agingrebel.com
For the second year in a row, State
Senator and former Austin Mayor Kirk Watson (photo above) has introduced
a bill in the Texas Senate that would make lane splitting legal in the
Lone Star State.
Watson, a Democrat, is a motorcycle
enthusiast and a member of the Harley Owners Group who has been
sympathetic to bikers concerns in the past. Last year he told Austin
television station KTBC that he splits lanes himself and that
he thinks the practice “actually makes the roads safer for motorcyclists
in stop and go traffic.”
He also gets air cooled engines. He told KTBC,
“Most people don’t understand unless they’re acutely aware of the fact
that motorcycles need to be moving in order to be cooled, at least mine
does. It’s not water-cooled. So if I’m stuck in traffic and we do know
that Austin has some particular problems with traffic, my motorcycle is
getting hotter and hotter.”
SB 288
If Watson’s bill eventually becomes law,
Texas would be the second state to legalize lane splitting. California
has always tolerated lane splitting and formally legalized it last year.
The practice is commonplace in virtually every country except the
United States.
This year’s bill is SB 288 and it would
modify the existing transportation code to allow: “ The operator of a
motorcycle operating on a limited-access or controlled-access highway”
to “operate the motorcycle for a safe distance between lanes of traffic
moving in the same direction during periods of traffic congestion if the
operator operates the motorcycle at a speed not more than five miles
per hour greater than the speed of the other traffic; and in traffic
that is moving at a speed of 20 miles per hour or less.”
The bill has a long way to go. It
probably does not help that the few newspapers in Texas to cover its
filing have misidentified it as SB 228 rather than SB 288.
SB 288 has been filed and must be
approved by a Senate committee before it can be approved by the whole
Senate. Then it will have to be approved by the Texas House. The Texas
legislature will be in session through May. Finally the new act would
have to be signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott.
If all that happens, low speed lane splitting would become legal in Texas next September 1.
