But from the comments, it does seem to be legal some places. But, in all other states in the US besides CA, it is explicitly illegal. It still seems unsafe even it is legal.
It's built into the language of articles about crashes too. You'll see 'it is not known if the rider was wearing a helmet'[1] without any similar remarks about the driver of the car. Or the oxymoronic 'police are still investigating the accident'[2].
[1] I wrote this, then searched to find an example. Here: https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/2018/05/vehicle_crashes_i...
[2] As above. No action being taken, yet they know it's an accident. Written 2 hours ago. https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/burton/burton-bridge-crash-...
If I’m in a car and disobey the traffic laws and get in an accident with someone who was following the law - by definition, I’m at fault.
After jumping to blaming the rider, you graciously accepted you were wrong about the law in some jurisdictions. Unfortunately, you then continued trying to blame the rider without taking the lesson that you may not be aware of what's safest for a bike rider to do. The only explanation I see for this is that you place people on bikes in a different mental tribe to your own.
From even a practical standpoint, if I’m on a motorcycle, I know that I’m at an increase risk of injury. Why wouldn’t I be more careful?
That's to illustrate precisely the idea you mentioned. The violation of laws must contribute to the accident for it to count towards fault.
Now that it's clear to me that you agree with that, I'm happy to close the discussion.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/05/29/motorcycle-lanesplittin...
> This study is not without limitations. The primary limitation is our lack of exposure data. To estimate how the risk of being involved in a collision changes when motorcyclists chose to lane- split, we would require information on both the lane-splitting and non-lane-splitting riding that is done by some identifiable sample of motorcyclists. The collection of these data is fraught with problems, and the current study did not attempt to collect such data. The current data set cannot be used to compare the collision risks for lane-splitting or non-lane-splitting riders.
The study itself explicitly states that they don't have the data to reach any conclusions about the relative safety of splitting vs not.
What the study shows is that riders who were lane-splitting at the time of an accident sustain fewer injuries than those who weren't. It mentions some differences between the two groups -- lane-splitters are more likely to be commuting and have better safety gear -- but glosses over how that impacts the injury rates.
I don't have another study to cite but motorcyclists who commute are likely a much less injured group than recreational riders. For a host of reasons, from not engaging in as much risky behavior -- who wants to die on the way to work? -- to being more skilled on average due to experience.
I'll also go as far as to say that commuting is certainly more dangerous than most recreational riding (the exception being recreational riding when the drunks are out, e.g. midnight on the weekend) due to traffic density. The text-and-drive crowd is also more active (both on their phones and on the road) during rush hour, perhaps because driving inattentively seems like a safer practice at lower speeds.
Commuting being a seemingly more dangerous activity doesn't preclude commuters from being a lower-risk-of-injury group. Age could be another factor -- older riders are more likely to be injured in motorcycle accidents, and might be less likely to commute or lane-split.
The study is crap. It lacks the data to control for other factors and draw meaningful conclusions about much of anything.
https://www.ots.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/67/2019/06/M...
- If there's a gap ahead in stopped traffic, assume a car will pull across it and adjust your speed and attention accordingly
- If it looks like a car will change lanes without indicating, assume they're going to do it
- Assume nobody can see you and ride accordingly
I used to lane split when I had a motorcycle as the highway traffic was terrible for my morning commute and it was generally fine, though you would occasionally get an idiot doing that thing some drivers do where they indicated a lane change as they were doing it and without checking mirrors so you have to be very careful.
In jurisdictions where it is illegal, why should a motorist any more “expect it” than they should expect a car to do any other illegal behavior? Of course safe driving 101, is that certain common behaviors you should expect.