Here’s a video from the Manitoba RCMP below, via Twitter, which shows you just how dangerous distracted driving can be—and how silly the penalties are.
In this clip, a motorcyclist waits for the traffic light to change, then heads into the intersection, not realizing the semi driver to his right isn’t stopping. The driver, said to be a 50-year-old from the US, was reported by several bystanders to be on his cell phone. Unsurprisingly, the bike is a write-off and the motorcyclist (Rober Selby of Manitou, MN, a dad with three kids) ended up in hospital.
The CBC says Selby’s injuries were minor (bruises to legs, ribs and arms, and a sore neck), partly because he was wearing full protective gear, including riding pants.
Thankfully, a driver’s dashcam caught the whole affair and was used to ticket the semi driver. But, after almost killing Selby, the driver only ended up with a $203 ticket for distracted driving and a $203 ticket for running the red light.
He could have died. Thankfully, the motorcyclist only received minor injuries after this collision. Several witnesses saw the 50yo semi driver on his phone in the intersection – he’s charged w distracted driving & running the red = $406. #TrafficTues #rcmpmb pic.twitter.com/4zbjKdowla
— RCMP Manitoba (@rcmpmb) May 1, 2018
Yeah, I agree that the truck was entirely at fault, but that motorcyclist was clearly not looking at side traffic before pulling forward. This was a close call he could easily have avoided.
Whether on a bike or in a car, Always, and I mean always look both ways before going through an intersection, especially just after a ligh change. Even though you legally have the Right of Way, don’t assume that every vehicle will stop even though they have a red light or a stop sign. The biker was very lucky in this case, but had he looked both ways before proceeding he likely would have noticed that the semi was not going to stop, and the rider could have simply waited. An extra second to check can mean the difference between going home with your bike or going home in an ambulance or worse.
I’ve seen it too many times and it’s happened to me several times.
Be safe out there folks, lives too short to be in a hurry
i was thinking the same thing – I never go through on a green without looking both ways and covering the brakes, even if it’s been green for a while. The rider really should’ve noticed something 70 feet long and ten feet high that wasn’t stopping.
On one of my favourite back roads (for motorcycling) it crosses a main (80kph) highway where there is a set of traffic lights. Almost invariably the tractor-trailer rigs that are coming north up-grade to the crossing are reluctant to stop at a yellow-changing-to-red-ahead and don’t want to lose speed so you just don’t cross on the first few seconds of a green to the side road until they do “blow though” and are gone (or once in a while brake and stop). Coming south on the highway to the same crossing the semi-s are running a bit downhill for a few km to the light and they usually burn through on the red, occasionally blowing the horn. They are running at 95-105 kph coming from the north and they are bigger so……..
It has been that way since the traffic lights went in there decades ago.
And no cop wants to take a truck driver’s livelihood away from him.
I was advised long, long ago, “Ride like every other vehicle on the road is being driven by a drunken idiot – because some of them are.”
AJ
Well said!
Exactly. I my opinion it was equally the fault of the motorcyclist – he didn’t have the right of way but he SHOULD have seen that HUGE trucking coming if he was at all paying attention.
It was not at all the fault of the motorcyclist. Certainly not from a legal point of view, or an insurance point of view. The truck drove through the red long after it had changed. It was 100% in the wrong.
Sure, the rider should have seen it and avoided it completely, but we don’t usually assign blame or fault to someone because they fail to accommodate someone else’s serious mistake.