can't really see anything to judge

Motorcyclist is to blame in my opinion. He braked for no reason

Nope. Anyone who rear-ends someone else, is ALWAYS at fault. Always.
You should leave enough room between you and the person in front that if they slam on their breaks, EVEN for something you dont see, you should have enough space to not hit them.

The cops in the wrong, end of story. You should never rear end someone if youre driving at the right distance.

Ok... but why did he just stop all of a sudden?

Who cares? Hes got every right to stop like that, what if his hand had cramped up? It doesnt matter, its not his responsibility to those behind him.

Car on the left is merging at 1:06, he backs off to let the guy in and then stops when the guy slows dramatically. Cop taps bike rider.

And as per Charliem, the cop should have left plenty of distance and at the speed they are moving, the braking distance is a few feet. Cop obviously wasn't paying attention and is trying to bully the guy.

Cop is to blame and you're either a troll, a cop or an idiot (or a combination of the three).

@Asmo

There's a SHIT load that the guy on the motorcycle did wrong, only one of the things being braking, and we'll cover that in a minute, but let me ask you, did you not happen to notice that the guy on the bike revs up before slamming on his brakes? He gets up to about 15-20 km and then decided to just stop flat. What people who don't ride motorcycles don't seem to realize is, you're literally THOUSANDS of pounds lighter than every other car around you. You can accelerate quicker, and brake quicker.

And when you jack-rabbit and put some distance between the person behind you, they'll likely speed up a bit. And when you decide you want to stop NOW! and they're still slightly accelerating because you decided to start doing so yourself a second ago, they still have a couple tons to stop, too.

Now, when you get trained to ride a motorcycle, you're specifically told: DO NOT ride the center line, or the pavement line when on a two or more lane road. You're supposed to drive defensively, I.e. Guarding your maneuvering area.

The car is trying to merge, he wants to be a nice guy and let him in, okay, cool. But at the end of the day, if the car can't make it in, tough shit for the car. You DO NOT ride the pavement line because it encourages other drivers to A) Cut you off, B) Pull around you, and C) Can lead to you being pushed off the road. The only exception to this rule is riding in a 3+ man formation, where the first and third rider are still (in a right lane) riding the middle line, while the second rider is at the pavement line, thus allowing all three riders a space cushion while maintaining their defensive positions.

And.. just, lastly, lets go ahead and put you in the cops shoes. Don't even imagine you're a cop, just think of this situation:

-Traffic is flowing nicely
-Motorcyclist is in front of you
-Motorcyclist pulls over to the wrong side of the lane
-Now having a clear line of sight, you see a car in the distance that wants to merge
-Car appears to have enough space, but won't turn in
-Motorcyclist revs up and starts to accelerate
-Motorcyclist slams on his brakes.

If that were in my shoes, I'd be screaming too. There's been local stories of people scamming insurance any way they can (deliberately getting hit in 4 way stops by waving at someone else to go first) so a person trying to get rear ended isn't out of the question. The motorcyclist is lucky to be alive, however. He seems to have completely disregarded EVERYTHING he was taught.

The rider's description of what happened really primed me for something bad on the cop's end. Yeah cops can be dicks but regardless of the law, breaking (the motorcycle) like that is not at all a good idea. Honestly I'm left thinking the rider's an idiot, you can see (and hear) he's very nervous in the video, now with the video hes trying to compensate back.

Read the whole description he left. There is so much mental priming and self justification in his words that we are left with "here me, the good guy/badass/doesn't give a shit about anybody/stays cool in sweaty situations, is getting harassed by doucher mc doucherton aka the 5 - O aka the guy that doesnt give a shit about anybody, and you know stuff happend all that matters is hes gonna pay"

If it wasn't a cop and it was someone just as angry, he might have been in a lot more real trouble.

Cop was too close. The rider was nervous because a guy with a gun was angry at him. That guy with a gun also happened to be a cop, so your responses had best be extremely well thought out and measured so as to deflate the situation as much as possible. The rider wasn't nervous because he felt guilty, that's just silly. By the way, the answers provided were masterful and sublime despite the situation and hesitations.

It sounds like Shepppard IS the angry cop.

What if there's somthing or someone crossing you have to stop and the one who's behind you also so for me it's the policecar who is in fault

Sure the biker braked a bit much but the cop was following too close.

In Ontario, Canada anyway whoever hits someone from behind is at fault.

I even had a situation where a guys car rolled slowly backwards right into me when we were stopped at a light on a slight hill, I asked a cop about it and was told I was too close to him, my fault.

I see nothing wrong with a cop telling someone off for being an asshole driver. Who gives a shit whose "fault" it is in the eyes of an insurance company. You brake suddenly for no reason, that makes you a *dick-head*. It's called reckless driving. Smarten the fuck up.

Yeah maybe the cop was too close, but the biker has mirrors. He has eyes. He has/should have common sense. He can see there's a car behind him and no one in front.

The biker's a shit driver.

What's with his description anyway, how many times did he re-work that *gem* until he felt it made him seem like he was totally innocent? "It wasn't me! It was judge Dredd!" What is that an excerpt from a novel?

This is what I get from your comment:

The cop is 100% wrong. Any car can come to a immediate complete stop if it hits something and that is what should guide how much distance you choose to keep in-between your car and the one in front of you. You have to be able to stop even if the car (or bike) in front of you stops instantly. Whether a bike can slow down faster than a car matters not. How fast your car slows down and how fast you can react should determine how much distance you keep.

There ya go! Some schlub steps up and serves the winning, universal gustatorially satisfying plate!

