I was driving home last night and here come 4 bikers.  The lead one was all of a foot from the yellow line, which meant that his handlebars were pretty much across it.  I've seen this behavior before.  On divided highways, they'll get in the slow lane and crowd the yellow line.  What's up with that?  If it was me, I'd want to get as close to the white as I could.  Would some motorcycle owner enlighten me on this?

Jim

there is no oil on that part of the road surface.

I ride the outsides of the lane, right or left in order to see ahead of the vehicle in front of me. It's very bad practice to ride center lane blind of what's up ahead of the vehicle in front of you. Worse than traffic suddenly slowing down is an object in the roadway that the vehicle in front of you simply drives over......you can't...
If in formation the rule of thumb is for the bikes to be staggered, one left then right etc..

And yes, there is more oil in the center of the lane. Especially at intersections where cars stop to wait for the light.
--RR

High visibility to car drivers when you are toward the center of your lane.

More visibility of the upcoming roadway.

Oooooh.  That makes sense.  I'll have to remind myself of this the next time I get annoyed with them.
AR15.com, bringing people together through understanding...and guns, lots of guns.

J

IF you ride the white (on a two lane road) you only have one direction in which to 'dodge' things on the road/potholes/etc plus the white line usually has lots of debris swept to it.  You can dodge to the left fine, but dodge to the right and you are in the dirt, not a good thing if you arent on a Dual sport.

In the middle of the cager 'line' is where they drop all the oil, plus if you are behind a cager and in the middle of the lane you cant see what the cager is ignoring because they have 4 wheels and no brain.

If you are near the yellow (or near the white divided line on a multilane road) you have more areas to dodge on either side of you, and less chance to hit an oil patch, plus you are usually out of the 'road ripples' or whatever you want to call em, and you can see around what is in front of you better.

Riding the yellow is also a way to make cars that pass you from behind go ALL the way around you. If you don't hog the lane, they may do a lazy-ass pass and brush too close to you in an attempt to "sneak around" even with oncoming traffic.

I like (or hate actually) in Kalifornia when bikes ride in between cars. In a state where most everything is banned you can still flirt with death riding the stripe.

Because they are ignorant.  The wheel track is actually the cleanest part of the road.  The left wheel track gives you more dodge options.  I am a rider myself, but watch the center line hoggers on bikes, you will see they are not even close to the tire track.  Most of them, judging by the way they look, just enjoy getting into other operator's space.  If they are truly trying to operate in the cleanest area of pavement (the LH wheel track), they would be about a foot to the right.

In the end, there is no single "best" part of the lane.  A trained biker will divide his lane into thirds; left, center, and right.  The best place to be depends on the factors in the riding environment at that moment.  A motorcycle is much more sensitive to environmental factors (road surface, wind gusts, etc.), and a biker is obviously much more vulnerable in a crash.

Some people might see a biker shifting from one side to the other and wonder what the heck he's doing.  He may have gone to the left to avoid a gravel patch and then to the right to get out of the windblast from an oncoming 18-wheeler.  

If there is a car on the right ready to pull out from a stop sign and another coming toward you with its left turn signal on, taking the center of the lane would give each hazard equal space.  Of course the center is to be avoided if there is evidence of significant car drippings.

I'd guess that the rider you described hasn't been trained in an MSF course.  My wife can pick an untrained rider in traffic pretty easily.

The one thing that I'm actualy jealous of Californians for.  Here in Florida lane-splitting or lane-sharing is illegal.  Lots of folks still do it (myself included when traffic is just rediculous) but technically it's against the law.

But on topic, crowding the left line is stupid.  Like TheKill said, the wheel track is the place to be.

Uhh..only in commieforniastan

I always see this when packs are riding.  They ride two abreast and the motorcyclist nearest the yellow line will practically ride on top of it.  Not that I don't pull my share of stunts on my KLR650, but tempting the bumper of oncoming cars scares me.

Lane splitting is illegal in Hawaii.  Instead, I ride on the shoulder with the mopeds. [:)]

Riding side-by-side might look cool in the movies but it leaves you no room to swerve around a hazard.  A staggered formation is much better.