I disagree. High percentage of these scenarios are at speeds and scenarios where hitting the brake would not prevent a collision and a quick swerve is the only option to not collide. Obviously your quick swerve could cause another collision so I guess it's which decision on average causes the least harm/death? I agree though that most people's extinct would be to brake. Mine never has been though.
> quick swerve could cause another collision so I guess it's which decision on average causes the least harm/death? I agree though that most people's extinct would be to brake
If it’s 1989 and you don’t have ABS, yes. Otherwise, swerving is a gamble [1]. If you don’t have time to stop, you physically don’t have time to evaluate and choose a right or left swerve. You’re trading the certainty of a head-on collision with whatever is in front of you against the uncertainty of what’s to the right or left, compounded with all the fun that comes with a side/tumbling collision and increased risk of not hitting a car.
If you cannot brake you are following too close. I know everyone else does it (except 3/4ths of semis!), but you can be the one who maintains a long following distance and thus can stop in time. Every time setup the long following distance 5 cars jump into the gap - but then the gap remains as no more do.
what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my lane?
do you also maintain a long following distance when there's a car right next to you in the next lane? I try to, because I don't want to stay in someone's blind spot, but sometimes it's not really possible to fall back.
I watch a lot of car accident videos and I've seen that happen exactly once.
Perhaps you mean the far more common scenario when the car in the next lane simply decides to merge into yours? Nothing about that is random[1] and the response in 90%+ of cases is just to let off the gas for a few seconds. That's it.
[1]: In most cases, it's because your lane is open and theirs is about to be backed up. You'd want to switch lanes too, so it really shouldn't be surprising they do.
The rest are mostly people realizing at the last second they want to turn right/left at an upcoming intersection (or highway exit). Again, predictable.
Because all the "person doesn't look, pulls out into road, other traffic swerves around them" don't cause crashes and don't get posted to your accident feed.
I watch accident videos, not crash videos. Pulling out/switching lanes while not looking is like 40% of the clips in the videos. It's a common, predictable driving scenario, nothing to get one's panties in a bunch about.
Right, so you've created a dangerous scenario by speeding and by the direct consequences of your actions you're now forced to execute a dangerous manoeuvre of swerving. Maybe, just maybe, the solution is not speeding.
> I agree though that most people's extinct would be to brake. Mine never has been though.
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You operate a motorized vehicle and your first instinct when seeing anything dangerous ahead is to do something other than braking?
