At least the most idiotic got a felony
That certainly does shed a different, well no, an extra light on things. Yes, the car driver totally road-raged in an unacceptable fashion, but the motorcycle driver is definitely at fault for starting things because he lane-split, which is not legal in Florida. Then, when the car took off from that first stoplight and got ahead of him, he cut in front of the left-lane vehicle and proceeded to further antagonize the car driver (it looks like he first slapped the mirror at that point).
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The āanything is OK if there are people I am afraid ofā mindset is exactly what leads cops to do evil things. I get it, but I canāt support it. No matter who started it, you are responsible for finishing it without hurting people unproportionately. Escalation doesnāt work in real life like it does in the movies.
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Itās bad, but I think Iāll forgive him. He was trying to escape a fuckwad trying to squish him with his 2000 pound prosthetic cock.
No. The motorcyclist did not āstart things.ā The driver is a grown man and became a homicidal lunatic all by himself.
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I found your problemā¦
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Thatās the crux of the matter. I donāt think many if any people here think the the driver isnāt at fault. But to believe the biker is also not at fault, you have to believe that his intent was to escape the driver and that he had no ready way to do that other than to go full speed through oncoming traffic, because there is simply no universe in which doing so didnāt mortally endanger the other motorists and their passengers on that road. I think itās fairly obvious that the biker was racing, not escaping. But if you donāt agree, then I ask only that you answer one question. Why didnāt the biker make a U turn and go in the opposite direction from the car? There is no way that would be less dangerous for him or the other morotrists than what he did in fact decide to do. So if he was trying to get away, why did he pursue the driver who was trying to run him off the road?
And if you concede that he was in fact racing the driver, how can you argue that he was justified doing that instead of turning around and escaping? That the biker sped through oncoming traffic is not in question; he recorded it himself. Thatās a fact you have to accept, whatever your justification.
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I said it was bad, and what I meant was āIf someone was trying to run me over with their car, Iād be focused on the car driver, and avoiding getting run over.ā Likely even to the point where Iād make stupid decisions like not turning around, because that just gives the driver a chance to squish me head on.
They both did stupid things.
Itās not okay that the biker drove the way he did. Iām just saying that I canāt say I would never do the same thing in that situation, because I know when Iām terrified of being killed, I donāt think very well.
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Thatās a fair point. Frankly, I donāt think the biker was focused on survival; I think he was focused on winning. Basically, I think anger, not fear, was on display on both sides, and the terrified people were the other motorists they both put in mortal danger. In part I base that on his behavior before and after the driver tried to murder him, and in part I base it on a lot of young bikers Iāve known for whom adrenaline makes their decisions. But maybe Iām wrong. I think at the absolute minimum he should lose his license for a good long time and learn some safety. I canāt agree with the comments in the thread (not yours) saying the biker did no wrong.
Iām not unsympathetic to the biker. Murder isnāt just deserts for cutting in line. But I have a big problem with how he reacted.
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I stepped away from this thread for a bit because I was getting cranky. Now that Iām a bit more mellow, letās go through the video. Before I do, though, one point: ethical, safe and legal are three distinctly different things.
First, the āHow it Startedā vid.
ā¢ At the 45 second mark, the rider does a completely routine lanesplit through a very wide gap between two completely stationary cars.
ā¢ This harms nobody, puts nobody at risk, inconveniences nobody. There is absolutely no sane reason to have any objection to this at all.
ā¢ This style of lanesplitting is explicitly legal in most of the world and ambiguously legal in much of the rest of the world. It improves traffic flow, harms nobody and substantially improves motorcyclist safety.
ā¢ Apparently itās illegal in Florida. This is stupid.
ā¢ So: ethical yes, safe yes, legal apparently not.
ā¢ Around the 1 minute mark, the lights change and traffic takes off. Usually what would happen here is that the bike accelerates at normal bike pace, the car accelerates at normal car pace, and everybody is happy with the bike half a block in front of the car.
ā¢ However, occasionally you run into a dickhead car driver who views being passed by a bike as a personal affront, and who accelerates hard in an attempt to prevent the bike from taking the lead. This turns a routine and harmless situation into one that is very slightly dangerous for the car driver and quite substantially dangerous for the biker.
