The recent death of a Garden Grove man in a motorcycle accident has underscored the rising statistics of motorcycle fatalities in California.
Recently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has reported a 44 percent increase in the number of motorcycle deaths.

The California Highway Patrol claimed that the common causes of motorcycle collisions include unsafe speed, improper turning, improper passing, and unsafe lane changes. According to them, lane splicing/splitting is also a contributing factor in many collisions.

Jason Doerr, the ill-fated motorcycle driver was allegedly lane splitting before he hit a car which caused him to fall down and get run over by a car from another lane.

According to Robert Gladden, who manages the California Motorcyclist Safety Program for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, California is the only state that does not explicitly ban motorcycle riders from splitting or sharing lanes – driving between established lanes of traffic.

Motorcycle riders can legally lane splice even if the Department of Motor Vehicles motorcyclist’s handbook has warned that the practice is not safe. According to the DMV, all motor vehicles and motorcycles need a full lane to operate safely.

The statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety speak for itself. In 2007, crashes involving a motorcycle and at least one other vehicle accounted for 56 percent of all motorcyclist deaths and forty percent of these crashes involved a vehicle turning left while the motorcycle was going straight, passing, or overtaking the vehicle.

While motorcycles can indeed be mobile and make their way around traffic easier, it is also more dangerous because a lot of times, other drivers are not aware of the presence of a motorcycle because it may be in the vehicle’s blind spot or its too dark to notice.

Motorcyclists often blame other drivers for their inattention to the road as a cause of motorcycle accidents. But other drivers find that motorcycle drivers are just as irresponsible and reckless when they speed up or split lanes on the road as well.

But in the end, road safety is a shared responsibility. While it is not safe to share lanes, the most car and motorcycle drivers can do is to respect everyone’s right of way and be an attentive and patient driver.