In California, USA, motorcycles a legally permitted to drive between traffic lanes, during traffic congestion events when all the cars are jammed up. Lane splitting improve rider safety, reduces traffic congestion, reduces energy waste & vehicle emissions, improves road utilization, reduces air pollution, improves the motorcycles fuel economy, reduces risk of rear end collision from a driver behind the motorcycle not coming to a full stop due to smartphone distraction or similar.
Other states in the USA or America are passing lane-splitting permission laws to enable motorcycle & scooter riders to legally ride between stopped or very slow moving car, truck & SUV traffic. Only a tiny fraction of motorists are motorcycle riders, willing to ride a motorcycle or scooter in traffic since doing so up to 26x more dangerous than driving an automobile with its metallic or composite safety cage, seatbelts, airbags & recently drive assist like collision prevention or automatic lane keep assist or event autonomous or self driving modes. Bicycle riders are legally permitted to lane split in traffic stopped at an light controlled intersection in most locals.
Emergent private vehicle ownerships & corresponding increases in traffic congestion worldwide are dominated by passenger cars, sedans & SUV and light duty utility vehicles & personal trucks. Motorcycle use also typically highly seasonal, where most motorcycle riders tend to ride more during clear overcast or sunny or partially cloudy warmer spring, summer & autumn seasonal weather & tend to not ride for pleasure or for commuting to work or to run errands during cold rainy weather, during snow fall, in the winter or other more dangerous conditions where the tiny curved motorcycle tire contact area on the front & back tires is up to 40x less road contact than that of 4 passenger car tires. This makes it easier for motorcycle tires to break traction on wet roads, sandy roads, on roads covered in loose gravel or the unstable debris.
Motorcycle helmets rarely feature HVAC controls or air filtering technology like that present in most passenger automobile vent, heating, air conditioning or cabin air control systems. Oddly, most motorcycle engine air intake systems feature filters to minimize dirt & other particle entry into the valve seats, piston rings, cylinder wall, crank bearings, head bearings, other oil film lubricated metal on metal friction surfaces where particulate sand or other rock dust can cause increased abrasion or wear rates to increase by scraping away the oil film & scratching the metal. Interesting, intentionally sand blasting or texturing the inside surfaces of the air intake system can reduce air flow restriction by forming a slippery gas turbulence boundary layer near the texture, that enables the engine to breathe more easily, enabling the engine to make more power, more energy, more torque, to rev faster, and improves efficiency, while reducing parasitic pumping losses that improve emissions as well! Think less air pollution & better fuel economy. Engine air filters on the other hand are restrictive to airflow & sometimes in motorsports the air intake does not feature a filter. In those high performance applications the engine life not as much of a priority as peak performance & the engine will be completely torn down & refurbished, repaired, wear parts replaced & upgraded after 10's or 100's of hours of operation, while a typically passenger automobile engine expected to operated with basic fluid & filter changes for thousands of hours by comparison.
In some motorcycle racing the racer helmets feature a forced filtered air system, especially where 2-stroke oil burning smoky engine bikes are utilized in the racing. Thankfully, like diesel, 2 stoke oil in the gasoline combustion engines are being phased out of most applications, perhaps except in some chain-saws where peak performance & low engine mass & very simple engine design are ideal. In some weedwackers the 2-stroke engine version has lower mass than the 4 stoke version, making it easier for the person operating the 2-stroke weedwhacker to work. For someone working professionally in the ladscaping industry, lower mass power tools reduce wear on their synovial joints, wrist, elbows, shoulders, neck, back, hips, knees & ankles. This makes lower mass or lighter weight tools ideal, even if they have a price premium or higher emissions. Some interesting new engine technology will enable some of those power tools to get an engine feature direct injection, turbo-charging, stratified ignition, emissions controls with O2 oxygen sensors measuring the exhaust gas temperatures & feeding this data to the ECU so that injection control & ignition event timing & pulse width duration can be dynamically optimized for all different engine speeds & engine loads & different air temperatures as for operation at different altitudes, while improving performance & reducing emissions, enabling more runtime per refuel, or allowing the tool to run longer with less fuel. This also applied to motorcycles lane splitting.