Answer to the Conundrum: They were BOTH dicks!

Wow I can't believe the apathy towards the motorcyclist here on this thread. Unless you ride you really don't have any place to comment on what the motorcyclist did because you don't know what it's like for us.

Did the motorcyclist over-react? Sure he probably didn't need to completely stop. But I understand why he did.

Was the copy wrong for twisting the law about writing him a "shit-load of tickets" yes absolutely. He was following entirely too close.

Wow a lot of hate for a motorcyclist...probably from people who have never ridden a motorcycle in traffic before.

Anyways what strikes me here is not that he bumped him, that's not that big of a deal. It's the fact that the cop got out of his car and yelled at and berated him. That's completely unprofessional, he threatens him with tickets and he would get away with this as well if the motorcyclist wasn't smart and always wore his GoPro on rides to work. It's just like dash cams, it's the only thing that stopped that officer from going way too far. Hopefully and internal investigation will solve this.

You seem to be hung up on this like it's the main thing. I'm sorry but although there is a better side of the lane for a motorcyclist there isn't a wrong one. It is not illegal for him to be there, the entire lane is his and he can clearly be seen by a car right behind him.

You obviously have some sort of anger issue, since you seem to want to scream at everyone for this. Take a breath, it's not the end of the world.

"Lots of hate for the motorcyclist, must be people who don't ride."

Nah, we just all know crotch-rocketeers are just compensating and we pity them.

All of that is true. The motorcyclist is inexperienced. But none of that changes the fact that legally the cop is at fault for rear-ending. Then he abused his authority to get himself out of it by threatening the victim with "a shitload of tickets". I fucking hate abusive cops.

I find some of the comments here amazing. Ppl complaining because the biker braked too quickly. Well, if the moron cop behind him had been at a safe distance, then the collision would not have occurred.

It's irrelevant whether the 2nd car THINKS everything in front of the bike is clear or not, they still need to maintain a safe braking distance. Because, Oh, I don't know, maybe the 1st car can see something one the road that the 2nd car cannot. That's why the law is the way it is...

Full stop. End of story. Case closed.

Biker in the wrong as usual completely - He wasn't driving smoothly at all, typical STOP or GOOOOOOOOOOOOO mentality.

The motorcyclist isn't a great driver and they make some mistakes. The cop makes a mistake and hits him, in violation of highway traffic law. Using color of authority he then dresses down the motorcyclist to intimidate him.
So it went from two people committing driving infractions to police corruption.

The law is plain on the matter.
Unless there is a minimum speed limit, you can stop at any time.
You can stop as quickly as you please.
Traffic behind you is REQUIRED to keep a distance large enough to stop safely, REGARDLESS of whatever happens in front.

Also, a motorcycle is not required to be in the center of the lane. He has domain to adjust left/right as needed or desired. Unless signaling or turning, you can't exceed the lane markers, but you can be anywhere between the lane markers.

Most people don't bother to keep a safe distance. Fine. Most people have zero regard for others and are so self important that they even take personal offense when you call them out on their own transgressions.

Just because ~everyone is reckless and follows too closely, doesn't mean that they are all excused.

A car is serious business.
People should think of it more like an airplane, and less like a bicycle.

The fact that people can blame the biker here, simply demonstrates how little regard for traffic rules so many people have. A driver tailgates or drives inattentively or too closely (all things he's REQUIRED not to be doing), and people actually think it's fine. Simply crazy. This is what gets people killed.




Heck, imagine the conversation if the roles were reversed.
*Biker cop gets bumped by a car.
Do you really think the cop would be looking at the situation the same way as in this video, and apologizing for stopping?
Good luck with that.

-scheherazade

A cop friend once told me that if your vehicle strikes the back of another vehicle, the only way you're not at fault is if they were backing up, and even in that case you'd better have a witness. It doesn't matter what the biker was doing, the cop is guilty of driving too close or driving without due care and possibly making an unsafe lane change. I once rear ended someone and a cop asked me if I was driving too close. Being a genius I said no so he ticketed me for driving without due care. $368 and 6 points vs $109 and 3 points.

Of course if a cop hits you from behind, common sense law takes effect, but if it was anyone else behind you who couldn't threaten you with a shitload of traffic citations it would always be their fault.

Freakin' humans.

Yeah, there were things he did wrong... However there was nothing illegal and if the cop had been paying attention and following at a safe distance, it wouldn't have been an issue. Considering a person can be cited for ignoring both/either of those fairly common sense rules, it's pretty hard to defend the cops actions here...

Incidentally, at the speed they're traveling the weight of the car is almost a non issue. Cars have bigger/more brakes precisely because they have more weight to stop. In the end, it's all irrelevant, cop shouldn't have been crowding the guy and should have payed attention.

While it's true if you rear-end someone, it's pretty much automatically your fault. A vehicle should be able to stop for any reason and not be hit.

That said, the motorcycle was driving pretty erratically. I'm with the (asshole) copper on this one.

Yup, biker did it on purpose. 20m of clearance in front, slow speed.

Bikie could have had a cramp....or a heart attack, or a stroke, or a momentary vision issue....youve no idea why he stopped, the point is, it does not matter one iota.

They were going SO slowly to begin with, the only reason the cop could have hit him is if he was RIGHT up his ass, or paying NO attention to the road...both instances makes him an asshole up front, let alone negligent in his duties to drive safely.

Bah, typical cop behavior.

FYI, if you are EVER in an accident with the police, DO NOT talk to them, request a supervisor. The ONLY goal of the cop will be to cover his ass by charging you.