Okay!
no more education for you boneheads! you can find it all out yourselves when u get there!!
With all due respect -- what a load of paternalistic hooey. Please stop already.
I'm a native here, who started riding motorcycles (legally) on California roads in 1967 with my learners permit (all that was required back in the stone age). Since then, other than the 3 years I lived in Colorado and 3 years in Nevada, I have been living, riding and driving in California. While I live in the foothills of the Sierras and lived for many years at Lake Tahoe, I've also lived, worked, gone to school, driven and ridden in the Los Angeles, Sacramento and SF Bay Area metropolitan areas. I've lane split in ways that I've considered safe in that time -- filtering to stop signs and signals, on freeways between congested (stopped OR slow moving) traffic, as well as all manner of other opportunities to avoid being stuck at a standstill and overheating. More importantly for this discussion, my daily commutes in the car have put me in a position to regularly observe motorcycles lane splitting (and it's the car drivers' attention you are talking about getting here).
So, with decades of experience splitting lanes and being in a cage in California while others have split lanes around me, I simply disagree with you.
As I posted above, I'll move over for a lane splitting motorcycle IF I see him behind me between lanes, or if I know he's there by any means. But in all candor, I don't think I've ever noticed a bike lane splitting behind me from the noise it made. The exhaust noise is effectively non-directional WHEN it can be heard at all from in front of the bike. Moreover, it is not uniquely recognizable as intending to attract attention, unlike a horn. And it must compete with a driver's ambient sound environment (i.e., noise levels from all sources inside and outside the car) if it's to be heard at all. Worse, it must not only be heard and recognized as coming from a motorcycle, but understood almost instantly as an intended signal that a motorcycle will be coming up on your left OR your right side in time to allow you to act (e.g., to give him more room or to avoid moving into his line). Lights in your car's mirrors at least tell you where the bike is and if it's closing. And remember that we're talking about the ordinary driver whose attention you're trying to get, not the alert motorcyclist in his cage who is looking for motorcycles everywhere on the road.
As to being stopped, try to understand what you're being told. If I'm stopped in my car (e.g., at a signal), I very often have no rolling room to move the car left or right (have to go forward and turn the wheels) -- THAT's what you're being told but continue to reject. Most of the time, if cars are stacked up at a stop, the rider can either get through or he can't -- there's little the stacked up car driver can do until he can move his car forward AND to the side.
I recall that you're a MSF instructor, but the condescending lecture from your non-resident experience splitting lanes on your bike is misplaced. The more relevant experience is probably that of driving a car in those conditions with motorcyclists splitting lanes. From the perspective of a splitting motorcyclist, you're mostly speculating what drivers do and don't see and hear as you quickly pass them without so much as ever even seeing their eyes (except what you might see in a car mirror). Experiencing it from inside the car you get a much better idea of what the car drivers see and hear. For corroboration, I'll refer you back to Fairlaner's comments (above) as both a driver and a rider in the Los Angeles area, or SacramentoMike's comments (above) as both a driver and a rider in the Sacramento area.
No, we don't all agree on this. My main objection in this thread is that I know very few people who don't literally HATE being deafened by unmuffled motorcycle exhaust systems, and I have enough experience with the political and legal systems to know that citizen complaints to legislators end up costing the rest of us motorcyclists in a number of ways. Collaterally, and IMO, I don't think there's any evidence that loud pipes improve safety on the roadway and you haven't persuaded me otherwise.