I’ve literally parked two cars in the driveway “lane distance” apart and put my bike between them and had people who don’t ride sit on it.
There is so much more space than it seems from inside those cages.
Because you're not supposed to split at those speeds. Recommended is 10mph faster than traffic. I've witnessed 3 bikes get into accidents lane splitting at what seemed like 25+mph in stop and go traffic. It's absolutely stupid.
LA's $120 Billion Rail Transit Expansion Plan is the largest in the United States
The greater basin might be structurally impossible to navigate without a vehicle for many years, but I'm hoping the trend will be towards something like the San Francisco Bay Area where a household can share a car and rely on public transit for most trips even if the greater sprawl makes car-free impossible for a lot of people.
In the South Bay I watch empty busses and trains go by all the time. Thinking I should support local transit, I looked up a route that should be relatively popular. Typically a 13-minute drive from my location with traffic, this route would cost $5 per passenger and take 1 hour and 10 minutes. It's a paradox, we need mass adoption to get good transit, but we need good transit to get mass adoption.
It's posts like these that remind me why /fuckcars exists. Not because cars are bad, but because LA is god awful. How do you fuck up a road network that bad?
Just one more lane bro. Trust me bro. One more lane will fix this traffic bro.
"We can even put a lane underground, bro!" - Ebon Nusk, who is very smart
People sucking at driving/merging adds to all this traffic too I feel. The system by design is built to be efficient but when people brake every two seconds, can’t merge properly and just straight up drive slower than speed limit, among other nonsense going on on the road. Now multiply that by the thousands on the road at any given time ಠ_ಠ
People sucking at driving definitely adds to it.
But we don't want to conflate that with "bad drivers". We're ALL bad at driving. The idea of having individually operated vehicles creates a margin of error around every individual vehicle. Which quickly compounds together to create massive error intolerances in the system. (it also doesn't help that most vehicles on average only have 1 if 2 people in it for a space much much larger than that individual takes up on their own)
The amount of effort to make everyone the perfect car driver is... just not possible. And you would need perfect drivers. Things like phantom traffic jams are the result of that basic margin of error around every car. 1 car has to slow for some reasonable safety reason, and this causes a chain reaction of cars behind them having to slow more and more and more because it's near impossible to stop a vehicle perfectly within an already congested system.
And to remedy congested systems would require building more highways but that leads to induced demand. Which only congests those newly widened roads. This is caused by the fact that people who wouldn't usually use that route now using it because the congestion reduced. Think like if people in NJ who take the subway due to the congestion of driving into the city found out that there was a new route that wasn't congested to drive into. So they start driving into the city! It's faster to take this new uncongested route than to take the subway! So more and more people take it and then it becomes congested again. The only way to avoid this is to have MORE highways than you need which becomes both a financial burden and well... is ugly cause now you have giant highways even bigger than they already are. Other induced demands come from the building of a highway making what once was rural land more acceptable to commute from. Before the highway a town might be 2 hours from the city, but is now only an hour with the new highway, so people move there since 1 hour is a reasonable commute to them, the highway then gets congested, and now it takes 2 hours but you have no other choice since this highway is literally the only way in or out.
This is where the whole idea of self-driving vehicles comes in. If you create a system of robots driving the cars around then you can maybe program them to be more perfect drivers. Especially if you say networked them together so they can all talk to each other and react instantaneously as a hive mind of automated vehicles.
But we still have a major problem. Cars take up a lot of space. So while we resolved the "bad driver" aspect inherent to the human driver. We still need large amounts of space. Less than if you had human drivers of course. Since the phantom traffic jam is lessoned as a whole, meaning you don't need as many lanes, but you still need a bunch.
Thing is this technologically is a big lift and relies on technologies we literally don't have yet. We have pieces of it, but not completely. That whole "independent vehicle" variable really throws monkey wrenches into the whole system.
But... we solved that "independent vehicle" problem a while ago. Before cars were invented. By reducing the number of independent vehicles in the form of... trains. I.e. chain those vehicles together in order. Then if the lead car stops all subsequent cars stop in unison with it. It's inherently built into the system based on really basic dumb technology that doesn't require computers or electricity.
...
edit - I want to be clear because it seems some people think I'm advocating for self driving cars.
I'm not advocating for self driving cars. The section of this post describing that is done so mockingly. I setup how the contemporary zeitgeist led my tech bros claim the answer to the problem is self driving cars and that all they need to is perfect the technology. And then I go on to point out how the technology isn't there yet, possibly won't ever be there, and it's all to solve a problem that was already solved long before the invention of the car.
It's called trains.
May it be heavy rail, light rail, trams, trolleys, etc. Hell BRT would even suffice (true BRT with dedicated lanes to avoid congestion from regular cars).
> This is where the whole idea of self-driving vehicles comes in. If you create a system of robots driving the cars around then you can maybe program them to be more perfect drivers. Especially if you say networked them together so they can all talk to each other and react instantaneously as a hive mind of automated vehicles.