ā¢ When this happens, the biker has to make a split second decision: accelerate harder in order to get into clear space ahead of the car, change lanes, or brake to try and pull in behind the car.
ā¢ Option #1 is usually the safest. The need to act quickly doesnāt generally allow the time for a headcheck to make sure that the other lane is clear. Braking to pull in behind the car may work, but if (a) the car behind also accelerated hard, or (b) the offending driver is enough of a dickhead to also slam on his brakes to continue to block the bike, it turns a dangerous situation into a more dangerous situation.
ā¢ With sufficient experience and awareness, you may be able to safely make the decision to brake and pull back. A less experienced rider is usually better off just gunning it momentarily; most cars canāt stay with a bike regardless of what the driver does.
ā¢ In this particular case, though, the rider was (a) slow enough off the mark that he could (and should) have just pulled in behind, and (b) chose the risky option of blindly trusting that the left lane was clear. He got lucky on that.
ā¢ Immediately following the incident, the rider was understandably cranky. He then chooses to match pace with the car and kick its mirror.
ā¢ Mirror-slapping is something of a traditional biker method of communicating disapproval of driver behavior. It very rarely does any harm to the mirror.
ā¢ It is however, a fucking stupid thing to do at any time (the sort of driver who deserves it is unlikely to learn from it, and it is very dangerous to the rider), and a substantial overreaction in this particular case.
ā¢ So: ethical no (but a venial rather than mortal sin), safe no, legal no.
ā¢ Biker then accelerates off, presumably thinking of the interaction as finished and deciding to put some distance between himself and the driver. He does this at quick but not crazy speed on a clear, flat, straight road with good visibility. Ethical yes, safe yes, legal probably not.
ā¢ At the 1:44 mark, the red car reappears (presumably after having gone as fast as he can to catch up).
ā¢ At this point, the biker does the sensible thing: lanesplits off to the left, putting a large number of cars between himself and the driver. Prevents any immediate attempt at vehicular homicide, and is usually enough for a threatening driver to cool off and give up. If not, the traffic may prevent the driver from catching up even if they still want to.
ā¢ Then the driver escalates, pulling past the traffic in the turn lane and putting his car sideways across the intersection.
ā¢ After an exchange of gestures, our biker then does the stupid thing of approaching to engage verbally.
ā¢ After a brief verbal exchange, he slaps the mirror again and attempts to flee.
ā¢ Ethical mixed, safe no, legal unclear.
ā¢ The driver pursues; the biker again accelerates to escape.
ā¢ This time heās quicker; the speed appears to be reading around 120, which I presume is MPH?
ā¢ Legal, definitely not. Ethical or safe? Arguable. Again, itās a dead straight, dead flat multilane divided road with perfect visibility, no immediate traffic ahead, no pedestrians or side traffic that might unexpectedly pop out.
ā¢ Itās also a long way inside the performance potential of that bike; the tacho is only half way up, and I doubt heās in top gear. The rider is going as fast as he thinks is necessary to escape, not as fast as he can go. Heās not āracingā.
ā¢ At around 2:50, the rider approaches other traffic. He slows, then lanesplits through a wide gap between moving vehicles.
ā¢ This sort of lanesplitting is legal and routine in some parts of the world (Portugal etc.), and common in many places where it isnāt legal. Presumably it isnāt legal in Florida.
ā¢ Is this style of lanesplitting safe/ethical? Well, personally, I donāt lanesplit moving traffic as a rule; Sydney roads are much narrower and bumpier than is typical in America, and I donāt like shaving my buffer space that thin. But it is a thing that can be safe in some circumstances, and the split in the video is at the safer end of the spectrum.
ā¢ At around 3:20, the rider is weaving at quick-but-not-crazy speed through sparse traffic, changing lanes without indicating. Legal no, safeā¦again, arguable.
ā¢ No, heās not riding in the safest and most sensible manner possible. But the risks heās taking are very slight in normal conditions, the danger created is almost entirely focused upon himself, and he is choosing to take those risks in an attempt to escape from what he accurately perceives as a greater risk approaching from behind. If he were to mess up here, the most likely outcome would be a seriously injured rider and a startled but unharmed car driver with some scuffed paintwork.
ā¢ At 3:38 thereās another moving lanesplit. Same as 2:50.
