Hola, buenos Dias mi amigos! Today I’m going to talk about stuff which in my opinion makes your
lane-splitting safer. But, depending on where you live you might want to adjust this information to
your specific region. Because you know, at some places lane splitting is legal and expected, in
some places it’s strictly prohibited and sometimes it’s legal, but only between certain lanes
and at certain speed. For example, back in Russia lane-splitting is kinda like Shrodinger’s cat.
It’s both legal and illegal at the same time, there is no particular law which forbids it,
but at the same time cops can say that you are not maintaining safe gap between vehicles.
Here in Argentina it’s the very same situation – lane splitting is not directly prohibited,
but there is no particular rules about it either,
so you can theoretically do it on any speed you want and between any lanes you want. So check your
local laws and, maybe even more importantly – look how people - other drivers and bikers react on
lane splitters. Often there are a quite strict set of rules about lane splitting,
and often there are not. But of course, there are a lot of things which you can do
in order to make your filtering or lane splitting safer. I picked 5 – let’s talk about them.
First of course is speed, I don’t think that it’s much of a revelation.
As you probably remember from our emergency braking exercises – our braking distance depends
heavily on our speed. Roughly every added 12mph of speed almost doubles our stopping distance.
In a dense traffic it’s not uncommon for cars to change lanes, and if you are travelling too fast
between 2 lanes – you have 2 major problems. First problem is that people highly unlikely will see
you in their mirrors when they decide to change lanes. Second problem, as I already said – is
that your stopping distance will be much longer. And since you are lane splitting – there is not
much space for any maneuvers, so if somebody in front of you decides to change lanes - your only
option will be braking. With all that being said – just don’t hurry when lane splitting,
go at such speed that you know for sure that you can stop fast if something goes wrong. Plus,
there is actually very little reason to hurry when lane splitting. Faster lane splitting really
doesn’t make a lot of difference. For example, in a very dense morning traffic in Moscow I could
save maybe 5 minutes tops for an hour-long trip when I was in a hurry, compared to my usual pace.
You already save a lot of time when lane splitting, there is very little sense to
go faster. I would say maybe 10 to 15 mph higher than traffic speed is usually more than enough.
Second tip about lane splitting is don’t let the gap between the cars dictate your speed.
Here is what I mean. Sometimes there will be a big gap like this, when a car is missing. Some riders
tend to immediately open throttle and zip through this gap very fast. That is not usually very wise,
because cars tend to jump into these gaps as well. And in a lot of cases drivers don’t look in the
mirrors in between the lanes. So don’t hurry here as well, continue to maintain safe speed.
Third tip – look further. Don’t concentrate whole your attention only on cars in front of you.
Try to also look further, at least several cars ahead, try to also look in other lanes too
from time to time and don’t forget your mirrors too. From looking far ahead and in other lanes
you can predict what people will do. For example, if you see that cars far ahead
stopped – it’s obvious that cars in front of you will soon stop too. And in mirrors if you
see a motorcycle that is going faster than you – when you can - let him pass and he will plow you
the path between the cars. 4th tip – be ready to brake. Cover
both brakes and a clutch lever and if something goes wrong – don’t hesitate, brake immediately. As
they say – brake first, ask questions later. Being ready to brake also means that it’s better to keep
the bike upright most of the time, don’t lean it from side to side too much.
5th tip is about filtering, when cars are completely stopped. When traffic stops – watch
out for pedestrians, which are walking through the traffic across the road. If you are going
near a truck or a bus – be extremely careful and extra slow, you can’t see a person behind it,
and pedestrians often don’t expect filtering bikes either. Also when traffic stops completely – it’s
not too uncommon for passengers to open car doors or to stick arms through the windows,
so definitely watch out for that too. And I think that’s pretty much it. At
least that’s what I remembered to say! If I forgot anything – you can write it in a comment section
or in our new riders facebook group. Thank you for watching, Adios!