My first thought was that the motorcyclist in the picture almost deserves to be hit for driving illegally and dangerously between two cars - ie lane splitting.
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.
And that's how people usually react when someone is hit on 2 wheeled vehicle: trying to find a reason the rider deserved it.
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].
What you deserve and what you are at fault for are not the same thing. Fault is a legal concept - as you said, by definition - of who is responsible for the outcome. But that doesn't mean that breaking the law means you deserve broken bones and misery: things you deserve are things you should be rewarded with or punished by for an action. If you deserved it, the punishment for illegal lane splitting (or an equivalent crime, like speeding) would be for the police to take a baton to your knees.
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.
If I drive into oncoming traffic, run a red light, fail to stop at a two way stop, etc. why shouldn’t I expect to be in an accident? I’m intentionally breaking the law and drivers expectations.
And if you are hit while driving the wrong way, is it also because someone wasn’t looking? The lane splitter did something they knew was illegal (in the jurisdiction in question), why should I be on the lookout for illegal behavior?
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?
No, that's not true. Take the simple case, you're not belted in (therefore disobeying laws, let's choose California, for example) and the light turns green but it turned for both you and the other side because of a malfunction. You would be marked down as no one at fault.
You were both obeying the traffic laws. In the case of lane splitting where it is illegal - one person clearly wasn’t. Not wearing your seat belt didn’t cause the accident.
And most people will agree with that if directly asked the question. But given a situation with even the slightest hint of potential ambiguity, people tend to basically erase the familiar elements and scrutinize the people who are the most unusual.
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.
In my experience, lane splitting is much safer. It has saved me from violent rear-end collisions on several occasions.
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.
I don't see where in that study it shows what you claim. They specifically say:
> 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.
A lot of things that "seem" unsafe to people who only drive will seem a lot different if you try other forms of transit. When pedal-cyclists take the lane (ride in the middle) it's not to piss you off, it's to make sure you see them or don't try to pass if unsafe, but plenty of people are surprised I don't just ride in the gutter or door zone, "for safety".
As a cyclist I have to basically assume any car door will open at any time. How do you square that with lane splitting? I know it happens; I've seen dash-cam from incidents where a passenger opened their door during slow traffic and took out a motorcyclist lane-splitting.
Lane splitting is generally quite safe if:
a) Other motorists are expecting it and paying attention and
b) The motorcyclist isn't going much faster than other traffic (if I remember correctly, where I live the law is that you shouldn't go more than 15mph above the speed of the traffic).
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.
a) Other motorists are expecting it and paying attention and
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.
It's common here in France and it wouldn't surprise me if it was considered safer; however I highly doubt it would be safer in countries/states where cars don't expect this to happen.
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.