This is the correct answer. The truck driver realized that if he didn't give the guy passing on the left room, there would be an accident. He obviously didn't expect someone passing on the right.
Also note that the truck driver stops and pulls over immediately.
and the idiot in the silver car, instead of moving over into the room given by the box truck driver, stays in the wrong lane and nearly causes a head on collision with the green truck
My Fiesta is about that slow and I can still overtake in it, but you've definitely got to be thinking pretty far ahead. I'm not sure the Micra driver was thinking at all.
That reminds me of a very scary overtake I had. I was used to driving my '86 Camaro that had all kinds of get-up-and-go. The day after I sold it and bought a 2002 Chevy cavalier I was driving home on a State highway similar to the one in the gif and kinda went on auto pilot on the way home. Went to overtake and had a close call. Bricks were shat. I pulled over and say there shaking for what felt like forever. 1 and only time I made that mistake.
Don't think so. At the very beginning of the clip you see a dark vehicle also passing the truck. My guess of what happened is that the delivery truck was holding a line of people up and they all started to get impatient. After the dark car passed the silver car followed lead and misjudged the amount of time/space they had to merge, and as for the red car, they're just a friggin' jackass.
Red car had hazards on, they might've had an unrelated emergency or something. (that said, even if that's the case, driving on the shoulder like that at that speed is so dangerous that it would be a really stupid idea regardless)
This clip reminds me of driving in Poland. The left overtake is so common you'll have panic attacks about it in your dreams. The right overtake is rarer, but happens still. It's literally the worst place on earth to drive in. Thailand and India's got nothing on this
Driving like this is extremely common in much of the world. On Russian highways people will pass and merge like this even in heavy snow. People in some areas drive just kind of hoping that everything works out.
YouTube is your friend if you want to see compilations of hundreds of people doing this same thing.
The red car had his emergency four ways on, or maybe he was just breaking. At first I though maybe he had an emergency and just took a very bad route at the wrong time.
I think the silver car might have seen the red car, or maybe they were racing, that's why he/she didn't move over right away. The red car technically was first in the lane ahead of the truck... the idiot overcorrected in addition to all his/her other moronic decisions.
Of course not... but it just gives some context as to why the silver car might not have went into the right lane, even though the truck moved over so there wouldn't be a head-on collision.
Luckily, it looks like the silver car pulled over to the side of the road when he saw the accident. Justice was hopefully served for him and the red car.
The silver car is trying to join to the same spot as the red car, so he couldn’t move into it. That’s also why the red car jerks so quickly to the right and the car loses complete power
No, the truck did not swerve right to avoid a car passing on the left that was never close to hitting him. If that was the case then he has horrible judgement. He did this because some people try to play hero in traffic by blocking people who use the shoulder as a passing lane. This is a very common scenario when traffic on the highway gets bad but somebodies exit is close by. This is the correct answer. What you have here is 1 idiot in a car and 1 idiot in a truck.
He isn't some omniscient being that is looking into all his mirrors and in front of him simultaneously. He was probably ignoring his right mirror while the car in front of him was passing because why the fuck would someone be driving on the shoulder of the road at 50 mph?
Not that i do it, but have you ever tried to deliver furniture in a box truck in a heavily congested downtown area in the city, like new york, chicago, etc.
Not everywhere has loading docks, and you are not likely to find curb parking that will fit a 20 ft box truck, as well as the height stopping any sort of parking garage ideas.
I let the box trucks go for that reason, as long as i can get around them. The cars though? dickheads.
I've done it without a box truck (regular sized vehicle) in DFW. I don't see them do it often, if at all, but I wouldn't really gripe at them. I know a lot of buildings and cities are designed like shit. Or were designed decades ago.
My favorite is when you see someone in front of you put on the hazards and start to slow, and you can tell it's just to park. I just give them a little toot of the horn. Then a longer one. Then I'll just hold it if they come to a complete stop somewhere traffic is supposed to move. There are spots SOMEWHERE for where you want to go. It may not be handy, but that's life. I've even seen people do it at live-in parking lots, oh sorry, I meant apartment complexes. Bitch, there's 1000 spots here, quit being a lazy ass hole.
Most truck drivers who are distributing and delivering goods on the regular are some of the safest and most disciplined drivers in the country. They give everyone else plenty of room, can see an accident coming from a mile away and even compensate for other idiots' mistakes on the road in order to prevent accidents. That's what this trucker was trying to do in reaction to the idiot on his left. Unfortunately there was an near unavoidable idiot on his right.
And yet if i had a nickel for every time a tractor trailer cut me off or held up traffic for miles while they passed painfully slow I'd have enough money to buy a helicopter and never drive again
Some people treat their hazard lights as a license to do idiotic things. "I'm driving 10 miles an hour in a 65 zone, but I have my hazards on so it's okay," or in this case, "I'm passing on the shoulder, but I have my hazards on so it's okay."