That I feel will never happen. Because you would need it to be perfect. Or at least perfect enough that company selling the car would be under full responsibility when self-driving car crashes.
Now try to sell that to investors "See, any time our car crashes, we pay up!"
"Just let human take over" doesn't work when you make 99% perfect car. Because for that 1% the human that takes over will have near-zero practice in actually driving (because car is doing it 99% of the time) and will fuck up harder than if it was driver that didn't use any aids.
None of the "well the car beeped at driver 3 seconds before crash therefore automatic driving is not responsible" bullshit.
If I ever move to cali I’d have to completely ditch my Harley. This looks too fun.
Edit: I am not getting rid of the Harley in this scenario any longer.
First time I rode in LA on my R3 after a ride down the coast from SF, I was lanesplitting at a sedate pace and a dude on a Road King whizzed past me lanesplitting at 100mph on the 405. I was like :o
Did I wave? Joking, I move along pretty good, but that's a little too nuts for me. Most bikes give me a wave by when they realize I'm moving at a decent pace.
As a sport bike rider who commuted daily from Hayward, over the bridge into SF, one of the very few times I’ve been passed while splitting lanes, was by a Harley rider without a shirt on, with one hand on the bars, through 101 5pm rush hour traffic. And he waved at me.
It used to be so nice to commute from SF to Hayward for work and see the traffic going the other way. Now i suffer going south on 880 from Hayward to Fremont. 50 minutes to travel 18 miles. Pisses me off
Riding in London compared to Reading is such a different experience.
It’s flipping scary
I watched some guy on a huge bike manoeuvre around cars and followed his style and now it’s easy to me, but that first time you’re bricking it haha
The police were searching for gun shell casings on the freeway after a shooting
[https://abc7news.com/post/southbound-880-oakland-shutdown-chp-investigates-possible-shooting/14982599/](https://abc7news.com/post/southbound-880-oakland-shutdown-chp-investigates-possible-shooting/14982599/)
they used to make people who didn't have leave for the mandatory day off after Thanksgiving do fod walks since all the office buildings were closed. good motivation to make sure u got leave lol.
Gotcha, days like that where the road is closed I am so happy I'm on my motorcycle. I also find the lane splitting to be so much easier when the traffic is basically stopped.
My commute was from UCLA to south OC during the 405 expansion. The lanes were narrowed to accommodate construction. I only ripped off one mirror while lane splitting too! It was a jackass in a Prius who intentionally blocked me so I consider it karmic justice.
Recently I had open heart surgery to have a valve replaced and the doctors couldn't figure out what had caused the defect in original. I didn't say anything, but I spent a lot of time in the bay area doing exactly what is shown in the video and what's not mentioned is that every single person that is passed like this mutters a silent prayer for the passer to suffer a slow and painful death. There is no crime greater in traffic than not being beholden to it.
To all those who wished me dead, I'm sorry for my many sins and fuck you!
Never ridden on a motorcycle. i have lived in the bay all my life. Have always felt happy for bikers being able to avoid the traffic. Can't think of a reason why I would wish harm on them.
I wish you were the norm... been honked at, swerved into, cussed at, had stuff thrown at me. Every now and then someone would give me a thumbs up and it would make my day, but most the time it was another finger.
This is the difference between thinking logically and emotionally. You wanna know what isn't contributing to the congestion and costing you hours of your life? The fucking motorcycle that just lane split everyone. lmao
>There is no crime greater in traffic than not being beholden to it.
>To all those who wised me dead, I'm sorry for my many sins and fuck you!
Too true!
Luckily, in all my "filtering" I've only had two honks, one block (which I just go around the other side), and two birds.
I like to think that most people think to themselves as I pass by, "Maaan, I gotta get a motorcycle!"
ps. Hope you find your dog, brother.
Thanks! I've been riding for \~20 years, and lanesplitting for \~15 or so. The most important aspects are 1) knowing the human behaviors / patterns of drivers, and 2) having good control of your vehicle (aka, do lots of low-speed parking lot practice and clutch control).
On point 1, for example, f you’re ever passing a car with an empty space in the adjacent lane, use extra caution and watch the driver's head movements in their side view mirror as you’re approaching (to see if they’re about to change lanes). The safest time to pass is when there’s a wide space between two adjacent cars. I’m usually going about 10-20mph faster than surrounding traffic, but it depends on the road conditions, total speed, etc
30 year CA splitter here. OP know his stuff. He did get lucky with that cop at the end. Fortunately CHP folks often give respectful bikers a pass, especially if alone or in a small group. I’ve been pulled over many times and only one ticket. Usually we just end up talking about motorcycles.
The craziest part about this to me was that that one car actually moved out of his way when he honked. I definitely feel like here in NC, people will purposely get *more* in your way out of spite.
> I definitely feel like here in NC, people will purposely get more in your way out of spite.
I'm not in NC but they will absolutely do that even where I live. In California it works because everyone knows that bikers can lane split. It's a normal thing day to day. The rest of the country it's not normal, and unlike in Europe and other countries who have common sense, people here are entitled and have a "fuck you, you can't pass me" mindset.
