Should motorcycles be allowed to drive on hwy shoulders?
Posted February 12, 2016 7:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OLYMPIA (NEWS 1130) – You’ve probably seen it before; you’re sitting in a traffic jam and suddenly a motorcycle zooms past you on the shoulder.
Washington State Senator Tim Sheldon wants to make it legal for bikers to use the shoulder when congestion causes the speed of traffic to fall below 40 kilometres an hour.
He says it would alleviate traffic and make highways safer for motorcycle riders in heavy traffic.
But Steve Wallace with Wallace Driving School says it’s a dangerous move, not worth the potential consequences.
“You want to keep that shoulder clear because if the police have to attend, that’s how they’re going to get to the scene. They’re going to come flying down the shoulder,” says the veteran driving instructor.
He also doesn’t think people would take well to what would amount to special treatment.
“You see a motorcycle going by on the right side and it’s a 12-hundred CC (cubic centimetre) Harley (Davidson). That costs 30-thousand dollars and my car costs six, so I’m going to follow him. Why should he get a bye and a pass and I’m paying the same taxes with a vehicle and I don’t?”
Wallace agrees with local police that it already happens and that existing laws are hard to enforce.
“It happens here, it’s not legal but it happens here. And how do you enforce it when the traffic flow is so great that the police can’t be in evidence, they can’t be there,” says Wallace.
Police have also opposed the move, the Washington State Patrol will testify against Sheldon’s bill, if it makes it to a hearing in the House of Representatives.
