Why do motorcyclists filter? The answer is, because they can!

Guided by the brain of an experienced biker, a motorcycle is one of the smallest yet most powerful machines on the planet. Maneuverability is its second name and its ability to negotiate the tightest traffic jams has been accepted since traffic jams were born. But is it legal? Here we discuss filtering and its effect upon accident claims.  

The relationship with cars and heavier vehicles is inextricably linked since it is they that we negotiate when filtering and furthermore it is they that usually send us flying across the road surface when they come into contact with us.  

You have to go back to basics to understand your relationship with legality and who actually owes a duty of care to whom. Let’s start with the Highway Code and learn what it says. It is quite precise in what it says about the standard and duty of care of car drivers. (In this I also refer to ‘car drivers’ as meaning other road users of light and heavy goods vehicles.) Accidents are usually caused when vehicles are maneuvering whilst stuck in queues. We bikers like to refer to it as impatience. The Highway Code is quite specific when it refers to maneuvering in that it states  

“You should be aware of what is behind and to the sides before manoeuvring. Look behind you; use mirrors if they are fitted. When in traffic queues look out for pedestrians crossing between vehicles and vehicles emerging from junctions or changing lanes. Position yourself so that drivers in front can see you in their mirrors. Additionally, when filtering in slow-moving traffic, take care and keep your speed low.”  

So, just how many seem to forget this basic and simple rule of motoring? You don’t need a bead board to count them at rush hour. It continues with this simple golden rule: “Remember: Observation – Signal – Manoeuvre”   Some say that rules are made to be broken, and so are necks and limbs, but that doesn’t make it alright.  

Rule 204 states   “The most vulnerable road users are pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and horse riders. It is particularly important to be aware of children, older and disabled people, and learner and inexperienced drivers and riders.”  

Quite specific I would say. Whilst I don’t want to bore you with endless quotations I think that it is important to note what else is said in the Highway Code. These passages will be useful to you in the event of an accident, so we cannot emphasis strongly enough that you be aware of them.  

Under the sub heading of ‘Motorcyclists and cyclists’, Section 211 says: “It is often difficult to see motorcyclists and cyclists, especially when they are coming up from behind, coming out of junctions, at roundabouts, overtaking you or filtering through traffic. Always look out for them before you emerge from a junction; they could be approaching faster than you think. When turning right across a line of slow-moving or stationary traffic, look out for cyclists or motorcyclists on the inside of the traffic you are crossing. Be especially careful when turning, and when changing direction or lane. Be sure to check mirrors and blind spots carefully.”   Thereafter, section 213 states:   “Motorcyclists and cyclists may suddenly need to avoid uneven road surfaces and obstacles such as drain covers or oily, wet or icy patches on the road. Give them plenty of room and pay particular attention to any sudden change of direction they may have to make.”  

The advice isn’t rocket science; it’s just a matter of using good road sense and using mirrors and making yourself aware of what is around you. But you must be aware that whether you are on a moped, scooter or high powered motorcycle, filtering is one of the most hazardous and dangerous things you can do. Perfectly legal; yes, but dangerous – very, very dangerous.  

Motorcyclists are constantly aware of what drivers do, but that is not so of drivers who sometimes seem oblivious to motorcycles and scooters. Very recently the term ‘think bike’ was used to press the point home in a national campaign to make drivers aware of bikers. That should tell you something about the ‘driver’ mentality. At all times, we are aware of them but sometimes they are oblivious of us and that can be to our detriment. So what happened to that successful campaign? Like most useful campaigns it appears to have been shelved. Maybe they think that the message has got home, but whoever thought that could not be more wrong. Just visit any Orthopaedic ward and look at the long line of legs in plaster that say otherwise.

Everybody recognises the vulnerability of motorcyclists when a collision occurs, and this is made quite plain in the Highway Code. Yet despite this, we constantly see cases where motorcyclists are persuaded to accept a certain amount of blame apportionment because some courts see filtering as being a contributory fact. In this legal system, cases are usually decided by considering earlier cases that are referred to as ‘precedents’. A precedent is where the facts of one case can be applied to another and the reason for deciding the case outcome is usually made by the Judge whose comments are taken into account. This ‘reason for deciding’ rule follows in all cases, and whilst sometimes it can be inappropriate to your case, the danger is that it can be used to persuade the court in favour of a driver as opposed to a motorcyclist. There have been cases in the past where motorcyclists have been found to be 100% at fault when they have been filtering.  

When it comes time to argue compensation in cases involving filtering or overtaking, contributory negligence is always argues against the motorcyclist. Being aware of your rights before you even visit your lawyer this can sometimes ensure that unreasonable arguments simply being made to save the Insurers money can be nipped in the bud.   In some countries they call it line riding, and in the US they call it ‘lane splitting’. There have been various attempts to argue the legality of this type of manouvre made by bikers over the years.  