When most convention vehicles are on & stopped, they are burning fuel but not moving, thereby getting negative fuel economy. Significantly important given gasoline price increases recently, someplace in the us where regular gas selling for nearly $6/ gallon. Food prices are also up 20-60% over the last couple of years. Electricity & natural gas prices & water prices are also on the rise. A recession is also forming, indicated by declines in copper trading price declines, declines in cryptocurrency values, falling home prices, the recently increased borrowing rate from the Federal Reserve & other market decline features typically of a bear market forming. I am not into professionally market analytics, but as a hobby investor I do follow trends in markets. I have been riding motorcycles for 22 years & my current machine a 2020 Yamaha MT-03 that makes about 40hp & can go just over 100 miles per hour; it achieves between 38-87 MPG, with fuel economy average trending around 68 MPG. I shift early & try to exploit a brake specific fuel consumption concept with the 6 speed sequential manual transmission, one left foot click down to first gear, half a click up to neutral, 5 more clicks for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th & 6th gear respectively. By keeping the RPM's near 3000-5800, and upshifting quickly, the engine consumes less fuel as indicated by the real time average fuel economy indicator on the black & white LCD dash display. The display also features a white LED shift light, trip functions for tracking when you last refueled or how far you have traveled, a clock, a shift position indicator, a tachometer & speedometer, all easy to read at a glance. The low mass of the Mt-03 & its wonderfully click-y transmissions & good ergonomics makes it the best motorcycle I have ever owned. This is why I am personally familiar with lane splitting & why I am writing about it as a topic. Check your local laws before engaging in lane splitting as they vary be location in different municipalities, states, countries, locals or similar places worldwide.
Consider an Idling Engine
Reciprocating internal combustion gasoline & Diesel engines have clean burning peak efficiency at a specific RPM & mechanical torque load level such that at engine idle states, typically from 300-1500 RPM depending on engine displacement, vehicle type or kind, fuel type & other factors, the engine not burning efficiently. In modern automobiles equipped with emissions control technologies, the ECU varies the fuel air mixture between lean burning & rich burning states of operation in order to keep the catalytic converters noble metals on ceramic core hot enough to convert toxic exhaust gas substances into non toxic substances, reducing air pollutant emissions from a modern emissions controlled vehicle by 95% or more. A typical gasoline burning carburetor equipped lawn mower engine for example emits 25X more air pollutants than a typical gasoline fueled fuel car engine, even though the car engine produces more peak power & torque & has a longer operating or useful life. Even when clean burning automobile engines are idling, they are not operating at an idle state & emit more pollutants per gallon of fuel burned then they would if the vehicle was operating at normal highway or cruising speeds. By allowing motorcycle to lane split and stay in-gear, the rider not forced to down shift all the way to neutral & this keeps the engine closer to its clean burn RPM range, so the tailpipe emission on the motorcycle are lower if it can keep moving, even at slow or moderate speeds while lane splitting.
Motorcycles can be Crushed Between Rearward & Forward Automobiles
Allowing a motorcyclist to lane split reduces the hazard of rear ending crushing that occurs when the driver driving behind a motorcyclist fails to stop & crashes into the rear of the motorcycle, crushing the bike & the rider into the bumper of the automobile to the front of the motorcycle. Laws the enable motorcyclists to lane split thereby improve rider safety in heavy traffic, stop & go traffic & congested traffic conditions.
In Developing Countries
Lane boundaries as observed by most motorists in North America or Europe are not as strictly observed in countries like India, where a combination of people on foot, people riding bicycles & scooters & motorcycles, and people driving cars are all sharing the same limited road space, such that lane boundaries are an often disregarded suggestion than something that a normal motorist observers or obeys. Watch YouTube videos of people driving in India to see an example of what I am talking about! In these "Wild West" like countries, lane splitting the norm or completely normal, not an exception to any rule of law. Sadly, accidents are exceedingly common in these locals, automobile collisions with pedestrians & with people on two-wheel vehicles like bicycles, scooters or motorcycles, a regular occurrence.
Many Motorcycles Air-Cooled
Meaning the engine will overheat in hot weather if the bike stuck in traffic idling in stop & go congestion conditions, since the engine requires air-flow for proper cooling, these air-cooled bike engines overheat easily, which increases NOX emissions, since this kind also typically lacks advanced emissions controls equipped on my 2020 fuel injected O2 sensor catalytic converter emission controlled Yamaha MT-03 for example, which incidentally, starts to overheat even when operated at lower speeds, the powerful electrical radiator fan cooler "kicks on" producing a lot of noise to force air past the coolant filled aluminum radiator, to keep the engine block cooled, an engine unit that was refined for more than 12 years of iterative improvements in the Yamaha R3, thankfully :)
Super Car in Traffic Congestion
What is the fun of having 1MW of engine power in your vehicle if your stuck in stop & go traffic ? The same can be said for 200KW motorcycle operated in similar conditions. Allowing motorcycle to lane split also reduces traffic congestion by allowing those motorcycle riding motorists to slip through the traffic jam, improving road passenger throughput while reducing the intensity and duration of the traffic jam. So allowing motorcycles to lane split reducing traffic congestion & enables people to get where they are going faster.
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