Thatās enough for one post; Iāll get onto the other video in a subsequent comment.
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Just to amplify that with a āwhat ifā If one of those oncoming cars had swerved into a fatal head on trying to avoid him, which isnāt particularly unlikely considering the circumstances, the rider would have been facing much more serious charges.
No, they arenāt. They are 1 idiot and 1 homicidal maniac.
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Video two (the one from the original post):
ā¢ We start with the biker moving at speed, attempting to escape his pursuer. Again, he is moving above the speed limit but well short of the bikeās maximum capacity. The road is no longer divided; this substantially increases the overall danger of the situation.
ā¢ The car passes at speed; the biker initially slows to keep away from the car, then brakes hard as the car weaves across the road in the first overt attempt to murder the biker.
ā¢ After the murder attempt, the car is near stationary on the side of the road; the biker gestures at the driver as he once again attempts to flee.
ā¢ He immediately slows down to more normal traffic speeds, checking behind him for pursuit once he is sheltered by another car.
ā¢ He is down to normal speed and turning onto a side road when the car once again comes flying past at extreme close range. Whether this was just recklessness or another murder attempt is unclear.
ā¢ The driver leans out of his window to shout at the rider, who again attempts to escape, this time riding on the extreme left of the road in order to maximize the distance between him and his attacker. It is a four-lane road, two lanes each way. As appears to be usual for America, the lanes are extremely wide.
ā¢ Around the thirty five second mark, the biker meets with a pair of cars travelling in the opposite direction. Thereās plenty of room; they both pass by in the unoccupied centre lane. If they had collided with the biker, once again the most likely outcome is a seriously injured biker and a relatively unharmed driver.
ā¢ However, the change in situation raises the chance of directly injuring a driver from miniscule to very low. There is also the possibility of other drivers around the situation creating their own accidents through panic, but that has been a given since the beginning of the incident. That danger is primarily created by the combination of the murderous driver and potential lack of skill on the part of the third parties, not the motorcyclist.
ā¢ So: the initial choice to move to the left of the road. In normal circumstances, this would be illegal, unethical and highly dangerous. However, while in the act of escaping from an ongoing murder attempt, it is not illegal, defensibly ethical and less dangerous than the alternative of being almost certainly run down.
ā¢ The biker continues, rapidly alternating attention between ahead (to check for oncoming traffic) and the right (to see if it is safe to return to the correct side of the road). He keeps his pace relatively slow, most likely to account for the enhanced danger of the sparse opposing traffic.
ā¢ At the 48 second mark, things get seriously dangerous: the would-be murderer is closing in, blocking the centre lane; traffic appears from a side street, providing an additional threat and cutting off the riderās escape to the left; while, simultaneously, another car appears travelling in the opposing direction. Due to the approach of the murder car, this new third party is unable to shift to the centre lane.
ā¢ The biker has very few options at this point other than what he did; squeeze by on the left. Dangerous, but not suicidal. Pretty much any other move at that point would have seen him under somebodyās tyres.
ā¢ The biker continues to try and escape and maximize his distance from the attacker. Again, the danger of possibly approaching traffic forces him to keep his speed down to a degree such that he is unable to put any extra distance between him and the car.
ā¢ At 1:00, two more vehicles approach head on; as both lanes are occupied, the biker again squeezes by on the left-hand verge. Again, not much in the way of other choices apart from deliberately throwing it onto the grass and almost certainly crashing (which would almost certainly be followed by being run over by the attacking driver).
ā¢ At 1:05, the road now opens up and clears enough for the biker to once again accelerate clear of the car. As soon as he achieves a safe distance, he moves back to the correct side of the road.
ā¢ At 1:10, approaching traffic both ahead and on a side street, he slightly decelerates for safety. He then splits at speed between a truck and another motorcycle travelling in the same direction. Not particularly dangerous, but it wouldāve pissed off the other biker a fair bit (not knowing the context), although from his body language itās clear that he heard him coming and wasnāt startled.
ā¢ The biker then accelerates again, attempting to lose his pursuer. Weāre in suburban streets now (as the biker turned off the main road earlier in his attempt to evade his would-be killer), which again enhances the risk: driveways, pedestrians, side streets, parked cars. Still a very wide, very flat, very well surfaced road with good visibility, though. The biker does reduce his pace relative to the more open roads, but is still attempting to outrun his pursuer.
