Having recently been to, *ahem*, traffic school recently courtesy of Culver City Police (thank you, sir) I was surprised to find that this was being taught in the school. (ie. no need to let anyone past) I challenged it, so he looked it up at lunchtime. Aparently in addition to Johno's comments, if you come up behind someone, flash your lights and honk your horn, they have to get out of your way. It's the law defining lane one as the emergengy lane. Sorry I don't have the California code number for you.
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As for Motorcyclist last night, that's the sort of journalism I was railing against before. It's amazing.. reviews of a variant of a bike I own and love (r1150gs) and a bike I'm looking to buy (zx12r) and the program managed to give virtually no information in an incoherent, late middle aged, RAMBLE
. Half an hour of 30 seconds worth of info. Pipe and slippers, matey. All nicey, nicey, must make sure we don't upset the manufacturer, self satisfied RUBBISH. (Now John.. this is me hating something. Before I was just worried and "all loved out")
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Last point, re: the price of the R1150GS as compared to the R. Admittedly the GS has to have some tougher components, a more expensive suspension, and some extra plastic/windscreen. However it doesn't account for the massive difference in price. In Europe the price differential is much, much smaller. In fact in the UK the GS is only about #7,650 sterling which is about $10,900 at the current exchange rate. This is without ABS and heated grips and there's some extra shipping to be added but we're still talking about at least a $2,500 difference to the price of the bike in Europe. This really annoyed me when I got the bike.
So it is the dealers fleecing us? Not really. BMW charge the dealers more than the UK spec bikes are sold to the public.
So why do they do it?.......
because they can.