There were cars coming into the highway from the on-ramp - good reason not to move from left into right lane.
There appeared to be some sort of congestion ahead (thought I saw break lights in driver’s lanes ahead and large amount of traffic on opposite side of highway).
Tailgaters deserve everything that happens to them, and need to be prosecuted if they cause more damage than just to their own car (damn no-fault states!).
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They are both in the wrong (insert whynotboth.gif here).
But… ha-ha, tailgater! (insert nelson.gif here)
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The front car was momentarily staying in the overtaking lane in order to avoid the cars merging from the right; their position was entirely justified at the time.
If they’d stayed in the overtaking lane after it was safe to move right, then the rear driver might have had some justification for annoyance, but still no justification for vehicular assault (which is what that sort of tailgating is; using the threat of injury to attempt to force compliance).
This whole “brake check is a grave offence” thing (and the term “brake check” itself) is completely foreign from my POV.
Flashing your brake lights as a means of telling a following driver to back off is completely routine in Australia; it’s no more seen as an aggressive/dangerous move than using your indicators before a lane change would be. Actually slamming on the anchors and attempting to cause a collision would be a dick move (and possibly get you arrested), but that is a completely different thing from just showing the lights.
A driver who responds to brake lights by losing control and crashing is unfit to be on the road in the first place. Unexpected things happen on roadways very frequently; if you aren’t prepared to cope with that, sell the car and catch the fucking bus.
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The left lane was going faster than the right. Also, there was a ramp merging into the right lane with a car that was at the position of the brake checking driver. He couldn’t have moved as he would have pushed off the incoming driver.
Nevertheless, it is stupid and dangerous to oneself and others to tailgate. The accident clearly showed the consequences of being irresponsible as a driver.
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No, the tailgater created the situation, not the guy in front.
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I’ll move over if I’m not actually moving appreciably faster than the next lane over. If I am moving faster than them, and especially if I’m already moving faster than the speed limit, then the tailgater can just cool their jets until there’s a decently-sized opening in the next lane for me to shift into. Many times I’ll actually end up slowing down… not out of revenge or anything, but to give myself more reaction time so that something in front of me won’t cause just this kind of thing.
The tailgater’s just making things worse for themselves. I wouldn’t really feel comfortable trying to change lanes with someone anywhere near that close behind me, anyways, especially right around a merge from an on-ramp!
The ones I really hate are when I get to a large enough opening to switch lanes into, put my blinker on beforehand, get far enough ahead to not cause the person I’d be getting in front of to brake… and then just as I’m starting to change lanes, the $#%$# tailgater swerves over into that much-too-small space and lunges past.
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BB already posted this vid back in March-- http://boingboing.net/2016/03/11/car-crash-video-tailgaters-su.html
Getting a lot of traction out of this one.
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And here BoingBoing is, running up against their pixel ration! Wastrels!
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They are both being overly aggressive and wrong. It is incredibly stupid to be aggressive towards strangers. You can’t know their circumstances. I generally assume that the other driver I am tempted to get angry with is a gang member with a machine gun in the passenger seat.
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Tailgating is reckless driving. Tapping your breaks when you perceive a potentially dangerous situation is not.
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The exit they’re passing - 146 on US 41 - is in Wisconsin. At the time of the accident, 41 seconds in, it’s a two-lane highway. Wisconsin specifically has a statute allowing you to pass on the right, 346.08, for two-lane roads, so it’s not like the tailgater could complain they were stuck. Wisconsin law requires that the cars driving “less than the normal speed of traffic” must be in the right-hand lane.
When Fox11 talked to the Sheriff’s office there, they emphasized that NOTHING in Wisconsin law creates a clear obligation for drivers who are doing what the break-checker did here to change lanes, or speed up. At 0:13 they cross mile-marker 146.8, and at 0:23 they cross mile-marker 146.5. They do this while overtaking traffic on the right. At no time, even up to the break-check, do they stop passing traffic on the right. That means the driver in the left lane is going faster than “normal traffic”, which is exactly what they’re asked to do.
Similarly, there’s no obligation to stay on the scene because you witnessed an accident. They didn’t cause this accident: the tailgater did.
This video was ACTUALLY first posted back in March, and got local attention in Wisconsin.
There’s nothing I see in here to say the break-checker did anything wrong legally, but I’m not licensed in WI so I’d never venture a full conclusion or advice.
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Tailgater is at fault for the accident since as a driver you are required to maintain a safe stopping distance.
Doesn’t make any difference as to what the driver in front speed is.
He (or she) can make the argument he (or she) moved over to let the car coming down the ramp onto the highway even if he(or she) did act like a total moron.
By the way the guy who took the video apparently didn’t stop to check on the accident victim and wait for the police with his dash cam video. Would have been the humane thing to do…
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Not this shit again…?
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Spoken like a true lawyer.
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Tailgater. 99.9999%
Watch the video.
Both Brakechecker(B) and Tailgater(T) pass the car filming (F). This clearly indicates that B is in the passing lane to pass F. B is not driving slower than normal traffic.
Once passing F, B sees that there is another car in front of F, and another is merging (M) in from the on-ramp. This makes it unsafe for B to merge in front of F immediately. T can see this also, and despite this, T continues to ride too close to B.
M enters B’s blind spot, parallel to T. At this point, T should recognize his escape path is cut off by M and back off a little. He doesn’t. He continues into a boxed-in position.
I don’t know about you all, but when a car enters my blind spot, the first thing I do is check my mirrors.
It is very likely that at this point, B notices exactly how close T is. He taps on his brakes but doesn’t slow down, maintaining speed to pass M. Deliberately slowing down in front of a tailgater is a jerk move, but tapping and speeding up, or tapping and maintaining speed is just a form of communication. It is the ONLY way he had of communicating with the driver behind him.
At this point it is clear T wasn’t paying attention to the location of the other vehicles and specifically misgauged how close M was. When B’s lights flash, T suddenly realizes that M is blocking his only other route, panics, over-compensates, and ends up in the median.
He was tailgating (strike one), he moves his vehicle into a position where he has no escape path (strike two), and then he freaks out (strike three). He has no business being on the road.
Even if you think B was a jerk, you have to admit that T isn’t just tailgating, he is a bad driver. Some people point out that B is at fault for not stopping after witnessing an accident. Technically, yes, but the same is true of the person filming.
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I disagree, they were passing an on-ramp with merging traffic. You generally move into the passing lane to allow incoming traffic to merge. ANd the other guy was seriously on his ass, I would have brake checked him too.
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At least they’re leaving a safe gap.
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Here’s the thing. The tailgater was creating a very dangerous situation by following so closely. I mean insanely dangerous. This is no joke. So what does the person being tailgated do? If you let off the gas, you might get rear-ended at freeway passing speeds–it’s not like the person in front was going slow. If you do nothing, then the merging traffic could create a situation that could result in a fatal crash, with the person in front being the fatality.
Braking in this case may not have been tremendously prudent either, but this was really frightening behavior on the part of the tailgater, and I simply can’t find fault in the person who hit the brakes. We don’t know their motivation–it’s easy to ascribe malice, but it’s equally possible that they just caught on to the fact that they were in danger and hit the brakes without thinking.
Sorry, tailgater is 100% at fault for this accident. The person in the rear always is, and with good reason; in this case it isn’t even questionable.
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Yeah as someone pointed out this video has already been posted. But about the question of who is at fault, clearly both of them are. Now if the question was pick only one as the culpable party then i would have to say that the person tailgating is more at fault
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Both.
Who’s more wrong? I don’t think it matters. I try to avoid being at all wrong when I have the opportunity.
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