ā¢ After about a minute (2:17), the red car appears again. The shouted argument continues; the driver appears to try to spit on the biker.
ā¢ The driver appears to cease pursuit; the biker leaves at a more normal speed.
ā¢ At 2:40, the driver makes one last dangerous close pass of the bike. This one appears to be just an attempt to intimidate rather than murder.
ā¢ Again, the rider accelerates to escape. Illegally fast, but not dangerously so given the immediate conditions. He appears to slow down to normal speed as soon as he is confident that the pursuit has not been resumed.
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BS. Bike-Man could have easily let things go when Car-Man passed him at the first stoplight, but Bike-Man accelerated to catch Car-Man and physically struck his car at that time (whether damage was caused is immaterial). Each will be punished in court for their individual stupidity, but Bike-Man started this.
Unless your logic is that itās perfectly okay to provoke people as long as theyāre more dangerous than you are.
I donāt ride, but I have friends who do, and they know better than to pull that kind of shit. First of all, it is illegal to split lanes, and second of all, thatās pretty much a guaranteed blind spot. The carās driver doesnāt even expect a vehicle to be there, so the risk is really high. Dumbass biker, plus nasty psycho car driver in this case. All the same, all riders out there please take this as a lesson in why not to lane-split at any speed.
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Lane splitting is explicitly not allowed in MA. And I stand by my position that itās dangerous and stupid everywhere. Your claim that it facilitates traffic flow is laughably ignorant. The only thing it āfacilitatesā is the biker getting a whole 2 seconds ahead of where he was. It also puts his safety at risk, risks an overreaction by a driver which could lead to a secondary collision, and does nothing whatsoever to reduce road congestion. youāve still got the same number of vehicles travelling on said roadway.
That is very apparent from your posts.
Riding a bike, even in heavy traffic, is not very dangerous. However, learning to ride a bike is incredibly dangerous, and itās not something that you do in a few weeks. It normally requires two to five years of regular riding.
The main reason for this lies in the nature of a bikeās ādefencesā.
The primary defences of cars are passive; bumpers, airbags, crumple zones, seatbelts. The primary defences of bikes are active: agility, acceleration, awareness. Used properly, these active defences work very well. But if you donāt do the things required to utilise them, they donāt work at all.
If you ride a motorcycle in traffic as if it were a car, all you get is an extremely dangerous microcar. But motorcycles are not cars, and should not be ridden as if they were.
One of the most dangerous situations for a motorcycle is crossing an intersection while surrounded by traffic. There are potential threats on all sides, and very few escape routes. Filtering through stationary traffic and getting out into the clear is much safer than remaining in the traffic pack; the cars canāt hit you when theyāre half a block behind.
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So glad I live in a civilized country where I can bike and cycle and make the occasional faux-pas without having to fear for my life.
Edit: I intended this comment as a āIām so glad with the better attitudes hereā not as a āyou guys suckā please donāt take it that way 
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This assumes many things, including the thought that there is free space ahead, which there isnāt during commuter hours (as well as a lot of the rest of the time). Your claim that āagility and accelerationā are safety tools for a motorcycle are absurd. Awareness and maintaining safe distances are safety tools which apply equally to cars and bikes. Any time you move to a position of invisibility (lane splitting, for one), youāre not helping your safety in any way, shape, or form. And btw the āprimary defensesā of a car are also awareness and proper spacing from other vehicles. Bumpers and airbags are last-stand features which one hopes never to need.
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The rest of the world laughs at your lack of understanding of the benefits of filtering/lane splitting.
I regularly filter, itās mostly legal where I live.
The space I have to filter in is way smaller then what I see on these roads, it would be crazy not to take advantage of the huge gaps between cars, especially when they are standing still.
Car drivers can be, and often are, blissfully unaware of motorcyclists, the damage this will do to their own health is negligible, for the biker this is life threatening. A frequently used acronym on biker forums is SMIDSYT, āSorry mate I didnāt see you thereā as that is usually a cars response to a near miss. This marks at least one way in which motorcyclists have to rely more on their awareness then car drivers do.
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