Passes & Canyons Blog

I think we can all relate to this one, an Examiner resurrection from October 2008.

No, you may NOT use a portion of my lane just because my motorcycle is not as wide as your car.

Saturday was a terrific Fall day to be riding up on the Peak to Peak Highway and we were there. It got blustery later but in the early part of the day it was wonderful.

Then we headed on down the Golden Gate Canyon road. Along the way I was looking for a good place to stop and get some photos. Coming in our direction was a bicyclist with a few cars behind looking for a safe place to pull around. If I had been driving defensively, as I credit myself with doing most of the time, I should have posed the question to myself, “What if that car tries to pull past the bicycle as I go past?”

But I was looking for a place to shoot some pictures, and I was cruising in the left portion of my lane, so I’ll let you guess the words that entered my mind when that car crossed the center line to come around the bicycle–heading straight toward me. I swerved sharply to the right and the jerk went on his way.

Rhetorically I might wonder, “What was that jerk thinking?” but I know what he was thinking. He was thinking that I was just a motorcycle and there was plenty of room for him, the bicycle, and me, all on the same piece of highway. Wrong!! Wrong, wrong, wrong!!

My motorcycle is a vehicle with the exact same rights to my piece of the road as any other vehicle. He wouldn’t pull that same stunt if I was driving a big SUV or even a Honda Civic. What makes him think it’s OK to do it when the other vehicle is a motorcycle? I was a little distracted already. What if I had been so distracted that I didn’t immediately notice him coming into my lane?

I know I have a responsibility to drive defensively, and I do most of the time, but I’m human. There’s no excuse for my lapse of attention but what the guy in the car did was darn close to criminal. And it was absolutely illegal.

So I’m going to repeat myself: No, you may NOT use a portion of my lane.

Biker Quote for Today

“We all undertake a modicum of risk every time we thumb the starter – it’s just inherent to the sport.” ~Sport Rider~

Some things just take you by surprise. As you may be aware, I write for Examiner.com as their Denver Motorcycle Examiner. I post on this blog three times a week and I post on Examiner three times a week.

Well, yesterday I wrote a piece entitled “Share the road, not my lane.” It was about how a car pulled across the center line–directly into my path–as he was passing a bicycle. I won’t go into more specifics; if you ride you know it all already.

Imagine my surprise when I checked this morning and found that more than 2,000 people had read that post so far and there were six comments. And more surprisingly, three of the six were hostile toward motorcycles and motorcyclists. Two were favorable and the sixth was more neutral.

One of the hostile comments was the sort of thing you just blow off and ignore:

You should cry more.

The woman who was neutral had this to say:

True, but you have to keep in mind how often those of us in cars see motorcyclists zip between us, riding the line on the highway. Maybe they guy just thought, “Well, they do it all the time, why can’t I?” I’m not defending his actions as they were very reckless.

Then, there were these:

Sure thing douchebag, but make sure you don’t share my lane the next time there’s a red light and a line of traffic that you really want to sidle past, m’kay?

And what are you going to do about it when someone does? And another thing, with the engine cooling excuse ready at hand when you pass huge traffic jams, you cannot expect to be taken seriously when you claim that your personal space corresponds with traffic conditions, because basically, that is what you are saying. When guys like you behave normally in traffic jams, normal people will begin to show you some respect, or at least, stop hating your guts.

It would be easy to dismiss these people as jerks but I don’t think we would be wise in doing so. Considering that these are the people who are out on the road with us, and we’re the ones who always lose in a collision, we need to consider any validity there might be in their statements.

The one argument they all make is that bikers share their lanes at times. Now, if you’re in California and you’re lane-splitting, that is absolutely legal. And I can see how that diminishes the argument that motorcycles have a right to the entire lane, just as cars do. We can’t have it both ways. At the same time, that in no way excuses the reckless, dangerous stunt I described. If I hadn’t swerved that driver would have had to choose between a head-on with me or running the bicycle off the road into the rocky hillside.

Elsewhere, lane-splitting is not legal, although here in Colorado I don’t ever see people lane-splitting anyway. I do, however, see bikers passing on yellow lines (because we know that we can do it safely) and ignoring other laws that were designed with cars in mind, not bikes. It might be worth our while to think about how the people in cars see these things. Obviously some of them, rightly or wrongly, see them as unfair, improper, and justification to act improperly toward us.

Food for thought.

Biker Quote for Today

Remember all the others on the road are crazy & out to kill you.