FILTERING OUT RISKS

IT’S morning peak and I’m on my way to work. With the two lanes to my right also chock- ablock, I’m accelerating slightly around a left- hand bend when the close- up, helmeted head of a motorcyclist suddenly appears in my field of vision.

So close is he as he leans into the curve, squeezing between me and the car on the right, that I can surely see the whites of his eyes and the blackheads on his nose, as I simultaneously snap out of an urge to swerve away to the left, lest there’s a bus or car in my blind spot.

Having rounded the bend, miraculously without clipping any wing mirrors, he roars off oblivious to the pounding hearts in the chests of the car drivers left behind.

This, my fellow motorists, is what is known as lane filtering.

Adopted by most states now, it came into effect in Queensland on February 1, 2015.

By virtue of it, motorcyclists are allowed to ride between lanes of stationary or slow- moving vehicles travelling in the same direction, with some caveats. They’re also allowed, in certain circumstances, to ride on the shoulders of major roads.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no whingeing, anti- motorbikite. Plenty of the misspent time I engaged in back in the day involved boyfriends with bikes. While the exhaust burn on my left inner calf eventually healed nicely after the run- in with the slippery ferry ramp on that trip to Straddie, I still have, subcutaneously, tiny pieces of gravel in both hands from when we slid down the road after hitting a patch of something on the way to play squash.

But, I have to say that, as a car commuter, I’m struggling a bit with this lane filtering and I can’t be the only one. I see too many motorbikes going what I think is way too fast between lanes, including quite a few whose command of their machine is, well, wobbly.

I’ve seen pedestrians almost hit. And, numerous times, I’ve had to act super quickly to curtail a wellindicated lane change because a bike’s zoomed up the middle out of nowhere.

The thing is, though, the Queensland Transport rules say motorbikes can lane filter at up to 30km/ h, which is actually quite fast and, while the rules stipulate you can only filter if the two lanes of traffic are stationary or slow moving, what constitutes “slow moving”?

As for riding on road shoulders past stationary or slow moving traffic, the laws are clear: motorbikes can do this on major roads ( highways, freeways and motorways) where the speed limit on the road is 90km/ h or more. So that rules out most city arterials, though you wouldn’t know it judging by the number of shoulder sneaks I see, some of whom switch from shoulder riding to filtering in one easy swoop.

Convinced all this filtering and shouldering has to be causing more crashes involving motorbikes, I asked the Department of Transport and Main Roads plus a couple of our bigger insurers, RACQ and Suncorp, for data.

Now it’s only been three and a bit years since the changes here were legislated, so it’s unwise to make any sweeping conclusions plus the TMR figures for 2017 are incomplete. But the department’s motorcycle/ moped casualties data shows that, in 2015, 1655 riders or pillions were killed or injured in Queensland for a total of 192,053 motorbike registrations.

In 2016, the changes having been in for not quite two full years, the numbers were 1586 and 198,468 respectively. So a 4 per cent decline in casualties, while the number of bikes on the road increased 3.3 per cent. Interestingly for car- driving whingers like me, in the past 10 years, there’s been a 16 per cent decline in casualties, while registrations have increased 58 per cent.

Now, stacks from lane filtering might not result in injuries sufficiently serious to figure in the TMR data and it’s true Suncorp figures show a 28 per cent increase in claims between 2015- 16 and 2016- 17 but the number of 2017- 18 claims so far, averaged per month, is the same as the previous year. Data from RACQ, meanwhile, shows an 11 per cent increase between 2015 and 2017.

But, like I said, it’s too early to identify a trend or make a call on whether ( reckless) lane filtering is the culprit.

So, bikers, here’s an interim deal: how about you wind it back a bit and keep a keener, more respectful eye out for cars aiming to change lanes and I’ll more equably eat your lane filtering dust.