In Europe, the MAIDS Report was conducted using (OECD) standards in 1999 – 2000 and collected data on over 900 motorcycle accidents in five countries, along with non-accident exposure data (control cases) to measure the contribution of different factors to accidents. Four of the five countries where data was collected allow lane splitting or filtering, while one does not, yet none of the conclusions contained in the MAIDS Final Report note any difference in rear-end accidents or accidents during lane splitting.  

It should be noted that the pre-crash motion of the motorcycle or scooter was lane-splitting or filtering in only 0.4% of cases, in contrast to the more common accident situations such as "Moving in a straight line, constant speed" 49.1% and "Negotiating a bend, constant speed" 12.1%. The motorcyclist was stopped in traffic prior to 2.8% of the accidents.  

Preliminary results indicate that from a study in the United Kingdom, conducted by the University of Nottingham for the Department of Transport indicated that filtering and lane splitting is responsible for around 5% of motorcyclists that are killed or injured. It also found that in these cases where filtering took place the motorist or car driver is twice as likely to be at fault as the motorcyclist due to drivers "failing to take into account possible motorcycle riding strategies in heavy traffic". Maybe some would conclude that the results aren’t conclusive, but the indications point directly at car drivers as opposed to motorcyclists.  

To conclude, what we are certain of is that in the majority of cases of collisions where car drivers pull into the path of motorcyclists, bikers get a raw deal if they are caught ‘filtering’. The stigma attached to this relatively harmless yet safe mode of traffic negotiation has become a dirty word in the eyes of some lawyers and insurance companies.  

In short the word filtering has just become a stick with which to beat the poor old biker, yet again. If you are going to filter, be aware at all times that you could be dubbed the aggressor. If that will satisfy the greed of the insurers and their defendant lawyers in their endless quest to save their shareholders money, then you must understand that you will have your work cut out for you in the event of an accident.  

The biker’s motto should be: “Think once, think twice, think idiot!”...

Remember this when referring to other drivers and you won’t go far wrong.

For further information and advice contact Motorcycle Compensation.com on 0800 622 6517

Article suplied by www.MotorcycleCompensation.com

Over 8000 UK drivers are still driving despite having 12 or more points on their licence.  The top fourteen licence point holders with 25 points or more are all men.  

The official upper limit for license points according to DVLA is 12, or six for those who have held a licence for three years or less. However, a freedom of information request to the DVLA showed many male drivers with 25-36 points were still driving.   A male driver from Warrington has the highest number of points, 36.  

Currently, there are 20,439,578 male and 16,804,524 female licence holders in the UK, but it’s men who fall foul of the law more often:  

• Of the top thirty-four licence point holders, only two are women. • Of the top 99 licence point holders, just fourteen are women. • 2256 men are still driving with more than 12 points on their licence. • 351 women are still driving with more than 12 points their licence.  

IAM chief executive Simon Best said: “Law abiding drivers will be shocked that so many drivers are on the road who have more than 12 points.  The ‘totting up’ principle is supposed to give a simple four strikes and you are out message. Anything more than this should be a disqualification, unless there are the most exceptional circumstances.   There must be tighter practice in courts and at the DVLA to take these motorists off the road or ensure they take a driver retraining course to help them break their points habit.”  

Steph Savill, managing director of FOXY Lady Drivers Club said: “For most motorists, collecting points is expensive, embarrassing and potentially highly stressful. But they make us more vigilant drivers. The relative few who collect 12 points in a fairly short period of time must be either ignorant or contemptuous of the rules of the road. They are getting away with it because the courts seem unwilling to play the disqualification cards they hold. There may even be a case for making serial point scorers re-sit the theory and practical driving test before their licence is reinstated.”

Information obtained as a result of a Freedom of Information Request:

4th - 6th May - with Brand New Touratech Trophy

Touratech UK’s Flag Ship store, will once again be holding its massively popular Travel Event. This will be the 5th travel event held at this location and it attracts people from all over Europe.

This year the Touratech Travel event will see a big upheaval and its going to be great! They have all the old favourites, talks, workshops off road and on road ride outs (including the famous Walters arena open for riding on Sunday), but they can do better than that... This year you will be able to take part in the Brand New Touratech Trophy. The Touratech trophy is a new idea for this year’s event. A friendly team competition, it will see competitors but into random teams of ten. The teams will then compete over the Saturday and Sunday to be the best team. The genius of Touratech’s idea is that the teams will be picked out of a hat. This encourages the competitors to mix and meet new like minded people while at the same time you don’t get 1 team of top riders that no-one has a hope of beating. This means the best people in the team will have to help the weaker rider improve if they want to win. On the Sunday afternoon the winning team of ten will go into and every man for themselves final. Nick Plumb, MD of Touratech UK says “It’s a great way to have a friendly competition, and it gets rid of any elitism. Most competitions like this cost hundreds to enter but at £30. We are really excited.”