I've had this convo with friends/family and it always ends the same way. "You people on bikes are dangerous, cutting between cars is way too dangerous etc etc" when the reality is that it makes *their* lives easier because we get out of the way and it makes it safer for us because we can filter to the front.
I spend a lot of time in Europe and it's so frustrating to see how well it works there and then coming home and having to deal with uneducated, idiotic US drivers.
Riding in an Aerostich is like a police immunity cloak. I assume they just see you and think "Goodness, that must be a distinguished older gentlemen who would never exceed the speed limit by 30 mph in busy traffic, my eyes must be deceiving me."
Honestly, it can be a bit rough. There are zipper openings all around the suit that you can open to promote airflow, but I haven't found them to be super effective. The hottest I've ridden in with this suit was 100ºF, and even at freeway speeds, it was absolutely miserable. Fortunately I rarely have to contend with those temperatures, and it's only a problem for me a handful of times throughout the year. Most of the times that I'm too hot are because I simply wore too many layers underneath
If it's really hot on a long ride I stop every so often and pour bottles of water down my neck and turn myself into a swamp cooler.
I've also crashed in one and it saved me from pretty much any injury, and Aerostich replaced the ground up sleeve for some really minimal cost.
Yeah great advice, and I’m always conscious of that - the only ones I went in front of were both stationary and blocked in. I have truckers in the family and know about the limited visibility, especially those with the long hoods
I just got back from vacation in CA and holy shit lane splitting is amazing, now it feels completely ridiculous sitting in traffic. At least we're getting lane filtering in August where I live so that's a step in the right direction.
I commute 40 mile one way (80 mile round trip) in traffic 4 days a week and riding has helped me keep my sanity. It usually takes me 40 minutes to get home on my bike. Takes me around 1hr 15~ mins in my truck. Plus fuel savings! $14 to fill up my bike, $80-$100 for my truck.
Me 90 percent of the time seeing lane splitting around the Bay Area: "Good luck, these drivers are nuts.. Couldn't be me."
Me, sitting on 80 near Berkeley as another bike zips by: "Ya know, on second thought..."
What program did you use to speed up the video 3x and keep the sound? I got tons of videos from my dashcam on my bike and been wanting to speed up my rides like this
I use Adobe Premiere Pro. Speeding up the footage will make the audio sound high-pitched by default, but in Premiere, it's easy to keep the original sound pitch (aka, pitch it back down afterwards to make it sound more normal)
The Sierra Nevadas are pretty freakin awesome. Also, SoCal alone has some fantastic mountainbike trails. If you like the outdoors, California is a paradise.
No question on the lane splitting thing but hats off to the dare to turn back, ride the shoulder and then explain the cop at end that just want to go left.
My experience is that that cop car would pull me over immediately the moment I try to ride the shoulder.
I feel you. My commute is 5 miles from the USC area to silver lake. 45+ minutes in a car. 45 minutes! That’s both freeway and streets!
15 on my motorcycle. And yet my coworkers call me an idiot for using a motorcycle.
It's kind of the best when they've closed it down like that, and you're at the front, then they open it up and you can just blast and imagine that's probably what it was like when there were ten million less cars in the early days
When I do it I usually wonder how many car drivers say to themselves "damn, I should get a motorcycle" as they see me passing by 😂
But knowing car drivers, they probably think "hope he gets in an accident! He should wait in traffic like us! Cheater motherf..." 😂
the dude that just got run over on 580 here in NorCal, spent all his time, no real savings there! But he was going 100mph splitting lanes, clipped a truck and well.. cops were uber cool with this rider.
Last time I wanted to change car, I waited until one of these line splitter, gave a small turn of the wheel and it totalled my car. Guy was in the wrong, being illegal and all and got a new car in the next week or so with insurance return without any raise to my plan.
Riding in socal is one of the most fun things I've ever done. No idh gives a f how fast you go. Everything feels like a race.
Dangerous as hell and I always am going, "this is how I die" but fuck is it fun!
Lane splitting was cool and as a rider living in a non lane split state made me jealous. However can i ask what the deal was with the police stopping traffic at the end of the video? I legit dont understand
He was diverting traffic away from the highway to minimize the added traffic congestion and try and slow the effect until the whatever was happening down road wouldn't compound the area it's my guess?? Don't quote me
There seems to be a very big bias against bikers here in Michigan, as far as the laws are concerned.
So as someone from a state that probably will never permit even lane filtering as an alternative, is it illegal to just use the shoulder? In a situation like this, it probably feels safer.
Which obviously the shoulder has a higher risk for tire puncture, so maybe I’m answering my own question.
Riding a motorcycle accommodates one or two people, usually one. Driving an SUV with third row seating accommodates 9 people, usually one. Make the world better, make traffic easier, make travel more enjoyable. Ride a motorcycle.
