I went back and watched it a few times. Mostly because I was trying to tell if the pickup truck left the scene as a hit and run or if it managed to avoid any impact. We have some roads with relatively fast speed limit and stop lights. I always worry about the scenario where the car following swerves around me instead of slowing and then the car behind them who was previously following a fast moving car is now approaching a stopped car it couldn’t see at all.
That pickup truck looked like it swerved instead of stopping behind the stopped cars. My first thought was that the car following them couldn’t see the stopped cars and that dramatically impacted the following/stopping distance vs the truck having just left. However, watching the video two things appeared to happen. First, the car behind the pickup actually rear ended the pickup before it swerved. Meaning that car didn’t have a safe following distance behind it already. Second, the pickup did just drive on, at least out of frame, even though it had just been rear ended enough to see on video.
The first car behind the Tesla was almost able to stop, but not quite. That’s easily the Tesla fault for cutting him off. The second car did stop without hitting the first car. That looks like the end of the initial chain reaction. The third car was the pickup. Might have had the distance to stop, might not have. It swerved to avoid the stationary vehicles. I would have said this removed some fault from the fourth car, except the fourth car hit the pickup before it swerved. The chain of 4, 5, 6, and 7 were clearly all following to close. It looks like car 8 was able to stop prior to hitting 7, then the video ends.
I love the adaptive cruise control on several of our cars, but there’s two things they are really bad at. They don’t do well when overtaking cars not previously in range that are also going substantially slower. The distance closes to fast when you need to slow down before they’re in range. The other is when set at a safe following distance, other drivers seem to think that’s a free spot for them to merge into.
