So I live in Korea where motorcycles are banned from tollways (despite thefact it isstatistically the safest place for us),but all othertraffic laws are widely considered optional, especially for taxis and motorcycles.Usually I find thisannoying and sometimes frustratingly dangerous but a couple days ago I had something happen which left me snickering with glee.

I was carving upsome greatmountain roads on a beautiful day, now the speed limit is a silly low 40 km/h (25 mph) but of course any car you would see would be doing at least double that. I was riding quite fast (toward thelimits of sane) in the areas with good visibility. Stupid road hazardslike patches of gravel construction with no warning are common here but I had been down this route earlier in the day, and knew it was safe except for a few areas where tarps were laid out with drying rice for the harvest. I come flying up on a nice sweeping left-hand curve just getting into a very small farm village and as I round the bend I come upon a cop parked in the oncoming lane waving his arms at me wildly. Now instinctively I think I am at a speed which would warrant (no pun intended) a loss of license back home in the US. So, I decide to keep my pace knowing full well that the Samsung SM3 (police issue) sedan has no chance of ever seeing me again, but debating which route to take in case he radios me in. Then as I cautiously swerve around the rice tarp laying in the road I realize he wasn't trying to stop me but give me a friendly warning about the rice in the road, which I had already known about from earlier on. Just funny how that would have been a loss of license or in some places an impounded bike but here was just a friendly warning of a road hazard.

It takes some getting used to that you can literally go by a cop at 100mph and they will wave to the cool bikers. They don't even have radar guns.The only thing you have to worry about speeding here is the speed cameras on some highways but they only take a picture of the front plate, which of coursewe don't have, and driver, which with a helmet on they can't see. So basically m/c's are immune to speed limits. Most of the Koreans I ride with have fender eliminators and never even bothered to mount plates, but it wouldn't matter if they did since the cops don't even look twice except to see what kind of bikes we are riding. Some of the bikes I see for sale at the shop have plates stuck between the heat-shield and muffler because apparently you just need a plate somewhere on the bike to sell it legally here or something.

On the other hand the lack of traffic law obedience has its downfalls too. I totalled my 929 at about 50mph last spring on a left turning (actually u-turning i think)drunk who decided to cross from the oncoming traffic turn lane and then pull a hit-and-run. Then again the settlement from the bruises and damaged gearI got let me upgrade to the 1000, hehe. Thank goodness for having a taxi-driver witness who chased him down and got make, model, and plate numbers.

 

Motorcycles banned on the highway in Korea? Thats pretty lame man.
Reminds me of our neighboring country Singapore; where we Malaysian superbikers can't enter their road but they can blaze on ours as fast as they can!

 

i think ill trade off no traffic speed limit for not being able to use the highway....fair trade.

 

We can use the highways, just not the tollways (expressways). There are still lots of great deserted high speed straights, but you have to keep an eye out for the odd traffic light.Of course you don't actually need to wait for it to turn green if its clear, but its usually a good idea to at least slow to a near stop of course or you could end up stuck in the grill of a truck . I don't mind anyway since I mostly stick to the twisties and if I really want to get my high-speed fix there are safe (as a straight road with guard rails on both sidesgnashing their teeth can be) roads to do it on.

Here's an article about a rejected protest in Seoul of the anti-motorcycle law a few years ago: http://news.motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf...1214MWEJNQ.htm It's not actually as bad as it sounds in the article either. Most of the car-only overpasses are in Seoul,and with the trafficI wouldn't want to ride there anyway. There is one highway marked as no motorcycles near where I live but we just ignore it since the cops don't really seem to enforce it. They just stop you at the tollways since there's a gate.

 

damm what are you doing in korea??

 

haha... sounds like that scene in tokyo drift where if you're going faster than X mph they won;t even bother... enjoy it, but stay safe!

 

when you said "i love this country" i was ready to come in here like "I don't"...but your not talking about the USA lol

 

Been teaching English here for the last 5 years. Was only going to be here for a year but ended up marrying a Korean girl.

 

Also believed when I read the title of this thread I was going to have to come in here and back up my statement from page 9 of The Most Random Thread Ever and probably received some form of redirect from our locally, admin and see this thread locked. But this turned out to be something else I seriously remember hearing about this a while back and could not believe it. It's amazing what politicians around the world will adhere to was a little bit of pressure. All I can say brother is I feel your pain. BTW I teach English to abroad lol here's a crappy cell phone photo for you and I know most of you recognize me. But for those who don't the little guy on the left. No worries, no thread jacking here, just sharing

 

Good to see you back, HC, absence was noted.