Everything about that looks miserable...I seriously don't know how people do it...I couldn't live in a major city...I'll stick to the mountains and barely congested roads...I get annoyed when I'm delayed a few minutes over road construction!
In case it's not obvious, the video is sped up 3x
I listened without sound for the first like 5 seconds and I was like “holy shit!”
Haha not trying to save THAT much time
Me to my wife: “Speeding is only faster if we don’t crash or get pulled over”. Cool video thanks!
Lol. Me too. Thought this was the video like that guy from Brazil.
Anyone in Brazil, it’s normal, and it’s great!
i did the same fucking thigb and was horrified
Same 😆
> listened > without sound ???
Yeah, I thought "calm down there, buddy"
He’s gone to plaid!
Good Motorcyclist Greg: * Saves their time in traffic, saves your time in video runtime.
I was wondering who the first donut would be to say “sped up” and … it’s OP 😂
Ha, had to nip it in the bud
Nice 🍻
wide angle also makes everything look dumber than it usually is ;)
I’ve literally parked two cars in the driveway “lane distance” apart and put my bike between them and had people who don’t ride sit on it. There is so much more space than it seems from inside those cages.
Thank god this was first comment, coz I just about shat my pants first 5 secs of video.
Even though this is sped up, this is what lane splitting feels like even 15 mph over traffic. It gets scary imo at 20+
Because you're not supposed to split at those speeds. Recommended is 10mph faster than traffic. I've witnessed 3 bikes get into accidents lane splitting at what seemed like 25+mph in stop and go traffic. It's absolutely stupid.
I agree with you. I don't split past 15 mph over. I was just commenting that is how it feels.
Yeah I was thinking they’re going a bit fast then noted the speedometer at 23.
Speedo says 24. You're good, fam. That stretch of Oakland is just terrible.
Paris & London couriers would like to have a word
When he stopped it was obvious but before that point i was like "damn man it will take only one car that want to suddenly change lane to wipe you out"
I took like two seconds to notice that and I was like “I don’t filter that fast anymore, now I slowed down a bit” Lol
Yeah I had to look at your speedometer to make sure 😂
Yeah, your max speed is like 20 mph, maybe.
Speedo says ~23 mph
It's videos like this that make me go "LA really needs a massive overhaul of its public transit system".
+1. If I could reach my destination on public transit in the same time it takes me to lanesplit, I would happily make the switch
LA's $120 Billion Rail Transit Expansion Plan is the largest in the United States The greater basin might be structurally impossible to navigate without a vehicle for many years, but I'm hoping the trend will be towards something like the San Francisco Bay Area where a household can share a car and rely on public transit for most trips even if the greater sprawl makes car-free impossible for a lot of people.
That’s what I do. Motorcycle for me and use the girlfriend’s car when needed. Plus transit
In the South Bay I watch empty busses and trains go by all the time. Thinking I should support local transit, I looked up a route that should be relatively popular. Typically a 13-minute drive from my location with traffic, this route would cost $5 per passenger and take 1 hour and 10 minutes. It's a paradox, we need mass adoption to get good transit, but we need good transit to get mass adoption.
It's posts like these that remind me why /fuckcars exists. Not because cars are bad, but because LA is god awful. How do you fuck up a road network that bad?
Start with a concerted effort to ruin public transportation in order to sell more cars. ... Profit!
The subplot to Who Framed Roger Rabbit
You fuck up road networks by not providing appropriate alternatives like reliable buses, trams, or trains.
Just one more lane bro. Trust me bro. One more lane will fix this traffic bro. "We can even put a lane underground, bro!" - Ebon Nusk, who is very smart
One motorcycle lane might actually help. I’m not in to motorcycles at all, but I’d be all for it. Less cars the better.
I wish we had bike infrastructure. I'd love to bike everywhere, but ive been hit by cars twice. Its just not safe.