The other main change to this years event is the evening entertainment, Saturday evening starts with main speaker Nick Sanders giving a talk on his many world record breaking trips. Then Graham Hoskins premiering his new live talk show 'The Graham Hoskins Show', a talk show style event with loads of guests and fun.  The evening is rounded off with some great live music from Elk Redemption. On Sunday evening, Austin Vince will be the main speaker followed by the prize giving for the Touratech Trophy and live music from Red Dirt Skinners. For both evenings there will be a Beer tent and Hog Roast.

Attendees can also look around the extended showroom which is three times bigger then last year, hear from new speakers, and browse more stands than ever before. On Saturday and Sunday they will be offering talks, workshops, ride outs and of course some retail therapy all while being able to watch the various rounds of the Touratech Trophy. Sunday will also see the opportunity for people to go up to Walters arena and play off road.

The travel event Starts on Friday evening (03/05/13) with a quiz and open mic night and end on the Bank holiday Monday when there will be a last ride out and a final goodbye before everyone starts heading home at midday.

Tickets to attend including camping is just £10 a person and to enter the Touratech Trophy is just £20 extra (which includes a T-Shirt and Competitor medal). See you there... 

Touratech UK came into the spot light when they kitted out Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s BMW GS bikes for both the Long Way Round and the Long Way Down. They also provided equipment for Charley Boorman’s Race to Dakar. They have also provided equipment for other adventure trips, working with celebrities including comedian Ross Noble and actor Danny John-Jules.

Nick Plumb, Touratech MD has competed in the Dakar Rally 4 times, completing the rally on his first and last attempt. He also features heavily in Race to Dakar.

Recreating the first around the world ride 100 years on.

In Glasgow, Clancy declared the people individuals to a man and the accent almost unintelligible from the red-nosed, bare-kneed women who gathered around them at every stop, rolling their r’s and sounding like Harry Lauder.

Storey was still too nervous to ride through the heavy city traffic, so Clancy gave him a lift to the city limits then went back for his Henderson.

By this time it was almost dark, and before long they were lost in the gathering gloom, made almost infernal by the lurid glare of countless iron foundries, and were forced to stop for the night in the unprepossessing Black Bull in “the dreary town of Stonehouse”.

Still, at least it only cost them $1.15 each for a hearty supper, a big feather bed and breakfast the next morning, during which a clergymen, as Clancy puts it, “told us that although he had been a weekly visitor at The Black Bull for several years, we were the first guests he had met; the bar being the inn’s principal mainstay and pure whiskey its principal staple”.

Naturally, it could only go downhill from there: a peeling monochrome pile on a windy corner, it’s finally been closed because of the inability of its customers to pop in for a small glass of sherry without finishing the bottle then breaking it over their neighbour’s head.

Warmed, fed and watered, we found a hotel and fell gratefully into bed. Gary and I took turns at keeping each other awake by snoring in shifts, and we rose at seven and were on the road at eight, heading for the balmy south.

Indeed, the snow looked ever so slightly warmer as we rode into Northwich in Cheshire, where Clancy and Storey had stayed at the Crown and Anchor, which had closed in 1960 and was now Madison’s Bar and Restaurant, the forthcoming attractions of which included the Playboy Bunny Party on Friday, with free bunny ears and a prize for the best costume.

“I can just see Clancy and Storey rolling up the street on their Hendersons and saying: ‘Playboy Bunny Party? That’ll do us’,” said fellow biker and journalist Peter Murtagh, who was riding with us as far as Spain, and whose hands had gone a funny shade of blue which matched my nose.

It was time to find somewhere warm to stay the night, and after riding around for a bit, we found the Blue Barrel, a pub with rooms and a sign outside advertising a Psychic Evening. Funny, I had a feeling we were going to stay there.

The next morning, we rode between the frozen fields the next morning to stand in the exact spot where Clancy had a century before when he took a photograph looking up St Werburgh Street towards the cathedral. It hadn’t changed in all that time, apart from the large Chrysler parked on the double yellow lines. And the double yellow lines, come to that. Still, at least Clancy would have been pleased that it was an American car.

In Birmingham, we took shelter from a blizzard in the Witton Arms, which turned out to be the worst Irish pub in the world, a cavernous hall occupied by a gloomy Mexican and an inexplicably cheery Jamaican watching the horse racing on a giant screen.

