Written by Andrew Jones
There’s nothing like a little lane splitting to raise the ire (and jealousy) of our four-wheeled brethren. While the practice in Australia, as in the US, is only legal in some states and frowned upon in others, you’d be hard-pressed to find a rider anywhere in the world that hasn’t tried it. Hell, in some South East Asian countries it’s the national passtime. But for BCR Design’s Benjie Flipprboi, a traffic jammed pick-up truck gave him a little time to daydream about lane splitting. Specifically, he wondered what a bike designed to lane split might look like" Funnily enough, it would probably look a lot like this svelte belter, BCR?s new ?Lane Splitter 54? Yamaha SR400 cafe racer.
A few month?s back, Benjie and his New Jersey team were asked by a local Yamaha dealer to do some custom work on their Yamaha SR400. ?On the way to the meeting where we were going to discuss the logistics of the rebuild, I got stuck in morning rush hour traffic in my pickup truck,? says Flipprboi. ?One of the few benefits of being in stand-still traffic is that it is fertile territory for creative thinking. For example, ?How cool it would be to build a bike that?s narrow enough to go between the cars during rush hour traffic"? Who would have thought something creative could come out of all that noise, congestion and pollution"? smiles Benjie.

So with that genius gem of an idea, and a revolutionary new use for traffic jams, Be...