If you ride motorcycles on public roads, chances are excellent that a) you know how motorcycle traffic is handled in your area, and b) you have some thoughts on how it can be done better. I've been lucky enough to ride in a few different places and see how motorcycle traffic flows (or doesn't) with other road traffic.
In my home state of Illinois, lane splitting and filtering aren't legal at the time of writing. However, in California, motorcycles can legally lane split, and can also use HOV lanes on highways. Both factors can significantly reduce the impact of traffic congestion for riders, although there's no true way to eliminate it completely because there's just too much traffic at certain times of day.
In Bangkok, motorbikes filter up to stop lights, and traffic flows along better on a bike than it does if you're in a larger vehicle. It's still congested, particularly if you go through areas that are popular with tourists and there's also lots of foot traffic to contend with. But considering the sheer volume of traffic (both on motorbikes and other methods of transportation), it functions better than you might expect.
Now, if you live in a place with dedicated bicycle lanes, and you ride motorcycles, you might have wondered to yourself what life would be like with dedicated motorcycle lanes. And you might be interested to know that Malaysia already does this on its federal highways, and in fact requires riders to use them, to the point where you'll get a stern warning from traffic enforcement if you don't.
Malaysian news outlet Star Metro recently spoke to riders in November about why they do (or don't) use these dedicated motorcycle lanes. Many of their answers are pretty clearly illustrated in the video above, which was recorded by fellow Malaysian motorcycle media outlet Paul Tan back in 2016. Many of the problems that riders reported to Star Metro earlier this month (at the time of writing) aren't new, and have been ongoing issues for riders for years now.
In case you're unfamiliar, motorbikes are a major presence in Malaysia. Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke said in December of 2023 that there are nearly as many motorbikes registered in Malaysia as there are cars (16,773,112 motorbikes to 17,244,978 cars, to be precise).
With that in mind, it's not totally surprising that there might be dedicated motorbike lanes on federal highways. But still, you'd think (and hope) that maintenance and at least a bit of thought would go into how best to map out and execute those dedicated motorcycle lanes.
And instead, a major problem is dark, poorly lit (or not lit at all) tunnels, lanes that are narrower than they should be, moss and other vegetation growing over parts of the lanes and making them slippery, and serious flooding in low-lying areas after bad weather. Construction debris is a random and unpleasant problem, only made worse in the more claustrophobic confines of a narrow motorcycle lane that only allows escape at extremely infrequent intervals.
As a rider, having to contend with the dangers posed by larger road traffic can be nerve-wracking, but the ability to switch lanes to get yourself out of a bad situation can be extremely helpful. I've certainly made use of this ability at different times in my riding life, and I'm sure you have, too.
But if there's one lane, and you have a physical barrier separating you from other traffic, what do you do when there's a problem in your one lane? The best you can, but sometimes that can get hairier than most riders would like.
There's seemingly no perfect answer to road safety for riders, unfortunately. As long as humans are involved, we're gonna human. We're gonna make mistakes sometimes, be careless sometimes, and have freaky, once-in-a-lifetime situations on roadways. And the best we can do is pay attention and try to help other riders when we can, wherever we are.
