Zen and the Art of Convenience, by ‘Lane Splitting’

Most people think I’m crazy to ride a motorcycle in Los Angeles, but when they find out I ride between the cars, they’re convinced I have a death wish.

I don’t.

I split lanes for one reason: It saves time.

I am not a weekend motorcyclist. I travel to and from work and everywhere else on my bike. I do not have a car.

Still, I can understand why it makes some car drivers nervous or angry to see a motorcycle careening through traffic with only centimeters of clearance on either side. They don’t want their mirrors broken. They don’t think it’s fair that we can cut to the front of the line. They don’t want to be held responsible if one of us falls.

I was nervous, too, the first time I split lanes two years after I’d started riding. I was on a date with another motorcyclist, and I was hyperventilating and sweating the entire time. But I made it through several miles of traffic without scraping any paint. Now I split lanes daily--in the street and on the freeway, rain or shine.

There’s a saying in the motorcycle community: “You’ve either been down or you’re going down.” There’s no reason to hasten the inevitable, but it is possible to split lanes safely. Mostly it’s a matter of vigilance. Whenever I’m on my bike, I am scanning for road conditions and drivers’ head and hand movements, looking for clues that they may change lanes. I never rely on drivers using turn signals, though I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

In my eight years as a motorcyclist, I’ve had a number of close calls but only one accident, and that involved lane splitting. The driver of the car that hit me did not signal, look or see me before changing lanes, clipping my front tire and dumping me onto the pavement. To this day, I have no idea if the driver knows he hit me. He didn’t stop.

What that driver did was clearly illegal, but I can’t pass all the blame. There was no reason to be splitting lanes in loose traffic that was already moving about 30 mph. My life is worth more than the 10 minutes I would have saved on my trip across town.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was violating the California Highway Patrol’s recommendation that, when splitting, I ride no more than 5 miles per hour faster than the speed of traffic. Then again, there was no way for me to know this because “there is no law regarding motorcycles in a lane,” according to Wendy Moore, a CHP public affairs officer.

If there’s enough room for two vehicles to be in one lane, they can be. That rule applies whether it’s two cars, two motorcycles or any other combination of vehicles, Moore said.

The way I see it, cars should be happy I share lanes. I’m one less vehicle for them to wait behind.

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There’s a saying in the motorcycle community: “You’ve either been down or you’re going down.”

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Susan Carpenter can be reached at susan.carpenter@latimes.com.