{"id":728,"date":"2008-12-22T00:22:37","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T07:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/?p=728"},"modified":"2010-03-21T00:25:15","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T07:25:15","slug":"split-or-get-off-the-botts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/2008\/12\/22\/split-or-get-off-the-botts\/","title":{"rendered":"Split Or Get Off The Botts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stumbled across a motorcycle blog the other day where the guy posted an angry screed against another biker who he felt was tailgating him. He started his tale, titled Some People Just Can\u2019t Help It – They\u2019re Dicks!<\/a> thusly\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m riding home in the fast lane and traffic is stop and go and I\u2019m splitting through traffic. Hey A-hole. Yeah you. Quit F***ING tailgating me. I see you and no, I\u2019m not gonna move over for you since you seem to be a jackass! Oh you\u2019re gonna keep riding me huh? (give him the palmed hand to back off) Oh that didn\u2019t work for you? You still like riding your front wheel up my ass. Is that it?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026and went on to talk about how the guy revved and honked and flashed his headlights at him while he refused to move over and gloated about how angry he was making the guy.<\/p>\n

I weighed in in the comments, saying that it sounded to me like the blogger-rider was the one being a dick by not moving over. It turns out that I was in the minority \u2014 all the other commenters chimed right in with the blogger-rider that the other guy was wrong and generally felt that the blogger-rider had struck a blow for justice by not letting the tailgater go by.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to hijack his blog with my own argument, so I thought I\u2019d try to start a discussion here about who\u2019s right and who\u2019s wrong. So:<\/p>\n

Me, I think the blogger-rider came off like an impotent, self-appointed traffic Nazi, the kind of guy who drives his Buick in the fast lane at exactly 55 mph (\u201dBecause that\u2019s the speed limit, damn it!\u201d) and refuses to move over even though the flow of traffic is going 75 mph and he\u2019s creating a hazard. He thinks the other guy is an asshole for trying to get him to move over or go faster, but thinks he\u2019s completely in the right in making the other guy move over to pass him or go slower. Accuses the other guy of only thinking of himself while he\u2019s only thinking of himself.<\/p>\n

My take on lane-splitting passing is this: If a faster rider comes up behind me, I drop into a gap and let him by. If I overtake a slower rider, I hang back for a little ways and wait for him to drop into a gap. If he doesn\u2019t, I\u2019ll flick my headlights at him because he may not have noticed me. If he still doesn\u2019t let me by, I\u2019ll get closer and flick the lights and rev the engine, maybe give him a beep of the horn. Up to this point it\u2019s all friendly. But if he still doesn\u2019t let me by, then he\u2019s a dick and at the first opportunity I drop over into the next lane, pass him, drop back in in front of him, and give him a taste of his own medicine. Because I can be a dick too.
\n
\nI\u2019ve written here before<\/a> about how much I like lane-splitting and how good I think I am at it. I\u2019m usually the guy catching up to slower riders, even though I\u2019m on a Harley bagger. I rarely have to pull over for other bikes, but I\u2019m happy to do it when necessary. I just expect the same courtesy.<\/p>\n

So, what do you think? When one rider overtakes another while lane-splitting, should the slower rider let him by or should the faster one adopt the slower speed? Sound off in the comments, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stumbled across a motorcycle blog the other day where the guy posted an angry screed against another biker who he felt was tailgating him. He started his tale, titled Some People Just Can\u2019t Help It – They\u2019re Dicks! thusly\u2026 I\u2019m riding home in the fast lane and traffic is stop and go and I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neutral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}