In California it is legal to do what's called "Lane Splitting" or "Lane Sharing".  What that means is a motorcycle is allowed to ride down the lane between traffic when traffic is backed up.  I'm not 100% sure of the specifics but as I understand as long as the officer considers it safe it's OK.  What I consider safe is once traffic reaches 30mph or less no more than 10mph faster than the surrounding traffic unless it's stopped then 20mph max.  The reason this is legal is 2 fold.  First and foremost, a motorcycle has a very limited cooling capability.  Motorcycles are either air cooled (meaning air must flow over the engine to keep it cool) or have a very small radiator that only helps for a very short period of time.  The second reason is because they are classified as commuter vehicles.  On the average highway commute, running at speed, a motorcycle will get 50+ miles to the gallon on average.  With a car, high range is around 35 and average, believe it or not is only 18.  And MOST cars are single occupancy.  Think about that the next time you're looking at a 12 mpg getting SUV and want to run some motorcycle off the road for lane splitting!

But I digress.  A short time ago, I was out for a weekend ride.  I decided I wanted to go to a nearby town to a dealership and then take country roads back home.  But I was on the highway first and traffic was backed up.  So as normal I started lane splitting.  Not really a big deal as I've been doing it for quite some time now and become rather accustomed to it, but I still keep it sensible.  I was travelling down i80 towards Fairfield from Vallejo at the i680 interchange and as usual I was keeping my eyes up further ahead to possible problems.

I saw an opening in the left hand lane (#1 lane) next to a car and figured that's a spot to watch.  I was about 60 or 70 yards away and I kept my eye on it.  60...50... all is good, he's not moving over.  40... 30... still good, I'm starting to think he's a reasonable driver and realizing that constantly changing lanes is a bad thing.  20... 15 ... OH SHIT!  HE SWITCHED LANES!  I hit my brakes both front and rear.  The front locks up so I let off and hit the rear harder and go for another bite from the front.  The front brake locks up again and that's the point where I think to myself "welp, I'm going down".  I started to move into the lane he was leaving so I have some room to keep from hitting other vehicles.  So what happens now?  The guy sees that I'm coming up on him and he's screwed up.  So he pulls BACK into the space he was leaving AND STOPS!

When I come off the bike, I do what's called a "high side".  That basically means you don't slide off the bike when it's already halfway down, you fall off it.  So, as my years of dirt bike riding and martial arts taught me I roll into the fall.  When my upper body comes down, I roll into it.  Right hand spins the body, elbow keeps the momentum of the spin going, shoulder also and land on back and slide.  But, alas, because there's no slide room, I end up with my head slamming against the guy's bumper.  

So let's talk a bit about what I was wearing.  I was wearing nothing more than basketball 3/4 top shoes, and blue jeans.  I was wearing air flow leather gloves and I also had on a T-shirt, but that was covered by an "air flow" body armor jacket made by Tour Master .  I was also wearing the state mandated Helmet.  The helmet I was wearing was a full faced helmet.  

The brunt of the impact with the ground was actually done to my right hand and arm.  When I came off the bike I was doing around 15 miles per hour.  And the fall was approximately a 5' fall when you think about where my riding position on my bike is and the impact with the pavement.  However, the part of my body that took the most damage was my right knee that only had contact with the pavement for a second.  I had no body armor on that part of my body and it was torn to shreads.

So to cap this off, the fall was on my upper body for the most part but I was wearing body armor. Literally no visible damage to my gloves at all.  A small little black scuff on the forearm of the body armor and nothing elsewhere on the upper part of my body which literally hit the ground hard and slid for approximately 15 feet.  There were no visible scuffs on my helmet from where this guy's bumper stopped my slide.  Nothing but a little knot on my forearm where the body armor did actually dug in at the impact with the ground.

HOWEVER, my right knee which had no body armor on it at all had about 1/8th inch chunk of meat torn out of it and my shoe laces were literally broken.  Even my left leg took a bit of damage while I came off the bike.  I had a knot and a bit of a blood clot on the inside of my left calf, a blood bruise on the outside of my left foot and a nasty little scrape on the outside ankle of my left foot.

The point to all this being, the upper body armor saved my entire right arm, shoulder and back from having anything more than a small knot on my forearm and it took the majority of the impact and contact.  While my legs and clothing on my legs took very little impact but ended up with so much more damage.  If I had been wearing proper riding boots and armor protecting pants, I would have walked away from the accident without a scratch and only a few bumps.  Instead, I limped away and limped for 4 days and even 2 weeks later I was STILL cleaning the wound on my right knee.

The point to this story is this.  My "spill" was literally less than 20 miles per hour and my knee was torn up because it wasn't properly protected.  Yet motorcycle racers come off their bikes at speeds in excess of 100mph and have no visible damage, get on their bikes and finish the race.  While my unprotected legs kept me from walking like a normal human being at a 20 mile per hour crash for 4 days and pained me for several weeks afterwards.  It is VERY important that you dress for the crash. I don't have pictures included in this article yet, I will be adding them later to help show my point.

The moral of this story, wear protective gear.  There are only 2 types of motorcyclists.  Those that have gone down and those that will go down.  Thinking that it won't happen to you is only making it more likely that it will happen to you and when it does it'll be worse than those of us who are prepared to go down.  Wearing the proper gear can save you days, weeks, or even years of pain afterwards.