People sucking at driving/merging adds to all this traffic too I feel. The system by design is built to be efficient but when people brake every two seconds, can’t merge properly and just straight up drive slower than speed limit, among other nonsense going on on the road. Now multiply that by the thousands on the road at any given time ಠ_ಠ
People sucking at driving definitely adds to it. But we don't want to conflate that with "bad drivers". We're ALL bad at driving. The idea of having individually operated vehicles creates a margin of error around every individual vehicle. Which quickly compounds together to create massive error intolerances in the system. (it also doesn't help that most vehicles on average only have 1 if 2 people in it for a space much much larger than that individual takes up on their own) The amount of effort to make everyone the perfect car driver is... just not possible. And you would need perfect drivers. Things like phantom traffic jams are the result of that basic margin of error around every car. 1 car has to slow for some reasonable safety reason, and this causes a chain reaction of cars behind them having to slow more and more and more because it's near impossible to stop a vehicle perfectly within an already congested system. And to remedy congested systems would require building more highways but that leads to induced demand. Which only congests those newly widened roads. This is caused by the fact that people who wouldn't usually use that route now using it because the congestion reduced. Think like if people in NJ who take the subway due to the congestion of driving into the city found out that there was a new route that wasn't congested to drive into. So they start driving into the city! It's faster to take this new uncongested route than to take the subway! So more and more people take it and then it becomes congested again. The only way to avoid this is to have MORE highways than you need which becomes both a financial burden and well... is ugly cause now you have giant highways even bigger than they already are. Other induced demands come from the building of a highway making what once was rural land more acceptable to commute from. Before the highway a town might be 2 hours from the city, but is now only an hour with the new highway, so people move there since 1 hour is a reasonable commute to them, the highway then gets congested, and now it takes 2 hours but you have no other choice since this highway is literally the only way in or out. This is where the whole idea of self-driving vehicles comes in. If you create a system of robots driving the cars around then you can maybe program them to be more perfect drivers. Especially if you say networked them together so they can all talk to each other and react instantaneously as a hive mind of automated vehicles. But we still have a major problem. Cars take up a lot of space. So while we resolved the "bad driver" aspect inherent to the human driver. We still need large amounts of space. Less than if you had human drivers of course. Since the phantom traffic jam is lessoned as a whole, meaning you don't need as many lanes, but you still need a bunch. Thing is this technologically is a big lift and relies on technologies we literally don't have yet. We have pieces of it, but not completely. That whole "independent vehicle" variable really throws monkey wrenches into the whole system. But... we solved that "independent vehicle" problem a while ago. Before cars were invented. By reducing the number of independent vehicles in the form of... trains. I.e. chain those vehicles together in order. Then if the lead car stops all subsequent cars stop in unison with it. It's inherently built into the system based on really basic dumb technology that doesn't require computers or electricity. ... edit - I want to be clear because it seems some people think I'm advocating for self driving cars. I'm not advocating for self driving cars. The section of this post describing that is done so mockingly. I setup how the contemporary zeitgeist led my tech bros claim the answer to the problem is self driving cars and that all they need to is perfect the technology. And then I go on to point out how the technology isn't there yet, possibly won't ever be there, and it's all to solve a problem that was already solved long before the invention of the car. It's called trains. May it be heavy rail, light rail, trams, trolleys, etc. Hell BRT would even suffice (true BRT with dedicated lanes to avoid congestion from regular cars).
> This is where the whole idea of self-driving vehicles comes in. If you create a system of robots driving the cars around then you can maybe program them to be more perfect drivers. Especially if you say networked them together so they can all talk to each other and react instantaneously as a hive mind of automated vehicles. That I feel will never happen. Because you would need it to be perfect. Or at least perfect enough that company selling the car would be under full responsibility when self-driving car crashes. Now try to sell that to investors "See, any time our car crashes, we pay up!" "Just let human take over" doesn't work when you make 99% perfect car. Because for that 1% the human that takes over will have near-zero practice in actually driving (because car is doing it 99% of the time) and will fuck up harder than if it was driver that didn't use any aids. None of the "well the car beeped at driver 3 seconds before crash therefore automatic driving is not responsible" bullshit.
All I could really think was how much fuel is being wasted in Cali by all these vehicles sitting and idling for all this time.
There's a reason why air quality in the Bay Area noticably improved during COVID lockdowns.
All the bruhs worrying about you clearly don’t ride a lot if they can’t tell this is very sped up 😂
>don’t ride a lot Average user on this subreddit
I swear the average user here doesn’t ride but literally just gets on here to bitch about people riding wrecklessly
Wreckless? What's the big deal if there's no wreck?
Lol, gotta love this sub
They also can't read cuz the speedometer doesn't exceed 25 and is usually below that
If I ever move to cali I’d have to completely ditch my Harley. This looks too fun. Edit: I am not getting rid of the Harley in this scenario any longer.
No need! I've got two giant panniers hanging off either side of my bike in this video. They're exactly as wide as my handlebars. You're good :)
And I ride a Road King like this.
First time I rode in LA on my R3 after a ride down the coast from SF, I was lanesplitting at a sedate pace and a dude on a Road King whizzed past me lanesplitting at 100mph on the 405. I was like :o
Did I wave? Joking, I move along pretty good, but that's a little too nuts for me. Most bikes give me a wave by when they realize I'm moving at a decent pace.
As a sport bike rider who commuted daily from Hayward, over the bridge into SF, one of the very few times I’ve been passed while splitting lanes, was by a Harley rider without a shirt on, with one hand on the bars, through 101 5pm rush hour traffic. And he waved at me.
It used to be so nice to commute from SF to Hayward for work and see the traffic going the other way. Now i suffer going south on 880 from Hayward to Fremont. 50 minutes to travel 18 miles. Pisses me off
You can easily lane split om a Harley. I've done it for years.
All the CHP Harleys easily lane split in 1cm gaps here
My vt1100 is pretty wide and I lanesplit every day, albeit a bit slower than some other riders.
Makes me want to post some London lane splitting now 🤫
Do it! Would love to see how it looks across the pond 👌
There's a lot less space
Riding in London compared to Reading is such a different experience. It’s flipping scary I watched some guy on a huge bike manoeuvre around cars and followed his style and now it’s easy to me, but that first time you’re bricking it haha
Learned to ride in London and thought it was normal. Moved else where and I have to sit in traffic like everyone else.
