I think 5 to 10 young men in their 20s and 30s are killed here in the Bay Area every year when lane splitting. A young man who worked in our town and was well liked by everybody died that way last summer.
I’ve gone to change lanes to the right, looked over my shoulder and in the mirror, signaled, started the lane change and BAM! a lane splitter shows up out of nowhere. I’ve had to abort lane changes more than once for that reason.
I don’t blame the Bolt...blame the idiot motorcyclist.
And it begins. Most of us here realized this is a fatal flaw. GM becomes the deep pocket and will be sued to oblivion. Maybe not this case, but there will inevitably be a baby stroller.
That is an idiotic statement. This is not racism you fool.
Robot vehicles are running over motorcyclists.
The San Francisco Police Department determined Nilsson to be at fault for the collision because he was attempting to pass on the right. The police report also claimed that the Bolt aborted its lane change, and that the GM employee behind the wheel of the vehicle attempted to steer away from the motorcyclist but was too late to avoid contact.People who pass on the right should be executed. (Well, that's the way it is in Germany I've read.)
We have all these nerds who worship technology, but each gadget you carry has multiple failures.
Technology has many failures, get used to it, and on a car that kills people.
“Re-centering” = Lawyerese BS
Lane splitting is dangerous. I’m surprised it is legal anywhere, but this was California which explains a lot.
Police reports are not always accurate, but they are under pressure to assign blame so they do. Therefore, lawsuits happen.
The whole incident boils down to this, IMHO:
The computer incorrectly assumed that the spot that it vacated when it attempted the lane change would remain vacant. The motorcyclist incorrectly assumed that the car would complete the lane change and stay there. Both were wrong, both share the blame.
This could just as easily have happened with a conventionally operated car.
I have had so many near misses with motorcyclists over the years that it isn’t even funny. They just come out of nowhere going way over the speed limit. If they are suicidal they should just jump off a bridge. They always blame the car driver for not seeing them.
Did you read the article you posted?
There’s nothing here.
WAY too many freepers are doing that lately.
If you want to take out a motorcyclist, clip his front wheel. That is the most difficult collision to recover from.
If you want to entice a motorcyclist to attempt to pass you, go 12 mph.
Not a fan of driver-less cars and love bikes and many of those who ride them, but reality is what reality is.
Wait until a robot 18-wheeler takes out a school bus.
Pinging this group because they offered insights relative to those blaming bikers generally (I’m just assuming that, like all news articles, we’re getting a biased fraction of the story).
I’ve long suspected that in a dilemma, autonomous cars will be programmed to kill motorcyclists because lib programmers, social norms, or both, will declare the biker (pick one or several):
- An ‘idiot’ on a ‘crotch rocket’
- Knowing the risk he took
- “I knew a...” (whatever anecdotal scary thing happened)
- By being on a ‘donor’cycle, inherently less important than anything else the car might hit.
See https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/ for how this will play out; when it’s not just a crash but a fatality, the larger part of people will all but cheer.
For the record: I do ride when the white slippery stuff isn’t covering the road; am clearly recognizable as a can of (popular lemon-lime carbonated beverage) by bright green bike, hi-viz helmet, and 3M reflective stripes; and ride sanely — and still have drivers, often with one or both hands full of food/smokes/phones/whatever, commit attempted murder against me several times weekly.
This is the “pro” lane-splitting argument from an American motorcyclists organization:
”Reducing a motorcyclist’s exposure to vehicles that are frequently accelerating and decelerating on congested roadways can be one way to reduce rear-end collisions for those most vulnerable in traffic.”
Are not other cars “exposed to vehicles that are frequently accelerating and decelerating on congested roadways??
Is not the “pro” argument actually an admission that the motorcyclist has a harder time making quick adjustments in congested traffic (braking at slow speeds, keeping balance, or dropping foot to secure the motorcycle is held upright). Whereas a car driver has zero “adjustment” to make to the upright balance of the motor vehicle just because it must slow down a lot, or even stop.
What the “pro” lane-slitting argument fails to acknowledge is that while lane-splitting may make it seem an easier driving experience for the motorcyclists in congested stop-and-go traffic, there is two things wrong with it. It is less likely that the motorcyclist will be bumped from behind in such situations, than the motorcycle will bump the vehicle ahead. Also, lane-splitting exposes the motorcyclists to accidents from car drivers quickly changing lanes, cutting off that “between the lanes” space the motorcyclist is using.
Full disclosure: I love motorcycles and use to have two - a “dirt bike” and a road bike. I hope again sometime to have another road bike. My own experience riding motorcycles has left the impression that a very good many motorcyclists are their own worst enemy, more so than the car drivers.
Not only does California allow “lane splitting” they do not require a rule I learned road biking with (as the best safety measure on highways) That rule was that the motorcycle should be sitting in the lane in the same relative position as it would be if the operator was behind the wheel of a car. That rule decreases observational mistakes, relative to the motorcycle, by the car drivers.
He got the ticket for an illegal pass. And the car will have the footage to show how far into the lane change the vehicle went before it aborted. He’ll have to show that a person driven car wouldn’t have also failed to see him and avoided the accident. He’ll probably lose.