The incident took place at 5:30 a.m. in Santa Clarita, which is located on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Shot with a cellphone, the film shows a biker on a red Harley-Davidson pulling up to a Nissan Sentra, looking over, and giving the driver-side door a solid kick. The driver of the Sentra swerves left into the biker, loses control of his car, slams into the center divider, and T-bones a Cadillac Escalade passing in one of the right lanes.
The Nissan spun and came to a stop in the far right lane, the Escalade rolled over, and the biker sped away from the scene as fast as possible. This all happened at freeway speeds, yet no one was seriously injured.
“When I felt the impact and my truck spun out from beside me, and I started to roll, I saw nothing but asphalt and sky. Coming to a rest, I looked around and I was still breathing. To me, that was a plus,” Carlos Benavidez, the 75-year old driver of the damaged Escalade, told CBS Los Angeles. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So, how did this happen? The man who shot the video explains the biker was passing cars between lanes, a practice called lane-splitting that’s neither legal nor illegal in the Golden State, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) website. The Sentra driver bumped into the motorcycle as he was exiting the carpool lane, and the two motorists started yelling at each other.
Witnesses say the biker kicked the Nissan’s driver-side door several times, even before the camera started to roll. One of the passengers told California Highway Patrol that he even flashed a knife at one point. The CHP haven’t charged anyone yet because they don’t know who is responsible, or which crime(s) have been committed. No one wrote down the biker’s license plate number, so they’re patiently waiting for him to come forward and tell his side of the story.
