This is a safety feature in newer cars now. Hazard lights automatically turn on after rapid deceleration or if the air bags are deployed.
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I didn’t know Winchell’s, nor Arco, still existed.
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This was my thought, too. At the beginning, the van’s lights looked like a left turn signal, then hazards. The van driver might have just been tapping the brakes. Thinking it might have been a hazard signal, the driver whose dashcam we are watching backs up far enough to see the van’s brake lights again. After that, the crash occurs.
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Watch the lines on the road, the van wasn’t pulling forward.
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My eyes WERE deceiving me!
It so looked as if the van pulled up a bit!
Thanks for that tip!
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I’m wondering if the dashcam driver backed up just to see around the van - the view of that side of the intersection is certainly blocked by the van in the video, anyways, until the car moves back.
That’s how it looks to me. So it was pure coincidence that they ended up in safer place.
Yeah, they look like they were speeding and driving straight and realized, too late, that unlike the cars turning left, they had the red light.
I think that’s it - the traffic in both directions is all turning left - the car slammed on the brakes because they finally noticed they had a red light.
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The other thing that I found really weird about the dashcam driver was that they made absolutely no out loud exclamation at the crash. I sure would have uttered a reflexive “holy shit!” or some such, but this guy made zero noise (not even a sharp intake of breath) for the 11 seconds from the crash moment to the end of the video.
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This looked like a major intersection, but a lot of intersections have sensors right at the line. If you don’t pull forward, you will never get a green light.
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Which is complicated, because Southern California means everything south of San Mateo.
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All these comments about the accident and who was at fault and the article is about how the dashcam car backed up and out of the way, not the accident it backed out of the way of in advance of it happening.
Sheesh.
The fact that the turning car was thrown backward from the collision would tend to suggest that the other car was going much faster. If the car coming from the left of frame was indeed speeding excessively, then the turning driver may have seen a clear intersection at the point when it started the turn.
We can’t see the posted speed limits, or the state of the signals both cars saw, so I think it’s pretty hard to call from this angle without more information.
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I once got out of my car to explain that to the lead car in the turn lane. They were not locals, and quite shocked when I did that, but they followed my instructions anyway and sure enough, third light change was the charm!
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There’s a bunch of Winchell’s left in Denver, at least.
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To try and understand the camera’s actions, it seems like it should help to understand what happened next, and as it happens, the accident wasn’t straightforward to decode for at least some of us. Why I would make a lousy eye-witness: I, too, at first thought that the van had moved, and it took a few watches to catch the car from the left.
Wasn’t relevant to the accident, but it was relevant to the dashcam driver backing up.
- wheels turned to the right in a left-turn lane
- backup lights appear to be on at the very beginning
- either several taps on the brake or hazards come on before brake
So dashcam driver sees a vehicle that’s making every signal (except the actual turn signal!) of wanting to come over to their lane if possible. As an experienced and polite driver if there’s nobody behind then yeah, I would have backed up as well.
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But, but, but, AI!
somebody once told me a Ford was gonna roll me.
so I think I’ll let that van go ahead…
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