point is, why bother? I already have this thing so I’m trying to make it work but if you haven’t already bought something avoid my error. Just get something better right from the start. That will probably mean going to a motorcycle supply shop or ordering online. A quick search showed me a wide selection ranging in price from $19 up to $45. None of these is going to break the bank.

I’ll give this thing I have one more shot, maybe with a couple more pins, but if it’s just not going to do the job I’ll get something that will.

Biker Quote for Today

The road listens. It believes in you.

I got a heads-up recently from Greg Drevenstedt editor’s column in Rider magazine that told me there have been significant advances in rider safety equipment of late. Figured I ought to look into it.

This “First Gear” column in the May 2024 issue was talking about inflatable vests made by Alpinestars. Said Greg in his column, “Recently we’ve added a new piece of protective gear to our arsenal that I’ve required all staffers to wear any time they are on a test bike or at a press launch: an airbag vest.”

The two vests he discussed are the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 and the Tech-Air 3, priced at $789.95 and $599.95 respectively. But it turns out that Alpinestars has a much larger line of such gear. Mostly it’s jackets or vests but they do have one, the Tech-Air® 10 Airbag System, that also protects your hips. That baby will run you $1,099.95.

That ain’t cheap, and with good insurance you might pay less than that in hospital bills, but I think I’d rather skip the injuries altogether. The pain from my wallet is a lot more bearable than the pain from my body. Nevertheless, the Tech-Air 10 appears to be targeted for sale to racers so let’s go back to the vests.

First off, in terms of advances in technology, whereas old-style inflatable vests were triggered by a cord connected to your bike that activated when that connection was broken, these new units have gyroscopes with all kinds of computer programming to tell them when to deploy. Also of interest, they deactivate below a certain speed. As the material on the website explains without such deactivation you could have a situation where some buddy comes along and slaps you soundly on the back . . . only to have your vest do its thing. Not something you really desire.

When the vests do go off they pump air instantly into a series of tubes throughout the vest. It’s literally an airbag kind of thing. I don’t think it takes any imagination to see how that would provide you a lot more protection than just armored riding gear. Plus, you would wear the vest either under or over your regular riding gear so you’re not choosing one or the other, you’ve got both.

And the thing with under your other gear is that these things are remarkably slim. Uninflated it looks pretty much like another vest.

Not to make this simply an Alpinestars commercial, I searched for inflatable motorcycle vests and found that there are a variety of others on the market, too. The first one I looked at was Helite Moto. It turns out they also have inflatable jeans. Helite has both cord-activated models and electronically activated model vests. The latter run around $800.

And then on Amazon I found more, often at much lower prices, but all with the cord tech, not the gyros.

So first we had cars with airbags and they have saved many thousands of lives. Now the idea of an airbag for a motorcycle is a real thing.

When I was a lot younger I was poor and the question of whether to get something like this would never have come up because that’s just way more than I could have considered spending. Now I’m intrigued. Of course if I ever do get something like this you’ll read about it right here.

Biker Quote for Today

A motorcycle is an artist’s brush on the canvas of the open road.

OK, what happened in 2023 might seem like old news but you have to understand that pulling all these statistics together and analyzing them is time consuming and reports on highway fatalities and such are always released well into the following year. It’s the best information we’ve got so we just have to go with it.

So anyway, it seems like pretty good news that the Colorado State Patrol has released 2023 data showing that drunk- or drugged-riding fatalities went down a whopping 36 percent in 2023. That correlates very nicely with the latest overall traffic fatality data just released by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) that shows traffic fatalities in Colorado decreased by by 5.8 percent in 2023, 764 down to 720.

According to NHTSA, about 14 percent of all US traffic deaths are of motorcyclists so if that percentage is carried through on the Colorado figures that would mean about 101 motorcyclists were killed here in 2023. A lower number is good but that still means 101 of your friends or my friends or somebody’s friends and family members died. Better is better but it’s not good.

Restating what we all know, Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said “Experienced riders don’t take unnecessary risks. Whether consuming alcohol, marijuana or another substance, intoxicated riders are more likely to lose control of their vehicles and crash.”

At the same time, better truly is better, and a 36 percent drop is amazing. Maybe people really are changing their thinking. I know it used to be a common thing with the OFMC that soon into the day’s ride John was sure to pull off somewhere and pull out his pipe. And stopping somewhere along the way to have a beer was totally normal. It has been years since we’ve done either of those things so if our thinking has changed it makes sense that many other peoples’ thinking has done so as well.

Let’s all keep up the good work. I wonder if a year from now the 2024 numbers will show a similar improvement.
<3>Biker Quote for Today
A motorcycle is like a drug but it doesn’t clog your arteries, impair your brain function, or send you to a rehabilitation center. Plus, it’s completely legal – if you have a license.

It’s not as good as it could have been but it’s better than nothing, I guess. On the final day of the latest legislative session the Colorado House and Senate worked out a compromise hands-free bill and passed it, sending it to the governor for his signature.

As passed in the Senate, SB 24-065, Mobile Electronic Devices & Motor Vehicle Driving, would have made holding your phone while driving a primary offense, meaning the police could stop you simply for violating that law. Instead, the House insisted that it be a secondary offense, meaning you can’t be stopped for it but if you are stopped for something else the officer can also charge you for this violation.

The reasoning, as I understand it, is that some legislators feared it could be used by the police to selectively profile drivers and choose to stop them or not based on things like ethnicity. Sadly, that sort of fear has had plenty of foundation in reality but honestly, if a cop wants to harass someone, if they can’t use this law they’ll just use a different one. Weakening this law will not have any effect on that at all. But it will make it harder to enforce this law.