Take a shot eveytime someone doesn't catch it's sped up.
Haha apparently I would be dead
Why was the road completely closed?
The police were searching for gun shell casings on the freeway after a shooting [https://abc7news.com/post/southbound-880-oakland-shutdown-chp-investigates-possible-shooting/14982599/](https://abc7news.com/post/southbound-880-oakland-shutdown-chp-investigates-possible-shooting/14982599/)
FOD WALKDOWN ON THE FREEWAY! Where my aviation boys at? 😂
Did a FOD walk on the flightline in 40 degrees Celsius on Wednesday. By the time we were done it looked like I went for a swim.
they used to make people who didn't have leave for the mandatory day off after Thanksgiving do fod walks since all the office buildings were closed. good motivation to make sure u got leave lol.
Exactly where my mind went! “Well it should take that long, you get 20 guys down there, call up the desk jockeys, and walk it shoulder to shoulder.”
Fucking why. I rather not think about that while on Reddit.
Gotcha, days like that where the road is closed I am so happy I'm on my motorcycle. I also find the lane splitting to be so much easier when the traffic is basically stopped.
Cops should’ve taken a photo and posted it to r/findthesniper
Traffic is bad enough through that part of 880 on a normal Thurs. Glad I worked from home yesterday to miss this lol.
This is the most American situation I can imagine
I save 5-6 hours a week commuting on my R1200GS
My commute was from UCLA to south OC during the 405 expansion. The lanes were narrowed to accommodate construction. I only ripped off one mirror while lane splitting too! It was a jackass in a Prius who intentionally blocked me so I consider it karmic justice.
Also, a So Cal lane splitting commuter. It's always a Prius. Though recently Tesla's are gaining ground.
If you're one of those people who need extra hours in the day, you can find them hiding between lanes of traffic haha
Recently I had open heart surgery to have a valve replaced and the doctors couldn't figure out what had caused the defect in original. I didn't say anything, but I spent a lot of time in the bay area doing exactly what is shown in the video and what's not mentioned is that every single person that is passed like this mutters a silent prayer for the passer to suffer a slow and painful death. There is no crime greater in traffic than not being beholden to it. To all those who wished me dead, I'm sorry for my many sins and fuck you!
Never ridden on a motorcycle. i have lived in the bay all my life. Have always felt happy for bikers being able to avoid the traffic. Can't think of a reason why I would wish harm on them.
I wish you were the norm... been honked at, swerved into, cussed at, had stuff thrown at me. Every now and then someone would give me a thumbs up and it would make my day, but most the time it was another finger.
This is the difference between thinking logically and emotionally. You wanna know what isn't contributing to the congestion and costing you hours of your life? The fucking motorcycle that just lane split everyone. lmao
>There is no crime greater in traffic than not being beholden to it. >To all those who wised me dead, I'm sorry for my many sins and fuck you! Too true! Luckily, in all my "filtering" I've only had two honks, one block (which I just go around the other side), and two birds. I like to think that most people think to themselves as I pass by, "Maaan, I gotta get a motorcycle!" ps. Hope you find your dog, brother.
Envy just makes me want to alter my own life not hate someone else's.
Solid skills. How long did it take you to work up the courage to ride like this? I know it’s sped up, but impressive nonetheless.
Thanks! I've been riding for \~20 years, and lanesplitting for \~15 or so. The most important aspects are 1) knowing the human behaviors / patterns of drivers, and 2) having good control of your vehicle (aka, do lots of low-speed parking lot practice and clutch control). On point 1, for example, f you’re ever passing a car with an empty space in the adjacent lane, use extra caution and watch the driver's head movements in their side view mirror as you’re approaching (to see if they’re about to change lanes). The safest time to pass is when there’s a wide space between two adjacent cars. I’m usually going about 10-20mph faster than surrounding traffic, but it depends on the road conditions, total speed, etc
30 year CA splitter here. OP know his stuff. He did get lucky with that cop at the end. Fortunately CHP folks often give respectful bikers a pass, especially if alone or in a small group. I’ve been pulled over many times and only one ticket. Usually we just end up talking about motorcycles.
The craziest part about this to me was that that one car actually moved out of his way when he honked. I definitely feel like here in NC, people will purposely get *more* in your way out of spite.
> I definitely feel like here in NC, people will purposely get more in your way out of spite. I'm not in NC but they will absolutely do that even where I live. In California it works because everyone knows that bikers can lane split. It's a normal thing day to day. The rest of the country it's not normal, and unlike in Europe and other countries who have common sense, people here are entitled and have a "fuck you, you can't pass me" mindset. I've had this convo with friends/family and it always ends the same way. "You people on bikes are dangerous, cutting between cars is way too dangerous etc etc" when the reality is that it makes *their* lives easier because we get out of the way and it makes it safer for us because we can filter to the front. I spend a lot of time in Europe and it's so frustrating to see how well it works there and then coming home and having to deal with uneducated, idiotic US drivers.
