France, one of the world's motorcycle El Dorados has been very tolerant towards motorcycles and their riders. For many years, motorcycles were allowed to park their bikes on sidewalks, go a little bit quicker than authorized, cars would get out of the way when a bike arrived, and most importantly, we were allowed (tolerated) to split lanes.
Filtering, or lane splitting, is one of the main reason many ride a motorcycle in the city, since traffic anywhere is usually at a standstill, and if you can ride in-between cars, you gain precious time. Cars prefer you to split lanes, no stay behind cars.
But now the French government want to start changing the law on this, as they have already on parking motorcycles on sidewalks. The government is moving towards making lane-splitting illegal! Already in Paris, the local cops will ticket you now if you split a lane. But if it becomes illegal, all bikes are fair game for ticket quota cops.
To show the government that this is not a smart move, the French Angry Bikers Association (FFMCFederation Francaise des Motards en Colere - Angry French Biker Association, an association of bikers fighting for the rights of motorcycle riders) are organizing an innovate protest ride on March the 13th.
On that day, in all major cities of France, all bikers are asked to ride in traffic as if they were a car, in other words, take up the space of car. That way traffic jams are going to skyrocket. If then we also just park our motorcycles in car spots, it's going to be a major mess in any city. Having bikes not lane split, as what the authorities want, they'll find out what this will do to their infrastructure.
Hopefully the authorities will take note, that making it illegal to split lanes will automatically mean 100,000's of extra vehicles on the road.
But then maybe it's wishful thinking, since we all know that any politicians suffers from that dreaded disease; CRICranial Rectal Inversion - he's got his head up his ass.
Via: FFMC
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