Still, I can tell you what will happen, at least at times. Cops will see someone using their phone and they will dig as deep as they need to to come up with some other reason for stopping them, then “let them go this time” on the “offense” they stopped them for but cite them for the phone usage.

I know this will happen because it happened to me once in regard to driving without using a seat belt, which was and is still a secondary offense in Colorado. I was on I-225 going the same speed as the traffic around me but I did not have my seat belt fastened. The state patrol guy stopped me for “speeding.” But, being a nice guy (right!) he let me off on the speeding but did cite me for the seat belt.

Bottom line, though, what will happen as a result of this legislation? Will drivers finally start to realize they need to put their damn phones down and concentrate on the number one thing they are doing–driving! My guess is some will. Not all but some. And not as many as would have if it had been made a primary offense. We don’t want to reject what is good because it is not perfect. Any progress is still progress. But it could have been better.

Biker Quote for Today

Owning a motorcycle is like eating biscuits in church–many will judge you but secretly they all want to be you.

I may well be updating this post right up until it gets posted but as I write this now on Sunday afternoon it appears the Legislature is in session and at work on the bill this moment. This bill being SB 24-065: Mobile Electronic Devices & Motor Vehicle Driving.

This morning I got an email from Stump, legislative liaison for ABATE of Colorado, reporting that it had been approved on second reading in the House. When I checked a short while ago it had come up on third reading and then when I came back to it just now it had been amended.

So now what I’m unclear on is whether this means it will need to go back to the Senate to be re-approved with the amendments. I think so. Does it go to a conference committee of the two houses to be reconciled and then need to be passed again by both houses? Is there time to get that done at this late moment in the session? I’m unclear.

What I am clear on is that my initial sense that this year is different, that this year the opposition to this bill has fallen away, was correct. After easily passing the Senate the bill came up in committee in the House and passed out of the House committee by an 11-0 vote. Now I see that on the House floor there have been several votes and the most recent vote was 55-6 in favor. This baby is going to pass! And the governor darn well better be planning to sign it. I can’t imagine he won’t.

Do we dare to think that by the time I click “Publish” on this thing tomorrow that it will be on its way to the governor? It might.

Update
OK, it’s Monday afternoon and the Senate voted not to concur with the House amendments. Before that vote I heard from Stump who said, “With 3 days left in the session and a ton of work to get done, it’s hard to say if there’s enough time to get SB24-065 passed the way we want it. We don’t like the latest amendments that were added, so we hope the Senate will reject them since the bill has to be reviewed by them and then send the bill to a conference committee. That all could happen in time as I saw a bill last week pass through a committee hearing, then through 2nd and 3rd reading in one day.”

Biker Quote for Today

Great memories happen when you don’t know where you’re going.

As Senate Bill 24-065 (Mobile Electronic Devices & Motor Vehicle Driving) was coming up for its initial Colorado House hearing recently I was wondering–as I mentioned previously–if there would be opposition as there was two years ago claiming that it would be unfair to fine poor people who violated the law.

Thinking about that got me thinking about a different issues from what must have been 25 years ago. The connector here is well-intentioned people reaching conclusions that overlook extremely relevant factors. In the case of outlawing use of handheld electronics while driving (SB24) it is the idea of trying to help people who did not have to break the law while ignoring the very real impact on other people who did nothing wrong. If it’s not clear what I’m referring to please read the other piece linked to above.

The situation 25 or so years ago had to do with insurance and wearing helmets. Specifically, there were health insurance companies that were writing policies that said if you were injured in a motorcycle crash and you were not wearing a helmet they would deny your claim. Does that still happen or were laws passed forbidding that? I’m not sure but I suspect it is no longer an issue because it’s been a long time since I’ve heard it mentioned.

So anyway, my family was gathered at some point and this whole thing came up and my father offered his opinion that he saw nothing wrong with that policy. After all, people should wear helmets and why should the insurance companies pay if they refuse to protect themselves?

I nearly exploded. This is the gist of what I told him.

OK, let’s say I’m legally riding my motorcycle without a helmet. I’m obeying the speed limit and all the traffic laws and I have a motorcycle endorsement on my drivers license. Then I get hit but a guy who a) is speeding, b) runs a red light, c) does not have a license because he lost it due to DUIs, and d) is drunk. He veers off and hits a telephone pole and is also injured.

So everything I have done is 100 percent legal, while everything he has done is 100 percent illegal. Oh, and by the way, while I am badly injured, I have not sustained any head injuries, despite not wearing a helmet.

After all this, my insurance company says it will not cover my medical expenses because I was not wearing a helmet (legally!) but his insurance company will cover his medical expenses.

Are you telling me that is somehow fair and appropriate? Really?? Are you telling me this makes any sense at all??

OK, my Dad was a rational guy and he acknowledged the error of his thinking once I educated him on the matter. And that’s my whole point. There are plenty of people out there who favor or oppose policies we might know are respectively bad or good simply because they are not personally connected to the issue and have not given it more than cursory consideration. But once they are presented with more facts, a deeper understanding, they see the error of their thinking.

That’s what the motorcycling community has to do, continually. That’s what organization such as the American Motorcyclist Association, the various state ABATEs, the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, and others work to do constantly. And it’s what each of us needs to do when talking with non-riding friends and family members. We need to educate them. I mean this was my own father and he thought it made sense to deny his son coverage until I educated him.

Let’s all be educators.

Biker Quote for Today

Every ride is a tiny holiday.