Could Lane Splitting Become Legal In Texas?

Take a few seconds to watch a portion of the below video before reading the rest of this post. (Don’t watch the whole thing. If you’re like me, it will give you motion sickness.)

The video is an example of lane splitting, the tactic of motorcycles driving between lanes of traffic. It looks dangerous to me, but yesterday, the Texas Senate voted to suspend constitutional rules and approved Senate Bill 506, which would make some lane splitting legal in Texas. The proposal is now headed to the Texas House.

Why do we need this? The bill’s supporters suggest that lane splitting would help improve traffic because the motorcycles could move up, vacating lanes for other cars and trucks. Are they kidding us? I’m not sure what kind of traffic Senator Carona, the bill’s sponsor, sits in, but the problems I see in traffic have a whole lot more to do with too many cars and trucks and not motorcycles. If we allowed 18 wheelers to engage in lane splitting, that might help traffic, but I can’t see any marginal improvements from allowing the occasional motorcyclist to move up.

To me, this seems to be a disaster waiting to happen. In rush hour traffic, it’s hard enough to change lanes and get to exits without adding the extra step of watching for motorcyclists speeding up behind me. And that’s not to mention the ticked off car drivers that drive close to one another to try and cut off the motorcycles. I just don’t see how this can be done safely.

If you share my concerns, you can call your state representative to try to derail this wayward bill.

For more on this, Fox 7’s Rudy Koski had a great report on last night’s news.

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