Rider behaviour to deteriorate?

Have you ever sat in traffic and just marvelled at the sheer amount of vehicles clogging up the roads? As more cars and motorcycles hit the streets every day, the amount of road available reduces accordingly.

Infrastructure upgrades, such as building wider, longer roads, rarely solve the problem - often adding to it by feeding more traffic into city and urban areas.

Spare a thought for Indonesian motorists in the capital of Jakarta, which reportedly has one motorcycle for every man woman and child.

Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, has a population of around 9.5 million people (circa December 2010) and roughly nine million registered motorcycles. Add the unregistered bikes to that equation and you're looking at a city with a lot of two-wheelers.

The Jakarta Globe is reporting that there are too many motorcycles in the capital city, and the governor of Jakarta reckons that around 1000 new motorbikes hit the city streets and pavements every day.

This is a boon for motorcycle makers, who stand to make plenty of revenue from the Indonesian bike boom, but reports suggest that complaints against motorcyclists have skyrocketed in Jakarta as rider numbers swell and behaviour deteriorates.

Taking the bus or driving a car during peak hour traffic in Jakarta results in incredibly slow travel times, forcing a lot of locals to adopt motorcycles, sometimes employing not-quite-legal techniques to avoid waiting in the traffic queue.

The average motorcyclist in almost any country across the planet has probably seen or been involved in a similar situation.

One of my first part-time jobs as a teenager was a motorcycle courier in the city of Melbourne, and being a young whipper-snapper with a quasi-excuse for being in a hurry, I can attest to doing far more dangerous things than just splitting traffic to get to the front of the queue at a traffic light congestion.

Depending on which traffic authority or police officer you ask in Australia, there are ways of legally splitting traffic or 'going up the middle', but the question remains: What is too much?

Should scooters be able to ride on bicycle paths, is it okay for motorcycles to split traffic and should two-wheeled vehicles be exempt from some road rules?

The people of Jakarta are making complaints of motorcyclists constantly running red lights, riding on the path and even on the wrong side of the road to make the journey a little quicker. As the roads of capital cities across the globe become increasingly congested and more people are taking to two wheels to avoid painfully slow commuting, will we see more and more risky behaviour?

Have your say on rider in the comments section below.