It’s a real thing, and I’m grateful for your naming it.
I can’t reply, in this single thread, how real it might be, but I acknowledge that, by your naming, it is a thing.
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I have been a lifetime cyclist in urban traffic. I’ve been hit as a cyclist enough times that I’d have to pause and recollect to get a figure, and also once as a ped. But, I have also logged more time behind the wheel of a car than many drivers due to being in food delivery/courier when I did have a car. Perhaps I can leverage these facts into convincing you that my opinions are qualified. To wit: Don’t make a move until you track the line of all the vehicles around you/potential intersections (also bad: failure to take your right of way/failure to act). Hang up and drive. Consult your maps before you leave. If you’re lost, pull over and call/look online. This applies to bikes, too, but I’m addressing drivers, because bikes aren’t going to kill me, and cars are so handicapped in terms of awareness (fully enclosed i.e. deafened, windshield glare, comparatively terrible range of view, stereo, devices, distractions from passengers.) It’s basic stuff to ask, yet to save my own life, I have to check every driver’s seat on the road before I get too close to them to make sure drivers are actually driving. It’s maaaaaaad annoying, yo.
a repost, if interested:
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he himself was driving irresponsibly by splitting traffic
Calling a driver irresponsible for lane splitting in California is like calling a driver in the UK irresponsible for driving on the left side of the road.
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So, guy gets assaulted by a massive dick. Said dick is facing prosecution. So far, so good.
What I find unconscionable is the financial hardship faced by the victim.
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And look at how he was dressed, too, all in leathers… he was clearly asking for it. The guy who tried to kill him, well, boys will be boys.
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Is it not completely messed-up that third-party insurance payouts are determined entirely by the policy of the offender? It’s like a murderer not having to go to jail because he can afford a good lawyer. Imagine if that ever happened…
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W T F ?
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BMW blinker fluid needs to be ordered specially from Germany, which is expensive.
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I’m speculating a bit here, but my guess is that the BMW driver’s insurance does not cover intentional acts; if the driver is being accused of maliciously running in to the motorcyclist, which could easily be the case from the video, then insurance wouldn’t pay out most likely. So the victim will have to sue the BMW driver in civil court to recover damages, which could include punitive damages.
Of course the motorcyclist could have gotten full insurance, which could cover him in this situation, but most motorcyclists carry a minimum of coverage because anything else is incredibly expensive and, since most accidents involving motorcycles are someone else’s fault, the thought is that in most cases someone else’s insurance would cover the rider. At least this was what I thought when I rode (and was a starving college student). This seems to be one of those terrible gaps in which the rider made a money-saving decision to not get full insurance, and yet the other drivers insurance won’t pay. Maybe it’s time everyone rethinks their policy…I know I will.
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most motorcyclists carry a minimum of coverage because anything else is incredibly expensive
Motorcycle insurance is weird. When I lived in Canada, insurance was crazy expensive which seemed weird to me because I was only riding 4 months of the year and anything medical was covered by OHIP (or whatever it was called back then). Now I’m in Texas where I ride most of the year and full coverage insurance is very inexpensive.
I believe in Canada the insurance company pays the health care system, so it stands to reason it’s not cheap.
When you say full coverage in Texas is inexpensive, do you mean coverage for uninsured/hit and run/etc including medical though? My memory is that coverage was very expensive if you included those things. Maybe there is also a difference in your age or the type of bike you ride? Apparently the vast majority of accidents where the rider is at fault are caused by people under 30 riding “sport” bikes and insurance rates reflect that. I know that because I had a VFR700 that was considered a sport bike that was twice as expensive to insure as my next bike, which was a GPZ900 (which ironically was classified as “vintage” not sport).
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Seemed the motorcyclist may have baited a bmw driver.
Wrong move.
As a cyclist I know to stay out of the way of cars. This guy didn’t.
Police report? Criminal charges?
I see by your comment that you have not RTFA.
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This seems a quite difficult concept to grasp for the majority:
Just because someone does something shitty you’re not allowed to do something shitty or even shittier yourself.
“But he did it too” is kindergarden-reasoning.
Stealing from a thief is stealing too.
Shooting someone in the back isn’t justified because he was not paying alimony and runs away.
Trying to run someone over with your car isn’t justified because he said things you didn’t like.
… and so on.
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This via Jalopnik
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I would think a better comparison would be that of a taxi driver in Costa Rica honking his horn before passing on a narrow 2 lane mountain road: legal but still dangerous.
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I don’t think that’s a better comparison because lane splitting isn’t dangerous.
Here’s the AMA’s position paper:
http://americanmotorcyclist.com/rights/positionstatements/lanesplitting.aspx
The Hurt Report is a pretty famous motorcycle safety study and in it, the authors find that lane splitting improves motorcycle safety by reducing rear end collisions.
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Funny: as a bicyclist, I recognized the behavior as being aware there’s an issue somewhere between 3 and 6 o’clock he has to keep monitoring to make sure it doesn’t affect him.
And a motorcycle doesn’t “block the lane” it’s traveling on. It gets to have a place in the lane, just like cars do.
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Not saying “block the lane” as in “he doesn’t have a right to be there” what I meant was that he apparently shared the lane with the car (in order to make the comment to the driver). Upon the light turning green he guns it to get in front then proceeds to drive slow “blocking the flow of traffic.”
No faster way to enrage an already pissed off driver than to get in front and do the glance over the shoulder brake check. Like the guy in the road rage incident discussed at length (whose trial just ended with the driver walking away free):
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I’ve never done one or ever seen one done. But I’ve seen/heard plenty of people who think they know what’s best for others.
I’d love to see more people scream at each other from moving vehicles.
