What the statute does
RCW 46.61.5259 creates the offence of negligent driving with a vulnerable user victim in the first degree, committed when a person operates a vehicle with ordinary negligence and proximately causes the death of a vulnerable user of a public way.
The list of vulnerable users includes pedestrians, people on bicycles, people on horseback, roadway workers, and a motorcycle.
It is a gross misdemeanor: up to 364 days, a fine up to $5,000 with a $1,000 minimum, and a 90-day suspension of driving privileges.
Why this exists
Before it, a driver who killed a rider through ordinary carelessness, as opposed to recklessness or intoxication, often faced only a traffic infraction. The gap between the harm and the consequence was indefensible, and this statute closes some of it.
It matters to riders for a reason beyond justice: it signals that a motorcycle is legally recognised as exposed in a way a car is not. That framing shows up in how these collisions are investigated and charged.
The overtaking rule, and the myth attached to it
RCW 46.61.110 requires a driver overtaking other traffic to pass to the left at a safe distance and not return to the right until safely clear. Where the overtaken traffic is a motorcycle, motor-driven cycle or moped, the statute adds a penalty equal to the base fine, and it may not be waived, reduced or suspended unless the offender is indigent.
Now the correction, because nearly every summary gets this wrong. Washington's well-known three-foot passing rule does not cover motorcycles. That subsection lists pedestrians, bicycles, animals and farm equipment. Motorcycles are protected instead by the enhanced, non-reducible fine. Different mechanism, same intent.
What this does not do for you
Being legally recognised as vulnerable is not protection. It is a description of what happens to you in a collision, and it operates after the fact.
The crash type that dominates is the driver turning left across the path of an oncoming motorcycle, usually reporting that they looked and did not see it. Nothing in this statute prevents that. What reduces it is being where the driver is looking, covering the brake at intersections, and having practised an emergency stop enough that it happens without deliberation.
Washington's own data makes the case: a substantial majority of riders killed in fatal crashes have no record of completing a training program.
If it happens to you
This is a training school, so the honest boundary: what to do legally after a collision is a question for a lawyer, and the personal-injury firms that dominate these search results will tell you so at length. What we can say is practical. Get medical attention even when you feel fine, because adrenaline masks a great deal. Do not negotiate at the roadside. And photograph the scene, including sight lines, before anything moves.