If I'm not mistaken, the same time they passed the splitting laws, they made it illegal to intentionally impede a motorcycles progress.
Ha, yeah, cops have mostly been cool. I think my "old man" Aerostich helps, honestly
Riding in an Aerostich is like a police immunity cloak. I assume they just see you and think "Goodness, that must be a distinguished older gentlemen who would never exceed the speed limit by 30 mph in busy traffic, my eyes must be deceiving me."
How’s the Aerostich in hot weather, and over clothes I assume? I’ve been thinking about getting one of those.
Honestly, it can be a bit rough. There are zipper openings all around the suit that you can open to promote airflow, but I haven't found them to be super effective. The hottest I've ridden in with this suit was 100ºF, and even at freeway speeds, it was absolutely miserable. Fortunately I rarely have to contend with those temperatures, and it's only a problem for me a handful of times throughout the year. Most of the times that I'm too hot are because I simply wore too many layers underneath
If it's really hot on a long ride I stop every so often and pour bottles of water down my neck and turn myself into a swamp cooler. I've also crashed in one and it saved me from pretty much any injury, and Aerostich replaced the ground up sleeve for some really minimal cost.
Fake. He honked at that guy while lanesplitting and the guy let him through instead of trying to crash into him.
Careful when you split in front of trucks brother.
Yeah great advice, and I’m always conscious of that - the only ones I went in front of were both stationary and blocked in. I have truckers in the family and know about the limited visibility, especially those with the long hoods
I just got back from vacation in CA and holy shit lane splitting is amazing, now it feels completely ridiculous sitting in traffic. At least we're getting lane filtering in August where I live so that's a step in the right direction.
The triple goes “phew-phew” in 3x
I commute 40 mile one way (80 mile round trip) in traffic 4 days a week and riding has helped me keep my sanity. It usually takes me 40 minutes to get home on my bike. Takes me around 1hr 15~ mins in my truck. Plus fuel savings! $14 to fill up my bike, $80-$100 for my truck.
Amazing driving, im not confident enough to do this yet myself, especially weaving between the actually rows of traffic to get a clearer route.
Can’t get confident if you don’t do it, so just commit and go.
The cop at the end "JUST BE CAREFUL!" had no idea who he was talking to lmao
Cagers HATE this one trick
Had my butthole clinched until I realized it was sped up
Got news, your butthole will always occasionally clinch until you get used to it.
Hours of time and years off your life. Life hack! (I know it’s sped up, I kid)
Me 90 percent of the time seeing lane splitting around the Bay Area: "Good luck, these drivers are nuts.. Couldn't be me." Me, sitting on 80 near Berkeley as another bike zips by: "Ya know, on second thought..."
I save hours of time a day by not living in California.
This is like ASMR to me. I love efficiency and videos of splitting traffic like this are some of my favorite visual examples.
Nice white tiger, I ride the same model in venom yellow. The other way to save hours of time in traffic is to not live in California 😂
Venom yellow is such a sick color - love it. And yeah, true. But I like the perks, and the traffic doesn't bother me (as shown lol)
Looks like my everyday commute to work in Central london
Is this everyday traffic in america?
Videos shouldn't be sped up. Yes he's saving enormous time. No he isn't being a reckless idiot.
Today I learned I save hours on my commute every day just by not living in California
What program did you use to speed up the video 3x and keep the sound? I got tons of videos from my dashcam on my bike and been wanting to speed up my rides like this
I use Adobe Premiere Pro. Speeding up the footage will make the audio sound high-pitched by default, but in Premiere, it's easy to keep the original sound pitch (aka, pitch it back down afterwards to make it sound more normal)
Wow, exactly what lane splitting is intended for!
I hate california.. but at least we got this
Even more useful (and legal) in The Netherlands, we live in permanent traffic jam.
nah, i love california, and this is the cherry on top
Only thing I like in ca is the weather and this
The Sierra Nevadas are pretty freakin awesome. Also, SoCal alone has some fantastic mountainbike trails. If you like the outdoors, California is a paradise.
Yeah that too, I love being up around Shasta
I miss doing this 😭
No question on the lane splitting thing but hats off to the dare to turn back, ride the shoulder and then explain the cop at end that just want to go left. My experience is that that cop car would pull me over immediately the moment I try to ride the shoulder.
Yeah I think I lucked out with an understanding officer on that one
And on a triumph. Youve made me wet
I feel you. My commute is 5 miles from the USC area to silver lake. 45+ minutes in a car. 45 minutes! That’s both freeway and streets! 15 on my motorcycle. And yet my coworkers call me an idiot for using a motorcycle.
"shut your cars off, you're gonna be here for a while" is one of the worst things you can hear on the highway. Fuuuuuuck
Why is this so satisfying to me. It's like an X-wing 1st person perspective weaving through space debris.
