ArGaT wrote on 07/13/10 at 12:01:46:So morn are you saying that at traffic lights you are not allowed legally to filter through traffic but have to do a full leave the lane and re enter at the front of the queue?
If so im glad we dont have that requirement coz there would be no point in having a MC might aswell get a nice convertable and sit in traffic.
Yeah, in Illinois you are not allowed to filter, split lanes, share lanes etc. The problem is people who think that you should share lanes when they want you to share, but not when it would be convenient or advantageous to a Motorcyclist or Bike rider. I guess a lot of them would probably say that MC and Bike riders should not be on public roads. And if you pull out and around one of those and try to re-enter at the front of the queue, you would be likely to get run over, or at least get honked/yelled at. I've had people open doors, swerve over, throw things at me and one guy pulled up beside me in a green pick-up truck - somethings you don't forget, and deliberately ran me off the road. The road was pretty much empty, and had two lanes in each direction. I was doing about 40 mph downhill and didn't see the parallel grate in front of me. Bystanders said I flew about 25 feet before landing and then rolling/sliding to a stop. They thought I was dead, but I was just laying there taking inventory. Turns out I had road rash, but no serious injuries.
Youzguys -
As far as passing on secondary roads in Illinois, the no passing zones indicate when it is too dangerous to pass, because of line of sight etc., but there are very few of them that extend for any distance (making it easy to get around any vehicle that is going 5mph). Most of our secondary roads are way too narrow to allow three vehicles side by side, even if one is a bicycle, so passing in these areas is just asking eventually to run into a head-on collision or to side swipe someone. Also, the shoulders on a lot of Illinois roads are non-existent so moving over to allow someone to "play through" your lane means that you are in the ditch. I've never run into the situation that you describe in Texas. Probably because when I visited Texas I've usually been in fairly heavily populated areas or travelling from city to city, so even the secondary roads tended to be fairly straight with plenty of areas to pass, or multiple lanes in each direction. Any road in Illinois that had 20 miles of no passing double yellow lines probably wouldn't be safe at much over 5 mph in any case.