Even if lane splitting is illegal in that state, does that mean it’s OK if a driver decides to play vigilante when he (it’s always a he) sees someone else in a car roll through a stop sign, or turn right on red when there’s a sign saying not to?
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It’s the risk of collision with another car or stationary object on the side of the road that’s dangerous to the drivers. The oncoming car drivers all had two choices. Trust that the biker was going to get out of their way or swerve to avoid hitting and killing him. That everyone of them stayed steady and trusted the biker is frankly amazing, and a testament to their skill and nerve. And yes, hitting a bike can cause serious injury to a car by causing it to turn suddenly and flip. The biker got lucky, and his vocalizations of relief when they don’t hit him or each other suggests he’s well aware how lucky he was.
Throughout the first video the biker had several opportunities at breaks in the median to turn around and go in the opposite direction in the correct lane. Alternatively, there’s a short stretch at the beginning of the second video when the biker could have crossed the right-hand median separating the road from a walking path down which the car could not have followed. At 2:45 in the second video he finally makes a smart decision and turns quickly at an intersection as both he and the car are going through it. That he waited until his third chance to escape was merely foolish. But not simply letting the car that cut him off at 1:02 in the first video for splitting pull ahead demonstrates the biker’s own road rage. Was that anger justified? Yes. The car endangered him and everyone else by cutting him off. Was is safe; hell no. Then approaching for a second mirror slap shows him further letting his anger make decisions. Of course the driver had it coming. That doesn’t change the fact that allowing himself to be goaded into a fight in traffic endangers everyone. These were not the actions of a biker wanting merely to escape (though he was sure as hell trying to escape by the middle of second video when he realized the car was really trying to hit him).
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I think that a lot of the “he should have done a U turn” and “he should have jumped the median” commentary is seriously underestimating the difficulty and time required to make a tight turn on a bike, as well as underestimating the driver’s willingness to go off-road in his pursuit.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that all of these decisions were made in a very short timeframe, under a lot of adrenaline, when the rider had very little processing power to spare from the immediate task of avoiding collisions.
But I also thoroughly agree that the biker screwed up in ways that made a bad situation worse.
His primary failing was in psychology, not narrowly-defined riding skill. Both in the sense of losing his own temper, and in the sense of failing to adequately manipulate the behaviour of the other driver.
Psychological management of your surrounding motorists is an essential rider skill.
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That’s a fair point. But it’s still less dangerous that splitting oncoming traffic. Granted, I’m sure he didn’t anticipate being driven into oncoming traffic. But that’s the thing, when unpredictable homicidal maniacs try to cut off and then hit you, the reflex behavior should be to do anything possible to deescalate and/or diffuse the interaction while trying to get away. But it was only after the second mirror slap that the biker seemed to realize that escape was his number one priority. In short, I think he underestimated the malice of the driver and escalated the situation, endangering primarily himself, but also the other people on the road. To be sure, the biker’s faults were bad decisions, not malice.
There is that. But that’s why calm down and look for an escape is something every biker should train his or her self to do instinctively. Adrenaline happens, but learning not to let it cloud your judgement is an essential, though never easy, riding skill.
That’s all I’m arguing.
There’s no question the rider is skilled, and I suspect has at least some experience competition riding.
That and swallowing your pride and anger when what you want to do is a nice cathartic mirror slap. It’s damn hard to resist showing your irritation at cars that endanger and/or don’t see you. You feel like those drivers who refuse to share the road are just getting away scott-free. But like you said, the drivers who deserve to know they’re assholes are not the kind of people who will learn from it.
I want to add that my rather glib first comment yesterday, Too stupid to live, in my off-the-cuff judgement of both motorists was way out of line and I apologize to everyone for my callousness. Like you, I allowed my irritation at the whole thing and the trenchant tone we had yesterday get the better of me. A little time and your thoughtful analysis helped put it in perspective.
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“When you go looking for trouble you’re sure to find it.” That certainly applies here. The biker clearly had an agenda from the start, based on the “prequel” videos posted. He also had multiple opportunities to avoid escalating the conflict; giving the driver the finger was pretty stupid. The driver was a jerk of the highest order, for sure. But long before he started riding on the wrong side of the highway the biker could have gotten out of the situation that he created.
