Update: California was considering a bill to formally legalize lane-splitting, and also restrict the speeds at which it could be done. Check out the latest on this developing story right here.

Allow me to talk you into a thing: I think it's a great idea to ride a motorcycle between moving cars on a highway.

Should you live east of California, this will sound nuts, but it only feels that way the first couple times you try it. Then you become an addict. On a good track day I might pass a couple guys and be damned proud I did. Lane-splitting at rush hour, I might pass 10,000 cars. Maybe more. I have no idea, and I'm not going to slow down to count.

Shall I continue to the part where it seems reasonable, and I convince you it's legal? Because it is.

I think it's a great idea to ride a motorcycle between moving cars on a highway.

Get past the thrill of watching rearview mirrors blur past the ends of your bars and lane splitting is a startlingly good traffic solution. Fundamentally, motorcyclists maintain a reasonable speed in congestion by sharing a lane with slowed traffic. Typically, the motorcyclist slots into the right side of the fast lane. On surface streets, motorcyclists are allowed to filter through traffic to the front when there's a stoplight.

It's good for everyone: For those comfortable in their cars, the lane-splitting motorcycle cruising past is one less vehicle between their front bumper and their destination. You can fit two motorcycles in the footprint of one small car. It's easy math. For the rider, the reward is being nearly impervious to congestion. My fellow lane-splitting riders in Los Angeles and San Francisco will back this up, as they regularly and safely trim hours off of long-distance commutes.

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When I first started dating my girlfriend, she lived in LA and I lived 50 miles away near our old office in Newport Beach. It's a drive that should take an hour, and it does—if you're on the road around 4:00 AM. Just about any other time, you'll have traffic to contend with; attempt it at rush hour and you'll be staring at taillights for more than two hours. Would I have stuck it out with Hayley despite the traffic? Absolutely. Would I have been happy? Probably not. It doesn't matter how nice your car is, traffic sucks and you'll never get those hours back. That's ten percent of your day, gone.

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Cutting an hour each way off my daily grind was enough to make me an evangelist, but I wouldn't be here preaching if improving my commute was the only benefit to sharing lanes.

By the numbers, lane splitting is both practical and sensible. And it's also intense. It uses your mind and your body and doesn't leave much space for anything else. You connect your eyes to your hands, you look ahead a thousand yards for threats to your delicate spine. It is active riding; heads-up, engaged, and with literally make-or-break decision-making. It's your ass if your mind wanders.

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When was the last time you were aware of your mortality on your commute? When was the last time you were conscious of your delicate existence for an hour? Lane splitting can make you think in a way that you've only ever thought on the racetrack, or at un-sensible and probably illegal speeds on the street. It's not especially difficult, but it is completely engaging. It isn't for everyone. For those with the inclination though, it'll tune you up something fierce.

Lane splitting actually makes riding safer.

Those rides up the 405 from Orange County to Los Angeles straightened me out like nothing ever has. At the time, Road & Track was in the middle of a huge overhaul—long hours, tons of frustration. None of that stress made it home to Hayley, and our nascent relationship survived. Lane splitting worked every time.

I hear a lot of talk about Kommiefornia, our nanny state, our restrictive laws and taxes. We'd be the greatest state in the Union, if only for that. Yet somehow California has managed to keep lane splitting legal. Most of Europe, too, has given lane splitting the thumbs-up. Other states are abandoning helmet laws that unquestionably improve rider safety; yet somehow California is the only state where you and I can ride and drive alongside each other. That's a damned shame.

Levi Bianco Getty Images

Recently though, our good fortune has smiled on the rest of the country. A clever team of researchers from University of California Berkeley used California Highway Patrol data to study lane splitting in my fair state.

Their report for the California Office of Traffic Safety concludes that the practice isn't just sensible for escaping traffic, it also found that lane splitters are "notably less likely to suffer head injury (9.1% vs 16.5%), torso injury (18.6% vs 27.3%), or fatal injury (1.4% vs 3.1%) than other motorcyclists." In addition, when lane splitters did not greatly exceed the speed of surrounding traffic, they had the lowest proportion of injuries. Perhaps surprisingly, the research shows that lane splitting—when executed at a reasonable speed with the proper gear—actually makes riding safer.

Just about every motorcyclist in California already knew that, and we love having the numbers to back it up. We've long suspected that riding between cars was safer than rolling along in a column at the mercy of the fickle attention span of commuter traffic. I'd rather take my chances clipping a rearview mirror because of my lack of skill over being rear-ended because of someone else's lack of caffeine.

Data is just the thing to ball up in your fist and shake at your local politician. Which is exactly what you should do if you're a rider. Or you can save yourself a headache and do the easy thing by going straight to the top and petition President Obamato take action.

I hope you do, and I hope it works, because I'd love to share a lane with you.

(Note: This article has been updated to provide more detail about the specific conclusions of the OTS report.)

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