Driver gets cut off and his car nearly tips over

boing
21

Just drive at the extreme outer edge of the lane, or even a bit over that line.

First - woe be to the poor guy changing his tire on the shoulder when you come around the corner.

Second - Tobin (and I, though I see now that I didn’t actually mention it) were talking about motorcycling. When following a car in the left lane on a motorcycle, it’s best to be at the right side of the lane. That way the cars ahead of you in the lane to your right can see you coming. When you’re at the left edge, you’re hidden by the car in front of you, and the traffic on your right sees a blank space where you are and think they can jump into it.

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22

I’m sorry, I should not have done that.

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23

Almost exactly a year ago I was in a bicycle lane, cycling to work, when some asscunt decided to pass me and immediately cut me off with no room to stop or swerve. Broke my skull and my wrist, which is still impaired thanks to that fuckface. I can’t even wipe my ass without pain anymore.

I hope I at least dented the fucker’s car.

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24

You gotta give him props for the turn signal fake-out. That’s attention to detail you don’t see in your run-of-the-mill dickhead!

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25

Sadly, not unique to Cali. I can think of three intersections off the top of my head where I regularly see people pull this balloneyshit stunt.

We all suffer with a-holes on the roadways.

4 Likes
26

With some awareness and responsibility of course, bridge abutments can be a problem too! :rofl:

As a long-time rider myself I’ll say that one’s trickier! At very slow speed differential I tend to stay close to the right as you say, but that’s when I’m slow enough that a hard brake or swerve is sufficient to avoid any idiots.

Then as the speed difference becomes greater I’ll start weaving to the left as I pass, then back to the right for the gap between. That maximizes visibility while maintaining the ability to avoid anybody that jumps out simply by drifting further left if needed, (shoulder conditions permitting of course). This also minimizes the blind-spot duration.

Then at higher speeds I just stick to the left. However, there is still a limit to how much faster I’m willing to go as there’s always the chance of somebody actually trying to make it all the way over to the shoulder which would require a last-second change-up to pass them on the inside.

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27

This is a regular occurrence in Tijuana, where red lights are merely suggestions. Probably where he learned that move.

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28

Happened to my friend a couple years ago. She was in a Toyota Celica (pretty low to the ground) and a pickup truck clipped the front of her car and she flipped. Other driver didn’t stop, not sure if he even noticed what happened. She really misses that car.

29

Not a week goes by that I don’t get that very event on my motorcycle, without impact preferably.

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30

Like everybody has said, it’s kinda both drivers’ faults: the honda obviously shouldn’t have moved into the turn lane, but the main driver was going way too fast to react to such a bonehead move. IMO you should always slow down as you move past a long line of stopped cars… you just never know what’s going to happen, plus everyone’s visibility is so reduced in that situation. Like when there’s a long line of cars for seemingly no reason till you pull around them and discover the other lane is closed or there’s a jay walker or whatever…

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31

I agree the other car is at fault, but he is going fast.

32

I see a few comments saying this, but I don’t see it. That looks like about 50km/h (30mph) to me, at least on the approach to the traffic. It does look a bit fast after that, but I’m not sure that’s not just an illusion created by the fact that he’s moving and the traffic to his right isn’t.

33
  1. This certainly fulfils the adage that most accidents happen close to home
  2. He IS decelerating approaching that turn, just not much frame of reference for it to be obvious
34

Its fortunate he didn’t flip. I keep thinking that I would have reacted and slowed down as I saw the guy pulling into the lane but conditions were wet and going into a slide would not have helped either. Hope the other person is okay as well…

People keep talking about him going fast, and this was my initial reaction too but I wanted to check so performed a few calculations after noticing some signs in the video.

  • See: 42.502273, -71.233701
  • The video has timestamps so you don’t even have to trust that its playback rate was not adjusted.
  • To confirm google streetview shows the speed limit on the Middlesex Turnpike is 40mph.
  • The distance from the Town Line sign to the start of the turn lane separator line is 1325 ft.
  • The time for that distance is from 17:13:56 to 17:14:18 or ~22 seconds.
  • The approximate speed is 39-41 MPH

So +/- measurement inaccuracy, etc, this guy is following the law for the non-intersection section of the road.

