
One of the greatest bits of legislation in recent years has been the law regarding filtering. Prior to its introduction, a motorcyclist, stuck in lanes of traffic would have to endure it until the traffic cleared or break the law and ride between the cars. Just to clarify, filtering is described in the following words.
“Lane filtering is where a motorcycle rider moves past stopped or slow-moving vehicles at 30km/h or less. Lane filtering is legal in NSW. Lane splitting is where a motorcycle rider moves past vehicles at more than 30km/h. Lane splitting is illegal.” There are some other caveats enshrined in the law, for example, filtering can only take place between cars and cannot be performed on the left hand side of traffic as seen in this picture (or on the right hand side of a line of cars either, for that matter). The other caveat is that filtering can only be done while the traffic is stopped, not while the cars are moving.
Lane SPLITTING is where a rider moves to the front of a queue of traffic at speed (above 30km/h) while the traffic around is also moving and it is illegal as the definitions says. We have all seen videos, especially from the USA, where riders and, worse still, groups of riders, lane split at HIGH speed on the highway and then publish their stupidity on YouTube. Unfortunately, not enough of these videos show the ugly results of this practice when it goes wrong, as it often does.
The photo at the head of the article was taken by a good friend on the weekend and shows a massive gridlock of cars on the Princes Highway just south of Kiama. Unfortunately, the bottleneck of cars was not the result of holiday traffic or of a road accident up ahead. It transpires that a cyclist, pedalling up the steep hill that leads to the top of Mount Pleasant, suffered a medical episode and passed away on the scene as a result of it. Police had the traffic narrowed down to one lane and moving slowly while they attended to the situation, all very sad.
There is a solution to this problem but it does fall slightly outside the legal definition of filtering. Move to the left onto the road shoulder and trickle slowly up the lane until the traffic clears and then pull back in.
And, you know what? I have done it dozens of times in similar situations, even passing police cars that were stuck in the traffic jam and I have never been pulled over for it. In fact, on a couple of occasions the police nodded to me as I went by, tacitly acknowledging that I was doing what I could do to not add to the logjam.
On one particular occasion, on the Newcastle Freeway I trundled past a few hundred cars all stopped and going nowhere. I didn’t even think of counting how far I travelled like this but it was many, many kilometres. On that occasion I also passed a police car and they didn’t even even give me a second glance.
I’m not bragging, I’m just saying that I made the call that doing so in a safe manner was contributing to keeping the traffic flowing. Yes, I filter, every time I get the opportunity and, no, I have never had a motorist try to block my progress when I have been doing so. In fact, I can’t even count the number of situations where motorists, seeing me coming, have actually made room for me to get to the head of the queue.
Filtering works, no question, it is for my safety and for the convenience of other road users.
I’d love to know what your experiences of filtering have been.