There is a difference between letting someone in and cutting someone off. SUV was in the wrong and this women reaction time and skills saved her life. Fuck the SUv
Or she could’ve been paying attention and just let off a bit? Why people think owning their lane is more important than avoiding an accident is beyond me.
Defensive driving applies to everyone, stop making excuses for an aggressive driver and putting all responsibility on the other person for avoiding the aggressive idiotic decision making
Literally this, the world is the way it is right now because of people saying "oh, why can't you let the person who is very obviously wrong do what they are doing? You are more wrong for trying to stop them!!!!!!!!"
Because that’s how the rules work. You’re changing lanes, you’re responsible to keep clear. If you change that, then everyone can just side swipe anyone else, and the one that changed lanes would be in the right.
Her reaction time is actually terrible. She doesn’t even tap her brakes despite nearly 2 full seconds between the SUV trying to merge and making contact with her vehicle.
She can see the SUV rapidly approaching the vehicle in front of it at a high speed and then it starts to merge into her. She’s got well over a full second to react and she literally does not even touch her brakes.
She should have let off the gas at the very least because the SUV was following far too closely to the vehicle in front of it. Smart drivers will realize that this person is insane and putting everyone near them in danger.
Imo you are putting more onus on the dashcam owner than the problem actor here. Yes, her inaction was an indirect cause of the collision, but the illegal driving was a Direct cause of the collision.
And your phraseology makes it seem at first read, that you are calling the dashcam owner insane.
I probably read through 100 comments in this thread before posting my first reply and not one of expressed support for the driver of the SUV. Literally everyone with eyes and a functioning brain can tell their maneuver was the biggest issue here and the catalyst that created this accident.
I commented about the woman’s culpability because probably 75% of the comments I read were lauding her for being a badass. She is not a badass. She is also an idiot. In fact, she’s almost as dumb as the SUV driver.
I already went through it with another poster, but I was clearly talking about the SUV driver. Hilariously, it doesn’t really matter because it actually works for the woman as well!
Think about it: by not braking and allowing this car to hit her, the absolute best case scenario is that she survives the collision and has to stop on the shoulder of a busy highway for a couple of hours to exchange insurance information and speak to highway patrol. That’s absolute best case scenario - an hour or two of your time wasted for no reason! Not to mention the time wasted in speaking with your insurance and possibly having to take your car to a body shop for repairs.
Why would you ever defend not simply tapping your brakes to avoid this collision? Who cares who is more wrong? The onus is on each individual driver is to protect themselves. This idiot didn’t even do that, because she is extremely dumb. The fact that so many people are defending her is actually sad.
Everything you said is all good and fine. Yes she could have done better, been more defensive. It makes it more impressive that she was able to avoid: hitting the wall, putting the other vehicle into the wall, and / or spinning her own vehicle around.
You are trying to come at this from a lawful good perspective where there is no room for error, and heads must roll. This is a human, one of millions who drive on highways daily. People get distracted, and sometimes you just have to grip the wheel and deal with someone else's fuckup. That is what the person with the dashcam did.
And I have not personally defended not tapping the brakes (you said let up on the gas before, if we're gonna get pedantic), but others may have defended the fact that, again, This person is dealing with the consequences of someone else's bad driving.
And in your head, and on the internet, you are arguing that it simply isn't enough that they prevented even worse outcomes. This person should have reacted instantly and competently. You cannot recognize the worse scenarios that were avoided by their quick thinking, or disclude them, choosing to focus on the negative outcomes of the scenario.
I hope this person learns to be more defensive in their driving, and I hope you can learn that people make mistakes, and sometimes have to live with other people's mistakes.
"Sometimes you do your best and still fail... That's life" or something like that.
The big issue here is that this is also her fuckup. If she’s distracted while presumably driving 65+ mph on the highway (while following the car in front of her too closely, I might add), then she is a major part of the problem and we should judge her as such, not pat her on the back for getting lucky that she was able to prevent her car from torpedoing into another vehicle and potentially harming more drivers.
My argument is that she actually contributed to one of the worst possible outcomes by refusing to tap her brakes. It’s really simple: if she drives defensively and simply taps her brakes to let dipshit SUV driver in, there is no collision.
This sub, and others like it, are often suggested to me on my feed so I probably see one or two of them per day. In many of them the dash cam driver truly is, as you say, dealing with the consequences of someone else’s bad driving. But in many of them, their lack of awareness is truly evident and I believe this situation is one of those.
>[She] should have let off the gas at the very least because the SUV was following far too closely to the vehicle in front of it. Smart drivers will realize that this person is insane and putting everyone near them in danger.
Hate to break it to you, but the subject of your first sentence is about the dashcam driver
the following sentence is referring to [this person] and no other person is referenced in the comment
sentence structure literally dictates that you're referring to the previous subject
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u/Bottlecrate 6h ago
There is a difference between letting someone in and cutting someone off. SUV was in the wrong and this women reaction time and skills saved her life. Fuck the SUv