I'm a lifelong rider and my prayers are with him and his family today. All of life is a risk versus reward thing. To me riding is worth the risk. It's especially risky these days because of distracted drivers texting or fiddling with phones. Please realize that touching your phone while driving may cost a motorcyclist their life. I'll do my best to stay out of your way in the meantime.
As long as motorcyclists split lanes at anything over "brisk walk" speed, they're gonna keep getting hammered. I totally get the freedom, and in many cases legality of splitting lanes, but in many states suicide is legal too, and presumably less painful.
Splitting is dangerous, but if you're doing it correctly, it's safer than not. Splitting when traffic is slow is actually more risky bc cars can change lanes more abruptly. When traffic is moving at a steady 45 mph and you don't travel twice as fast as traffic, it's actually very safe.
I've gotten merged into and pushed out of my land onto the shoulder pretty consistently when I decide not to split and just flow with traffic, esp with everyone on their phones.
Now I try, if safe, to split to the gaps in traffic and stay there.
To reiterate your point about speed, when splitting you shouldn't be going much faster than traffic. That is very dangerous. But most motorcyclist aren't getting hit while splitting, most are either killing themselves by riding outside if their skill level(forgetting how to turn under stress) or they're getting hit in intersections. I've gotten hit twice by people doing stupid things in intersections and I've been nearly hit countless times by red light runners, cops blowing stop signs, drunk drivers, the list goes on.
I'm a lifelong rider and my prayers are with him and his family today. All of life is a risk versus reward thing. To me riding is worth the risk. It's especially risky these days because of distracted drivers texting or fiddling with phones. Please realize that touching your phone while driving may cost a motorcyclist their life. I'll do my best to stay out of your way in the meantime.
This is the reason I don’t ride.
As long as motorcyclists split lanes at anything over "brisk walk" speed, they're gonna keep getting hammered. I totally get the freedom, and in many cases legality of splitting lanes, but in many states suicide is legal too, and presumably less painful.
Splitting is dangerous, but if you're doing it correctly, it's safer than not. Splitting when traffic is slow is actually more risky bc cars can change lanes more abruptly. When traffic is moving at a steady 45 mph and you don't travel twice as fast as traffic, it's actually very safe.
I've gotten merged into and pushed out of my land onto the shoulder pretty consistently when I decide not to split and just flow with traffic, esp with everyone on their phones.
Now I try, if safe, to split to the gaps in traffic and stay there.
To reiterate your point about speed, when splitting you shouldn't be going much faster than traffic. That is very dangerous. But most motorcyclist aren't getting hit while splitting, most are either killing themselves by riding outside if their skill level(forgetting how to turn under stress) or they're getting hit in intersections. I've gotten hit twice by people doing stupid things in intersections and I've been nearly hit countless times by red light runners, cops blowing stop signs, drunk drivers, the list goes on.