Things got much better in London, where two mornings later we pulled up at the stroke of nine outside the Ace Café, which Clancy didn’t visit for the simple reason that it only opened in 1938, to accommodate traffic on the new North Circular Road. Because it was open 24 hours a day, it started to attract motorcyclists. It then became popular with the Ton Up Boys and girls in the 1950s and the Rockers in the 1960s and many bands and motorcycle enthusiast groups such as the 59 Club formed there.

It was, you’ll be glad to hear, exactly as it should be: down one end was with three Triumphs, a Royal Enfield, a BSA and a Brough Superior; the first time I had seen in the flash the machine favoured by Lawrence of Arabia up to the point where he met his death on one. Down the other was a jukebox on which Mick Jagger was complaining yet again that he couldn’t get no satisfaction, and in the middle, a bunch of grizzled chaps with faraway looks in their eyes were sitting at scrubbed wooden tables, tucking into bacon butties washed down with mugs of tea. In the circumstances, it seemed impolite not to join them, then buy an Ace Café sticker as a memento and a Castrol one because it reminded me of the metal one that once turned in the wind outside my dear old dad’s motorcycle garage. All stickered up, we rode into London, where Clancy and Storey spent several happy days at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall planning their route east.

Clancy had joined the RAC associate organisation the Auto-Cycle Union of England before leaving the States, and called into the RAC, which had only been built the year before, to enlist the help of the RAC's resident experts in getting maps, GB numberplates and international passes, although only after having his riding skills approved by an examiner in the street outside.

He was deeply impressed by the magnificent building and interior, and he had every right to be, for it is a soaring hymn to tasteful opulence, from the richly carpeted reception room in which someone had carelessly parked a Bentley Continental, through the swimming pool, saunas, steam room and gym to the St James’s Room in which we were expected for a press conference; an appropriate venue, since it was named after the saint whose bones had inspired centuries of pilgrims to set off on their own adventures to Santiago de Compostela.

In deep armchairs all around, the descendants of the same chaps who had sat in the same chairs when Clancy was here were busily unscrewing their fountain pens, just as their grandfathers had, to write letters of withering erudition to the Daily Telegraph about the state of the nation’s roads.

Supported by Adelaide Insurance Services and BMW Motorrad

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John McGuinness started the race for the Honda TT Legends and the first few hours saw him, Simon Andrews and Michael Dunlop put in an impressive performance that took them from 28th to third place.

As evening fell on the Magny Cours circuit in France, light rain caused a few incidents for other teams, but the Honda TT Legends settled into a steady fourth place, where they remained through the night until daybreak.     

Just after 8am, Dunlop made an unexpected pit stop and the Honda TT Legends crew set to work, eventually identifying and fixing a problem with the heat exchanger. McGuinness re-joined the race in 13th place but unfortunately the irreparable damage to the engine had already been done and it subsequently overheated. He was forced to dismount and push the bike back to the pits on the first lap and the team retired from the race.

The EWC will continue with the Suzuka 8-hour in Japan on 28 July.

Neil Tuxworth   This is a very disappointing end for the team after all the hard work and effort everyone has put in. It’s unfortunate but we had a problem with the heat exchanger which caused the engine to overheat and fail towards the end of the race. It’s our first incomplete event in seven races and our first ever retirement from a 24 hour race, but it happens to everyone at some point and the main thing is that everyone is ok. We haven’t had any injuries to anybody and although there was some leakage from the bike, it doesn’t look like it caused problems to anybody else as the safety car came out very quickly. Like I say, very disappointing for everyone but we have to move on and look forward to the road races coming up in the next few months.       John McGuinness   We’re just gutted not to have finished. The lads have done so much work on the bike – new electronics, traction control – all sorts of bits and pieces that they’ve spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on. We’ve had a fantastic run of results up to now with seven races completed and we were looking good in the race. We were top five again and chipping away, but unfortunately we had a problem 18 hours in. I’m just speechless really, just gutted, but we’ll try and take the positives out of it. We were running a lot closer to some of our rivals so we can take that to the next round.     

Simon Andrews   It had gone well up until that point. I did a good few stints at the beginning to get us up to fourth and I was happy enough with that. It’s a shame what’s happened for everyone because the guys have worked so hard. The chassis was working well and we had the quickest bike out there at some points, so it just would have been nice to reward everyone with a podium. We were third at one stage so to go from that position to coming away with no points at all is not fun, but that’s endurance racing. We can be happy with the hard work we’ve put in and the way we’ve worked together and we’ll look forward to the next round.     

Michael Dunlop   It’s so disappointing for all the lads after all the hard work they’ve done. I really feel for them because it’s not just about us riders, it’s a massive team effort and they put so much into it. I just got my head down and got on with it, going with the flow really. It was going well up until that point, but we’ll go back and take a look at the bike and come back bigger and stronger next time.