Sarah Miller figured Tuesday, Oct. 13, would be her last motorcycle ride of the season with two friends. By her account, a white pickup with a contractor’s name on the door cut off one rider, then forced her and a friend off Freedom Crider Road in New Sewickley Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. Her Insta 360 camera recorded the truck coming up behind her before the driver cut off another rider, according to KDKA-TV’s report.
“I was like, ‘I’m going in the grass. I’m gone,’” Miller told the station.
KDKA described what the footage shows. CE Little Contracting is visible on the side of the truck before Miller speeds ahead to get away. Later in the video, the white truck crosses into the opposite lane to catch up to her as she starts pointing at her camera. “As soon as I pointed to that camera, it looks like he kind of backs off and slows down a little bit. Maybe he didn’t realize I was recording,” she said.
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Her account of how it started: the road had two lanes, the riders were in the left one and the truck was in the right, and she said the driver had already been driving aggressively and tried to split the group so he could get between them. Asked what set him off, she said she had no idea and that the riders weren’t doing anything they shouldn’t have been.
That is one side, and right now it is the only side on the record. KDKA said it contacted CE Little Contracting several times and never heard back. WPXI reported that no one answered when it called the phone number on the truck, and the company’s website was not working. The driver has not been publicly identified, and no police statement we found says anyone has been charged. Neither station reported injuries.
What New Sewickley Township police have asked for
The department said on social media that it is “aware of and investigating the facts surrounding the video that is being shared, which involves the motorcycles and truck on Freedom Crider Road,” and asked the motorcycle operators to contact it. The number is 724-774-2473. WPXI placed the encounter near a busy sports complex and said the video had millions of views on TikTok alone.
That request is where the case turns. Pennsylvania wrote a rule for this situation, and breaking it carries a $25 fine. The charges with real consequences require proving what the driver was thinking, and the only witnesses to that are three riders and one camera.
Pennsylvania’s motorcycle lane law is a $25 ticket
Section 3523 of the Vehicle Code says “all motorcycles are entitled to full use of a lane and no motor vehicle shall be driven in such a manner as to deprive any motorcycle of the full use of a lane.” That is the statute for a truck squeezing a bike out of its lane. It has no penalty of its own. That means it falls under the Vehicle Code’s catch-all: any summary offense in the title with no other penalty provided carries a fine of $25. Court costs come on top of that, but the base fine is less than a tank of gas.
Reckless driving under Section 3736 is more serious. It applies to anyone who “drives any vehicle in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property,” and it is a summary offense with a $200 fine. The fine is not the expensive part. Under Section 1532(b), PennDOT must suspend a driver’s license for six months once it receives a certified record of a reckless driving conviction. For anyone who drives a work truck to job sites, six months without a license costs far more than $200.
The key words are “willful or wanton.” A careless lane change does not meet that standard. A driver who follows a rider into the oncoming lane after she has already sped away from him might. That is why the full, uncut video file matters more than the clip going around online.
A crime without a crash
Pennsylvania’s recklessly endangering another person statute does not require anyone to be hit. Under it, “a person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he recklessly engages in conduct which places or may place another person in danger of death or serious bodily injury.” The words “may place” do the work. The question is whether there was a risk, not whether the risk turned into an injury. A second-degree misdemeanor carries up to two years in prison under Section 1104 and a fine of up to $5,000 under Section 1101.
The size difference between the vehicles is what makes the risk serious. “I’m only 115 pounds. My bike’s probably 450 pounds. Truck’s at least 10,000 pounds,” Miller said. The truck’s weight is her estimate, not a measured figure. The federal crash data is measured. NHTSA reported 31.39 motorcyclist deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2023, compared with 1.13 for passenger car occupants, which is about 28 times the rate. The 6,335 motorcyclists killed that year were the most since at least 1975, according to the agency.
Another pickup, another motorcycle, another camera
The Pittsburgh area has seen a far worse version of this already in 2026. In a different township with a similar name, Sewickley Township in Westmoreland County, state police say a motorcycle was found down on Lowber Road on July 16, and a neighbor’s camera showed it traveling east with a crew cab truck following closely behind. The rider, Roy Holliday, died the next day. According to the state police release, troopers charged Ryan Thompson with criminal homicide, homicide by vehicle, aggravated assault by vehicle, reckless driving and recklessly endangering another person. Those are accusations. Thompson has not been convicted, and we could not confirm the case’s current docket status.
The two cases have no connection beyond geography. What they share is how the evidence was gathered: in both, the record of what the truck did came from a camera, not from a witness’s memory.
What the lettering on the door does and doesn’t mean
The company name on the truck is why WPXI could call a phone number within days of the video posting. It does not mean CE Little Contracting is responsible for what happened, and it does not tell us who was driving.
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In civil cases, Pennsylvania courts decide whether an employer answers for a worker’s conduct using a four-part test from the Restatement (Second) of Agency. The conduct must be the kind of work the employee was hired to do, happen within the time and place of the job, be meant at least partly to serve the employer, and involve force the employer could foresee. If any one of those is missing, the act falls outside the scope of employment. State courts have also held that an employer generally isn’t liable for an employee’s assault, because that kind of willful conduct is usually considered outside the scope of employment. If police tie the driving to a specific driver, any criminal case will be against that person, and the decal on the door won’t change that.
What happens next on Freedom Crider Road
The next step is in the riders’ hands. A statement from the people who were run toward the grass, along with the complete original footage, gives investigators the time, the location, and the minutes before the clip begins. Those minutes are the first thing any defense attorney will ask about. Miller says punishment isn’t her goal. “I didn’t post the video to get anybody in trouble. I just posted it to bring attention to bad drivers in Pittsburgh,” she said, and she plans to keep the camera running on every ride from now on.
@cbspittsburgh A motorcyclist said she and two other bikers were almost run off the road by a Pittsburgh-area contractor's pickup truck in an apparent road rage incident that was caught on camera and has since gone viral. New Sewickley Township police said an investigation is underway after video appears to show a truck driver trying to run over several motorcyclists in Beaver County.
♬ original sound – KDKA
If charges are filed, they will appear on the state court system’s public docket under the Beaver County magisterial district covering New Sewickley Township. Neither the driver nor CE Little Contracting has said a word publicly. If either responds, this story will be updated. Until then, a rider in Pennsylvania who is crowded out of a lane has a right written into Section 3523 and a $25 penalty to back it up.
Should Pennsylvania give its motorcycle lane law a penalty that matches the danger, or are reckless driving and endangerment charges enough to handle drivers who push riders off the road?
Images Via The Tiktok Post Above.
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