Originally Posted by
FBinNY
I don't get the debate about the rider changing lanes. He wasn't. He was in the rightmost through lane, with an exit lane to his right. The road widened creating a new lane and he was moving into it immediately, essentially following the fog line. He never changed lanes to his right at all, and there would have been no accident if the truck hadn't illegally moved left over the barrier stripes to move from the exit lane to a through lane.
As for the signaling and not looking, he might have been letting his buddies know he was moving, but as he was riding the fog line, he didn't expect anything to pass on his right.
We don't have a lot of footage before the accident indicating the group's full path, or what the lanes were doing to be created and disappearing.
It appears to be a 3-lane portion of the highway where the right most lane turned, then was re-created immediately, so that a vehicle could continue straight in the 3rd lane (illegally). A curb, or something might discourage that practice, but might be dangerous to the traffic.
They clearly aren't on the "fog line" in the initial feet of the video, and I certainly would not want to be in a place on the interstate where I was riding the line with traffic on both sides. It is bad enough to do that in stop & go city traffic.
His turn signal is odd. It looks a bit anemic, so perhaps it was meant to be seen by the companions and not the vehicles. Nonetheless, he has passed the point of creation of the lane, and is not hugging to the shoulder or "fog line".
Of course, that is fortunate because had he been 2 feet further right, he would have been flattened.
I still think that had one not expected traffic in that zone, then one would have ridden down the white line into the "safety zone" without any hand signals (and doom).