I don’t think he created the situation. But I agree he could have made much better choices to extricate himself from it.
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Today on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom: FLORIDA The quick and nimble Motorcycle is attacked by its natural enemy the Automobile. Watch as the real life drama unfolds upon the blacktop, under the sun.
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Welcome to most of FL… where people don’t fucking walk anywhere.
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You ever seen Wild Kingdom? I mean that guy was doing that show for thirty years, thirty years ago!
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I doubt it; nothing he did was beyond a typical commuter or weekend rider of moderate experience. A race-trained rider or serious sportsbike enthusiast would likely have been a bit quicker in the fast bits (say, 150mph instead of 120) and may have tried a knee-down high-speed cornering move into one of the side streets.
All he was doing was riding fast-ish on flat, straight roads. He didn’t even accelerate that hard; the front wheel stayed comfortably down the whole way. Kept the back wheel on the ground during the hard braking, too.
Just for reference: on my bike (Yamaha MT-07HO), in any gear up to third, anything more than half throttle will lift the front wheel. And, by sportsbike standards, the MT is an inexpensive utilitarian bike of moderate performance.
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Good point. While it seems unlikely that a weekend rider would risk driving into oncoming traffic without losing focus, I suppose he didn’t have much choice. I will say that I honestly don’t think I could handle the stress of that situation and, while I’ve never competed, I’ve been commuting on a bike for a while.
You never know what you can do until you have to do it, and it’s often surprising what you can manage when you don’t have any other option. 
So long as you stay chilled and keep your arms relaxed, a good bike will carry you through almost anything. Nerves nearly always fail before traction does.
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It’s my nerves I’m pretty sure would fail in that situation. But I sincerely hope never to have to test my limits in this regard.
BTW: this is what routine and legal lanesplitting in Portugal looks like:
Not sure that I’d be comfortable with that myself, but it works for the Portuguese.
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Lane splitting is illegal in my state too. Today, a biker lane split on top of a dubious and dangerous maneuver. I tapped my horn at him because the horn’s for reminding people not to do dangerous things. 
Got caught behind him at the next light because you can’t fight traffic by weaving in and out of it.
And nothing at all happened between him and me at the light because I have better things to stay angry about. While I was waiting behind him, I was reminded of this thread*.
Reckless and irresponsible behavior on the part of others can’t justify vindictive and irresponsible behavior on the part of others.
*Once we were stopped, realizing he’d been a jackass, he felt behind his seat to make sure his plate was still bent up toward the sky … presumably so I couldn’t get a picture of his plate. I ain’t no snitch so it didn’t occur to me until he reached back there.
The entire shenanigan is made even more hilarious by the fact that it occurred maybe a quarter mile up from one of the largest police stations in the area.
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I don’t think many people would argue that his choices were optimal. But I’d certainly argue that they were defensible. It’s easy to view the video and list the things you’d have done differently. Probably easy for the rider to do the same, after the fact. But when you’re in the situation and the adrenaline is pumping, you do what seems best at the time, which is often not, in fact, best. In a circumstance where your life has been clearly threatened, and you’re acting (however sub-optimally) to deal with that threat, then I don’t think it’s fair to judge your choices according to the standards of a sane rational person in ideal circumstances.
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Shooting him leaves a car traveling at high speed driverless.
The answer is to pull over and engage in an angry shouting match and then a physical altercation.
This is what normal civilized road ragers do.
Not resolve arguments Fury Road style. That’s what Australians do.
I didn’t advocate shooting anyone. I said the motorcycle driver should have pulled off the road like at a gas station. The other poster didn’t like that idea because, “What if he has a gun?”
My suggestion was to play the odds that he doesn’t, because getting creamed by his car, or by one of the innocent drivers he imperiled driving into incoming traffic, would have probably been more damaging than being shot.
And I’ve seen Australian road ragers. Aside from driving on the wrong side, there is all that ramming and jumping on cars looks pretty Fury Road to me…
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Because you know how sensitive we are about our homicidal maniac problems?
