Thanks for sharing.
I think the article title is misleading at best. It's suggesting that it can be safe. My interpretation of the article content is that it's "not as unsafe as you might think" -- that doesn't mean "safe".
---From the article:
"Also compared with other motorcyclists involved in a collision, lane-splitting riders were less likely to suffer head injury (9 percent versus 17 percent), torso injury (19 percent versus 29 percent) and fatal injury (1.2 percent versus 3 percent)."
This is a characterization of lane spitting injuries vs. motorcycle injuries generally. Ok, so when you get in your "bonus" accident from lane-splitting it's not as bad as other types of collisions. "Yay"? How 'bout not having the bonus accident at all. That seems better to me.
---From the study:
"Of the 5,969 collision-involved motorcyclists we studied, 997 were lane-splitting at the time of their collision (17%)."
Holy crap. If you removed all lane-splitting, motorcycle collisions would be reduced 17%? Sound good to me. I'd like to see some evaluation of % of time lane-splitting vs. % of time doing non-lane-splitting driving. If the lane-splitting driving time is < 17% (and I suspect it is by a lot) it seems easy to argue that
while lane-splitting you're more likely to have a collision.
"Motorcyclists who were lane-splitting were notably different from those that were not lane-splitting. Compared with other motorcyclists, lane-splitting motorcyclists were more often riding on weekdays and during commute hours, were using better helmets, and were traveling at lower speeds. Lane-splitting riders were also less likely to have been using alcohol and less likely to have been carrying a passenger."
My interpretation: Even motorcycle drivers recognize lane-splitting is more risky than general motorcycle driving and thus (a) avoid doing so when impaired and (b) take additional precautions when doing so. Or they just generally want to drive faster when sober, well equipped, and driving solo -- and that makes them more impatient with traffic, and thus end up lane-splitting.
"Lane-splitting appears to be a relatively safe motorcycle riding strategy if done in traffic moving at 50 MPH or less and if motorcyclists do not exceed the speed of other vehicles by more than 15 MPH."
They make this assertion in the abstract but don't back it up (well, it's the abstract...) or clarify what "relatively" is relative to.
"American Motorcyclist Association ... Their position is that lane-splitting is a safe and beneficial strategy for motorcyclists if done in a reasonable manner, and that the success of legalized lane-splitting in any US state will be
dependent upon high levels of knowledge among non-motorcycling road users."
Anything that requires "high levels of knowledge" from your average motorist to be successful is doomed to fail. Unless they plan on backing that up with required education every time every driver's license is renewed.
"In 2012, CHP investigated 62,309 injury-producing traffic collisions, 38% of collisions in California. Of the 11,617 collisions that involved a motorcycle in the state that year, CHP investigated 52%."
I'm having some difficult interpreting their phrasing here. I think from these numbers we can assert:
- 163971 collisions
- 11671 collisions involving motorcycle
- 62309 collisions involving injury
- 6069 collisions involving a motorocycle and involving injury
- 7.1% of collisions involve a motorcycle
No conclusions, just data skimming.
"For example, 69% of riders were exceeding the traffic speed by 15 MPH or less. A significant number were traveling at excessive speed: 14% had a speed differential of 25 MPH or greater, and 3% had a speed differential of 40 MPH or greater. Lane-splitting in such a manner is likely to increase the risk of being involved in a traffic collision."
They make the assertion on multiple occasions but they don't back it up with numbers. Looking at just these numbers, 69% of the cases they analyzed were at smaller differently. That data seems to make the opposite argument: the lesser differential bucket is having
more accidents. Later they make the argument that the
degree of injury when having an accident is lessened when the differential is lower, but that's a completely different assertion than they are stating here.
"The findings from this analysis suggest that countermeasures to alter the way motorcyclists lane-split are likely to result in reductions in injury."
Obvious before even looking at data. Almost anything can be made
safer.
"While our study data cannot be used to estimate the risk of actually being involved in a collision..."
... and thus, buy definition, cannot support the title of the article.
"To estimate how the risk of being involved in a collision changes when motorcyclists chose to lanesplit, we would require information on both the lane-splitting and non-lane-splitting riding that is done by some identifiable sample of motorcyclists. The collection of these data is fraught with problems, and the current study did not attempt to collect such data. The current data set cannot be used to compare the collision risks for lane-splitting or non-lane-splitting riders."
Again, article is misusing the study.
There are lots of tables at the end, but by this point I had lost interest.
