If the car driver wasn't nicked which I suspect is the case then this clearly shows a prejudice by the copper against bikers
If the car driver was getting a blow job from Christina Hendricks at the time, he was doubly lucky. We see a lot of this - driver hogging the lane getting away scot(ch)-free whilst police prosecute the "victims" of lane-hoggers. The difference now is that police should be prosecuting both parties, what with the recent rule changes - but will we see it happening? I want to believe that but won't until there is evidence of it happening.
The traffic density was such that constantly swapping lanes would increase the risk of a major pile up. Whilst it is the case that traffic should move left when they can there is little point in doing so if seconds later you are just going to have to move right again. Whilst what the biker did wasn't that dangerous on it's own if everyone was doing it it would be chaos. Pulling in front of the lorry wasn't that clever.
How would it increase the likelihood if each individual manoeuvre was subject to due care and attention, with essentially identical circumstances in place each time? If you are arguing from the point of view that an accident is likely to occur over time ... well, that's not exactly earth-shattering news This point nicely sets up a discussion concerning the "stay in your lane" approach they have in the USA. If everyone was doing it, no one would do it You are describing what might happen under completely different traffic conditions, which isn't relevant to the case in hand. From our vantage, it looked horribly risky. However, if there was communication and cooperation between rider and lorry driver, the manoeuvre was less risky than it looked - but still scary.
On those rare occasions that I travel south of Kendal the trafic density is often such that you couldn't "make progress" even if you wanted to. I have often sat in the outside lane at 70 -80 mph with a 2-3 second gap in front for miles with someone behind me simply because to move over I would have to brake to fit into the gaps to my left. This does cause problems for some drivers who can't see more than 10m beyond their bumper but frankly who cares.
Seemed to me that as undertakes go it was pretty aggressive - swoop in on and out directly in front of the slow car Compounded by hard acceleration (to 95 apparently) and then by the crossing ot two lanes sharpish Add to that the disputing it and not turning up and its not a massive surprise I would like to think that may have been different had he undertook slowly and waited before pulling back into outside lane May have got a talking to but probably not much else
It was aggressive but anything less than aggressive would have increased his time exposed to danger; being rearended by the car in the middle lane or the car in the outside lane moving left as he passed. The issue for me was that it only gained him several seconds up the road unless he was going to continue riding in that way for some time, which would have been reckless.
Aggressive was the wrong choice of word by me - I agree with you as a biker but the magistrate non biker would have seen it a sudden manouvre in all three directions in short succession plus all the other stuff I have certainly done much much worse - not occupying a pedestal - just saying that given what he did and what happened its not that much of a shock result
