tailgater. no idea what happened in the van. doesn’t matter.
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You guys didn’t see the squirrel that ran in front of the brake-checker? Well, neither did I. But I bet the brake-checker did. At least, that would be my story.
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Or better yet… My daily driver is an Audi S4 that has dual rear fog lights that look very similar to my brake lights. Being an S4, it’s plenty fast, so if I’m in the left lane, I’m shuffling along and/or passing. I never doddle and I stay to the right mostly anyway (because it’s what you’re supposed to do and) just in case someone wanting to go faster comes along (rarely).
Occasionally I’ll get someone that decides to ride my tail in the left lane when I can’t get over due to circumstance. If it’s prolonged I just tap my fog light switch, lighting up the rears briefly without even stepping off the accelerator or slowing the car at all, yet making the person behind me think I’ve braked. They back off immediately and generally stay back after that. Often it seems the person was just on auto-pilot and not paying attention to how close they had drifted up, but it gets their attention without actually putting my pretty car at risk of being rear-ended by an idiot.
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I agree in principle, but in this specific case “just moving over” was not an option, what with there being cars in the right lane, including at least one that was merging from an on-ramp.
I would have sped up to get to the first safe opening to move to the right lane, but strictly speaking the lead car wasn’t obligated to do that. It would have been the right thing to do in order to get a dangerous asshole out of their life ASAP, though.
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Tailgater. It’s a for sure a jerk move to righteously throttle the fast lane and the brake-checker absolutely should’ve moved over, however…
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in the instance of a sudden / unexpected stop it is the responsibility of the trailing driver to give themselves enough room to safety respond.
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the tailgater had passing opportunity after clearing the filming truck, however the idiot was clearly raging and trying to make point. a point that could’ve been safely made by passing on the inside, hitting the horn and flipping the bird…
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I say fuck that tailgater, got what they deserved.
I’m not convinced that the leading car was only tapping their brakes to slow down to merge right. I suppose you expect them to enter the right lane too fast and rear end the car ahead so as not to upset the tailgater?
If you are going to sit right on somebody’s ass like that its your fault if you don’t have time, or skills to react quickly, appropriately to what the car in front is doing.
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Just because someone is doing something annoying, illegal, or dangerous, doesn’t give you an excuse to do something even more annoying, Illegal, or dangerous.
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That idiot was going to crash his car no matter what.
You simply can’t drive with that combination of poor judgement and lack of skill without crashing.
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In as much as the guy in front was driving too slow in the passing lane and or not actively passing, It is still the guy in the rear who’s responsibility it is to not intentionally put themselves in a position where there could be a collision.
When I was a truck driver, I hit a car parked in a no parking zone who was also about 4 feet from the curb. It was a passenger pickup drop off for an ER.
The cop gave me the ticket with the explanation that even if he left it in the middle of the road, I still should not have hit him. Fair enough. He did cite the guy for a shitty park job.
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In my state, it’s illegal, and it should be. It’s intentionally doing something that you know could cause an accident. Yes, the tailgaiter is wrong to do what they’re doing, but knowingly causing an accident that otherwise wouldn’t happen without your action should make you at least half liable. The problem is proving it. The brake checker can always just say that they thought they saw something that warranted caution and therefore braked. But if they admit they did so intentionally to punish or warn the tailgater, they should be liable.
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But the key thing is: it wasn’t. That’s just saying, “if X were driving properly, Y driving like an asshole wouldn’t have been (as big) an issue.” Y was still driving like an asshole. There’s plenty of blame to go around, even if the tailgater was driving like a supreme asshole.
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Neither is ‘wrong’. A tailgater got what they deserved. Had the tailgater hit the brake checker, then they both would have got what they deserved.
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Being rear-ended isn’t some magical scenario that automatically absolves you of fault. If it’s found that you were driving unsafely and contributed to a condition that caused the collision to occur, you could easily have to share fault in the eyes of the law and for insurance purposes.
As @dawdler said:
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No
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That is 100% correct. Bunch of assholes on the road fighting for ultimate assholery.
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It’s impossible to prove intent, but if the brake-checker intended to cause an accident, they are at fault for the tailgater and every other car they put in danger. That said, financially they’d both be at fault if the cars made contact, and they’d both get tickets. Morally they both deserve our hatred. If they had collided on an empty road with video evidence they’d both be getting what they deserved, but they both put other drivers at risk with their actions.
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if brake checking is dangerous because it leads to road rage, is wearing a short skirt at night dangerous because it leads to rape?
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What is more interesting to me is the question of who is at fault if a car swerves in front of you and then quickly applies the brakes.
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The brake checker did not ‘create a hazard’. They didn’t even slow down. What they did was cause the tailgater to believe there was a hazard. Since they were tailgating rather aggressively, they were not able to react well to the perceived hazard, and lost control of their vehicle. This created a hazard. All actual hazards in the video originate 100% from the drivers seat of the tailgating vehicle.
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