The real speed question is how quickly, or not, he decelerates entering the intersection. To see this you would need more sophisticated tools, which you know youtube, with its abundance of dash-cam videos, is probably working on :smiley:

2 Likes
35

I was sued for $1,000,000 for a similar situation when I was 17 ($500k for me, $500k for my father who owned the car). I was the equivalent of the dashcam driver in the situation and we won*, but more to the point, just because you’re in the right in an accident, doesn’t excuse stupid behavior. Moreover, just because you’ll win your insurance claim or court case, it’s best to avoid it altogether.

It shouldn’t take a $1m lawsuit for people to understand that it’s stupid to drive at high speeds next to cars stopped in traffic. 9 times out of 10, one of the drivers in the stopped traffic is going to try and get out of their lane and into your lane where, apparently, driving at high speed is a possibility.

Slow the -f- down. This dude was flying. It made me clench up just watching as he approached those cars.

If you’re on a highway and there’s a lane to the left, go there. Don’t drive 20, 30 or more mph next to stopped traffic or you will be smacking into a car that’s trying to escape.

Sure, that Honda Fit made a mistake, but it was entirely predictable. As I watched the video the first time, I knew exactly where the dashcam driver was about to go wrong. And I’m no Nostradamus. Dashcam guy should have been creeping as he approached the stopped drivers. But he was blasting down the road like he was on the Autobahn.

Moreover, an experienced driver knows that the left turn arrow will be short AF. The way Mr. Dashcam was driving, it seemed that he knew that as well. Indeed, at 1:39, you can see the car in front of him was just making the turn when the light turned yellow. So the only way he had a chance was to drive like a bat out of hell to get on the first driver’s ass.

He obviously didn’t make it, but the effort was clearly evident by his driving.

If I were Honda Fit’s attorney, I’d make a similar (but vastly longer) argument to show that the dashcam driver was also negligent. (this is not legal advice)

*In my case, I ended up rear-ending a car that was in my lane but obscured.

1 Like
36

If there’s a foot of snow on the ground, do you think a driver is excused if they are driving under the speed limit when they smash into a car?

Obviously, road conditions and the context are taken into account. So, assuming your calculations are accurate, this driver was at the speed limit. However, it was raining so there’s a gray area for where he should have been driving.

More importantly, and the point I make in my own post, a driver must take into account context. Again, assuming your calculations are correct, he was at or near the speed limit…

  • In rainy conditions
  • Next to a line of stopped cars
    Again, I’m not Honda Fit’s attorney, but I would love your calculations because they show the dashcam driver was driving too fast for the inclement weather.

And I would add that he was driving next to a line of stopped cars, as discussed in my own post.

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37

But 30mph is too fast to move past a stationary queue of traffic.

The usual recommendation for lane-splitting/filtering on a motorcycle is to go no faster than 15mph more than the traffic flow- this allows enough time to react to any unusual movement by the car in front of the one you’re overtaking.

The same applies here- any more than 15mph past a stationary queue of traffic is too fast to be able to stop if the next-but-one car pulls out.

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38

The victim was soaking up the distance between his car and the others that had been stopped in the turn lane to catch the arrow. This seems 100% valid to me. As to passing a row of stationary cars at speed, sure… exercise caution on the interstate or other situations with that occurrence. However, in this case, it was a row of cars stopped in the lane to proceed straight through the intersection. By being over there they’ve signaled their intention to a reasonable degree. It’s not like they just got stuck in traffic and you would expect people to be moving around an obstacle.

I’d cut the victim total slack on his approach. Seemed acceptable. The person who causes the accident allows substantial time to pass after the car in front of the victim at the turn queue clears a gap before hesitating into the lane. This would tell me that they hadn’t planned the move, but changed their mind once they perceived space had become available.

Instead of watching their mirror for an opportunity to change lanes, I would say they saw the lane ‘empty’, got impatient, and went without checking for additional vehicles approaching from behind. It’s either they didn’t check their mirror or they didn’t see the victim’s car - who was in the lane well before the encroaching vehicle began to move. Judging from when their turn signal begins to flash, I’d say the victim’s car should have been visible in their mirror.

Maybe it was rain on the side mirror?

Mitigating fault would be if the victim had failed to turn their headlights on. Seems like the encroaching vehicle’s weren’t.

39

Came here expecting victim blaming from backseat drivers. Was not disappointed. I mean, I am disappointed, but you know what I mean.

1 Like
40

happened to me last year was shocking even though he barely
touched a nerf rider