Careless motorcycle on HW87 California

[Doutt]

Heading to work yesterday, I always have motorcycles pull past me even though the car pool lane was moving 50mph plus.
I had one bike go by and raise his hand back at me. I figured I would save the video to check it out later.

Later down the road, I started to get over to exit, and noticed my side mirror was pushed.

Here's why.....

 

[Saghost]

There have been a couple of posts about this recently. Grabbing mirrors seems to be a common strategy to intimidate drivers into giving them more room to split lanes.

While the legality of lane splitting is still a little ambiguous after the new law, I'm pretty sure he's not supposed to do that.

Not sure if you can take the videos to the police and get him cited for it after the fact...

 

[ecarfan]

That is a very foolish thing for a motorcycle to do; it could knock them off balance and cause a serious accident.

See Tesla captures lane-splitting motorcyclist intentionally hitting Model 3 for not making space on Autopilot - Electrek

 

[SMAlset]

Heading to work yesterday, I always have motorcycles pull past me even though the car pool lane was moving 50mph plus.
I had one bike go by and raise his hand back at me. I figured I would save the video to check it out later.

Later down the road, I started to get over to exit, and noticed my side mirror was pushed.

Here's why.....

OMG that is shocking and I don’t believe “careless” more like Intentional. Had you gotten in an accident afterwards because of your side view mirror visibility, people would assume it was your fault but more likely than not that biker’s instead. I still can’t believe he did that. Looks like this was from your right repeater TeslaCam dashcam. Did you check your front camera to see if you got his bike’s plate number? If so I’d take that to the CHP/local police depending on Hwy 87 designation and see if they won’t contact him officially. Wonder if he could be cited for that. I would hope so. He doesn’t deserve to be on the road IMO playing those games but a ticket would serve as a good first step to stopping that behavior.

 

[SMAlset]

You know @Doutt this behavior especially if more people are seeing it happen should get made public as well. I had no idea this is going on. In addition to the hwy enforcement authorities, I’d see if local TV stations would be interested in doing a story on it. This puts other drivers at risk too if you can’t check to see the traffic in the right lane. The Mercury News I think still runs a Mr. Roadshow column. But showing videos of this irresponsible behavior should be out there for all to see and hopefully get quashed in a severe way. Just unreal.

BTW if someone knocks off/breaks your passenger side mirror, be aware that’s where some of your antennas are (GPS and cellular? antenna I believe).

 

[Doutt]

Here's the bike riding away. I can't tell the license plate number.

 

[mkspeedr]

I commute every day on a motorcycle - sometimes on 87. I am embarrassed when I see stuff like this.

Splitting is so much more dangerous now than 10 years ago. I record my commute and the amount of people not paying attention is astonishing. Even the riders have Bluetooth phone calls.

The rider should not be splitting. He is not qualified.

 

[Uncle Paul]

It is not illegal for a biker to lane split in California, but that gives them no special entitlement. It is totally up to the biker to determine if his way ahead is clear. If not, he needs to fall back in line with other traffic.

While many vehicles move over to make more room for the lane splitter, they have no legal obligation to do so. It is a courtesy.

A biker bending a mirror is way out of line and causing a dangerous condition for a following biker, because the driver can no longer see if a biker is creaping up on him.

I am a biker myself, and when in the #1 lane, with motorcycles around, I usually drop out of autopilot to give them room, but they continue to self enforce people moving over, they should quickly loose that ability to lane split.

Stupid thing to do.

 

[SMAlset]

Here's the bike riding away. I can't tell the license plate number.

Thanks @Doutt, I think YouTube compresses the video so hard for me to read his plate at my end, but it does look like it would be visible. I know there are some here who are very good at enhancing the original video from TeslaCam. Not long ago there was a thread I was on that was of a Tesla owner (think Model 3) that had damage to his car on the highway from a bolt (people were pretty sure that was what it was) that was actually caught flying through the air on the right repeater video when he either ran it over, came off his car or thrown from another nearby vehicle. On the thread we were commenting how clear the images were. He had uploaded it to DropBox I think. So maybe someone here can speak more to being able to read the plate. I would really like to see this biker contacted over this by the police. Such a dangerous and stupid thing to do.

As it was he was moving faster than any of the surrounding traffic and probably got to work sooner than others, yet he feels compelled to do what he did.

 

[Saghost]

Here's the bike riding away. I can't tell the license plate number.

Can you give us the original file, by dropbox or something? Youtube reencodes when things are uploaded, which often crushes resolution. The 720P Youtube clip is only 1.1 mb...

And even so, there's a moment in the second second when the sun highlights the plate and you can almost read it:

 

[Doutt]

It is not illegal for a biker to lane split in California, but that gives them no special entitlement. It is totally up to the biker to determine if his way ahead is clear. If not, he needs to fall back in line with other traffic.

While many vehicles move over to make more room for the lane splitter, they have no legal obligation to do so. It is a courtesy.

A biker bending a mirror is way out of line and causing a dangerous condition for a following biker, because the driver can no longer see if a biker is creaping up on him.

I am a biker myself, and when in the #1 lane, with motorcycles around, I usually drop out of autopilot to give them room, but they continue to self enforce people moving over, they should quickly loose that ability to lane split.

Stupid thing to do.

I’ve heard mixed data on the max speed allowed where a biker can split lanes. Does anyone have the “real” data for California? Last I heard was lane splitting was allowed as long as traffic is moving under 35 mph.

 

[Doutt]

Can you give us the original file, by dropbox or something? Youtube reencodes when things are uploaded, which often crushes resolution. The 720P Youtube clip is only 1.1 mb...

And even so, there's a moment in the second second when the sun highlights the plate and you can almost read it:

View attachment 415916
View attachment 415915 View attachment 415914

Let me try and work on that tonight.
Thanks for the information.

Mark

 

[Bacalao]

Lane splitting info.

Note “done in a safe and proper manner”.

The bill was proposed by assemblymember Bill Quirk — whose district office is in Hayward — and authorized the California Highway Patrol to develop guidelines to ensure lane-splitting is done in a safe and proper manner. Starting Jan. 1, the bill took effect in the law and defined lane splitting as driving a motorcycle between rows of stopped or moving vehicles in the same lane.

There is nothing safe and proper about the maneuver depicted in the video if it included a mirror grab. I’m positive he would have been ticketed if seen by CHP.


Here is the current state of affairs.
Lane splitting general guidelines

Needless to say lane sharing is commonplace here and believe it or not a lot safer than it appears. I do it everyday as safely as possible. Unfortunately it’s often done recklessly. Hopefully the video can be enhanced and the maniac is cited.

 

[ecarfan]

I’ve heard mixed data on the max speed allowed where a biker can split lanes. Does anyone have the “real” data for California? Last I heard was lane splitting was allowed as long as traffic is moving under 35 mph.

I have owned a number of motorcycles in my life. I am not aware of a specific max traffic speed above which lane splitting is not allowed. I regularly see riders splitting lanes when traffic is moving at the speed limit, which I think is foolish behavior. Lane splitting at any speed is a risk, but when traffic is very dense and moving slowly it can be done relatively safely. Unfortunately, too many riders seem to think it is acceptable behavior under any circumstances.

 

[ShawnA]

Hi Doutt,

Please check the right rear corner of your car...
It looks to me like he may have touched, punched, or scratched your car on approach before changing your mirror...

Shawn