With one swing of his car door, a cabbie caused two lane-splitting motorcyclists to crash onto the asphalt along the Seletar Expressway (SLE).
Captured on a dash cam, a clip of the crash was shared on the Singapore Road Accident Facebook page today, but it’s unclear when exactly it happened. The accident was said to have taken place on the SLE near the exit to Bukit Timah Expressway.
From the footage, it appeared to be that a ComfortDelGro taxi had been rear-ended by a car, and the drivers of both vehicles had stopped in the middle of the expressway to inspect the damages. The cabbie, however, did not see a motorcyclist filtering in between his lane and the next. So when the cab door was swung wide open, the motorcyclist grazed it and slammed hard onto the road. The motorcycle skid further, and another motorcyclist trailing right behind was not able to avoid it, flipping his own ride over the fallen vehicle.
The video cuts out before we can see what happened next, but another motorcyclist was seen stopping by the side of the road to render assistance to the fallen casualties on the ground.
Technically, there are no explicit laws permitting and prohibiting motorcyclists from lane splitting. Nonetheless, it’s always a risk for riders, and straddling in between lanes reduces their proximity with other vehicles, opening themselves up to a greater possibility of crashing into inattentive drivers.
