Motorcyclist kicks car and triggers chain-reaction crash in apparent road-rage video
The California Highway Patrol is searching for a motorcyclist who was captured on video as he kicked a vehicle on the 14 Freeway in Santa Clarita on Wednesday and triggered a wild, chain-reaction crash that left one motorist injured when his truck flipped.
The 22-second clip of the apparent road-rage incident has been shared thousands of times on Facebook. It shows the motorcyclist kicking the driver’s side of a sedan in the southbound carpool lane of the freeway. The sedan responds by veering left and sideswiping the motorcycle.
The sedan driver appears to lose control at the end of the maneuver, swerving right, across the double-yellow lines, then hard left before slamming into the freeway divider. The force of the collision with the concrete barrier throws up sparks and lifts the car’s left rear tire off the ground.
In the video, the car ricochets off the barrier and into traffic, where it barrels into the driver’s door of a white pickup truck, flipping it onto its roof.
The truck slides down the freeway upside down before skidding to a stop in the fast lane. The sedan spun 360 degrees and came to a stop in the slow lane with white smoke or steam pluming from the engine.
The motorcyclist rode off without stopping. The California Highway Patrol said the incident is considered a hit-and-run. It occurred on the southbound 14 Freeway about 5:45 a.m. Wednesday at Newhall Avenue, authorities said.
“Obviously it was a road-rage incident. He was seen kicking the vehicle,” CHP Officer Josh Greengard told KNBC-TV.
The driver of the pickup suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to the hospital, Greengard said. The other driver was uninjured.
“It looked like a pretty violent video … this could’ve been a horrible tragedy,” Greengard said. “More people could’ve gotten hurt.”
Though the video shows the driver of the sedan swerving into the motorcycle, investigators still want to talk to the motorcyclist before citing anyone or making an arrest.
“We need to get the motorcyclist’s side of the story to see what led up to this incident. We’re not sure what happened farther back,” Greengard said.
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
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UPDATES:
11:50 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from the CHP.
This article was originally published at 8 a.m.
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