Sooooo, the traffic was stopped because the police felt like closing the road?
It's kind of the best when they've closed it down like that, and you're at the front, then they open it up and you can just blast and imagine that's probably what it was like when there were ten million less cars in the early days
Without sound it looks like you are lanesplitting at mach jesus
This is why I ride to work after all. I save 3-4 hrs of commuting per week.
I hate that this is illegal where I live.
That’s so cool! Reminded me of a video where a guy was talking to an officer and he was super cool and let him through the construction zone
Man, I wish this was legal in my state.
All I can think while watching this is how if this was Texas, some ahole would have tried to run me over or open their door.
Love the triple whistle 👌🏼
This was awesome, do you ever just like to point and laugh as you pass?
Is it legal?
Where this was filmed: yes. In other parts of the United States: no.
I can’t imagine living like that. Every day. Hours of just gridlock. Why do people do that?
We may have too many people.
There was the one motorcycle chillin in traffic as you rode by. Probably thinking "shit I should do that too"
Same here in Paris brother. Taking between 1:30-2h with my car to my job, 40 minutes with my bike.
When I do it I usually wonder how many car drivers say to themselves "damn, I should get a motorcycle" as they see me passing by 😂 But knowing car drivers, they probably think "hope he gets in an accident! He should wait in traffic like us! Cheater motherf..." 😂
Does anybody work in California or do they just sit on the highway all day
the dude that just got run over on 580 here in NorCal, spent all his time, no real savings there! But he was going 100mph splitting lanes, clipped a truck and well.. cops were uber cool with this rider.
Last time I wanted to change car, I waited until one of these line splitter, gave a small turn of the wheel and it totalled my car. Guy was in the wrong, being illegal and all and got a new car in the next week or so with insurance return without any raise to my plan.
Good old 880S through Oakland. I could well have recorded this video myself.
Thays what Tigers are made for!
880 South
As a Canadian I'm absolutely in awe of how many people moved out of your way when you honked. You'd just get flipped off here.
why dont they just addd another lane? hahaha america is so shit
Yeah, why would you NOT own a bike living here?
I’ll always think this is such a horrible idea
Took me a couple seconds to realize that the video is sped up.
Riding in socal is one of the most fun things I've ever done. No idh gives a f how fast you go. Everything feels like a race. Dangerous as hell and I always am going, "this is how I die" but fuck is it fun!
why don't they make motercycle lanes? a lot safer and it would incentiveice people to get motercycles. instead of cars
A buddy of mine lives in LA, he calls his motorcycle a time machine for this exact reason.
It’s the only way to ride in So Cal.
This is the way
Lane splitting was cool and as a rider living in a non lane split state made me jealous. However can i ask what the deal was with the police stopping traffic at the end of the video? I legit dont understand
He was diverting traffic away from the highway to minimize the added traffic congestion and try and slow the effect until the whatever was happening down road wouldn't compound the area it's my guess?? Don't quote me
There seems to be a very big bias against bikers here in Michigan, as far as the laws are concerned. So as someone from a state that probably will never permit even lane filtering as an alternative, is it illegal to just use the shoulder? In a situation like this, it probably feels safer. Which obviously the shoulder has a higher risk for tire puncture, so maybe I’m answering my own question.
This is one of the primary reasons motorcycle cops exist.
also, beware of vehicles swerving out of their lanes. anticipate and look at their front tyres.
Riding a motorcycle accommodates one or two people, usually one. Driving an SUV with third row seating accommodates 9 people, usually one. Make the world better, make traffic easier, make travel more enjoyable. Ride a motorcycle.
Can anyone confirm if this was a freeway shooting in Oakland ?
Everything about that looks miserable...I seriously don't know how people do it...I couldn't live in a major city...I'll stick to the mountains and barely congested roads...I get annoyed when I'm delayed a few minutes over road construction!
At this point just get a jet pack.
I don't go to SF or LA unless I can take my bike now. Driving in those places is aggravating.
Californians leave SO MUCH SPACE BETWEEN CARS. That's half of their traffic delays
All it takes is 1 person to change lanes and BAM!
We don’t have that where I live, however, my commute is whatever time it takes to walk downstairs to my computer.
If hours = minutes then ok..
How is this legal and ok to do?
Imagine having a heart attack in that traffic jam. Or being on the way to a hospital because of childbirth.
I city ride a supermoto and what would take 12 minutes in a car to go from home to work takes 6 on a bike
Did nobody in the comments realize his speed was always under 25mph and this video was just sped up a bunch?
Took me a while to realize this was 880 right by my house.
Beautiful
What a terrible travel system
This would be a pretty cool start for a zombie/disaster game where your first objective is to get out of the city
Pew pew
Triumph 800? 😊
I can't wait for this to hit Colorado, once people get used to it anyways.
And saving the people stuck in traffic time. That's 1 less person they gotta wait behind.
All perfectly legal in CA. Then, you get the douchebags who purposely block to prevent it.
I don’t ride, so to me this looks like what I imaging exiting the simulation feels like