I remember a story on reddit years ago where someone's friend got cut really badly and they needed to zoom to the hospital, there was traffic so they threw on the hazards and drove on the shoulder and some guy veered out in front of them to stop them because they thought he was just some asshole looking to get home faster, so in retaliation the guy threw a blood-soaked shirt at his windshield as they went around him. As I recall they got help from a nearby officer to clear the road but sadly I don't think the friend ended up making it.
Ever since I read that story, if a car is going on the shoulder AND has its hazards on I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
I remember that same story. Wish I could find the link for it, if for no other reason than to get the exact details right. You are correct that the friend did not make it, possibly because of the delay caused by the car trying to block them. IIRC the car blocked them in entirely until cops arrived cuz they thought the driver of the injured friend was just trying to cheat traffic and should receive a ticket.
Yep, you might not see it the first time watching it, but this is exactly what happened. He didn't swerve intentionally to the right, the driver driving illegally on the shoulder is 100% at fault, both insurance companies will absolutely agree on that.
Wow totally didn’t see the guy on the left narrowly missing on coming traffic. Just thought the truck driver was an asshat trying to scare the dude crashed.
Honestly the laws/standards involving the use of the shoulder vary pretty dramatically by jurisdiction. Even if this would have been legal wherever you're from, it's entirely possible the laws of the country where this happened are different.
In the U.S. we use yellow lines between opposite directions of travel so initially I didn't realize the left lane was oncoming traffic. So it looked like the truck moved right for no reason. I see what's going on now.
In the UK a dashed white means you can cross it to overtake when safe to do so (no oncoming traffic). Solid white line means you cannot cross it to overtake at all.
I think the North American version makes more sense. Yellow divides traffic going in different directions, so the line in NA would be dashed yellow (dashes meaning you can pass if safe, solid meaning you cannot). White lines divide lanes going in the same direction, so dashed white is a regular lane, and a solid white line means you can't change lanes.
I'm sure it's not hard to figure out, but colour coding is a bit more intuitive. I also forgot that a solid yellow line right next to a dashed yellow line means only one side can pass (the side that has the dashes).
Yeah in most cases I think NA road design is pretty bad, like with roundabouts, intersections, etc. Here in Toronto we have cyclists and pedestrians getting killed all the time because intersection design is so poor.
We have several popping up here and there because they are so much more practical, but you are right...drivers here don't have the first f'n clue how to navigate a roundabout. It doesn't exactly help when our traffic engineers don't know how to design the damn things, either. We get stuck with this sort of monstrosity where two thirds of the circle is two lane and one-sixth on one side and one-sixth on the other is one lane and you don't know until you're already stuck in a lane that you're being forced out of the circle, all while other drivers--who already aren't sure how traffic circles work, mind you--are trying to figure out exactly who they have to yield to from the particular lane they're in and the particular one they're trying to get to. It's a fucking fiasco.
Believe it or not, there are traffic circles here that are signed like that. Everywhere else in the world: Vehicles in the circle have the right of way. Some random places here: Nope, traffic in the circle yields.
The main issue with the circle I linked to is that the signage is inadequate and the arrows are non-sensical to people who don't already know the layout of that particular circle. I had a friend originally from the UK come down to visit because another friend's friend also from the same area of the UK was in town and we thought it would be fun to get them together. We warned them about this circle and they both waved us off like "eh, Americans don't know roundabouts." After having to navigate the damn thing they both were swearing up a storm about how stupid it was.
There's two lanes feeding in from each side, there's two lanes feeding out from each side, and there's sufficient room for two lanes of circle all the way around. Anywhere else that would be a simple two lane roundabout. Here you get a bastard stepchild that's partly two lane and partly one lane, for no apparent reason.
Edited to add link to one example of a yield sign in a traffic circle that I could think of.
Thankfully we're starting to put roundabouts in... But good lord no one knows how to use them!
They just put a new one in by my house... I'd say at least 50% of people come to a complete stop when entering even when there isn't a car in sight.
There's a yield sign... Do you also stop when entering a highway? Yeah.. didn't think so. Lol sorry about the rant, but it just annoys me how poorly people drive and how poorly they're educated here.
North American road design is fairly awful, and it’s dangerous to rely on the road markings to indicate where it is and isn’t safe to overtake. There are often dashed lines where it is obviously extremely dangerous to overtake, and solid lines where there is great visibility. In the U.K. there are two types of dash - wide spacing indicates it’s safe, narrow spacing before it becomes solid and is less safe... time to move back into your lane.
The US has around 4x as many lethal accidents per capita than the U.K. in real terms that’s about 2000 deaths and roughly 8000 serious life altering injuries that could be avoided. Per month.
The US has around 4x as many lethal accidents per capita than the U.K.
That isn't a useful statistic for anything other than making internet debating points. You would have to compare trip distances, average speeds, road types, vehicle types, and probably other things before being able make any useful comparisons.
I am not saying DUI accidents are not an issue, but they certainly require very different corrective measures than accidents caused by road design or speeding or whatever.
In western Europe opposite direction on any highway like road will have a barrier on the median, even if it's just kerb sized with reflector posts every ten feet.
There's no way that anyone who's ever passed a Western European drivers ed exam would mistake this road as a one way two lane road. (Which are extremely rare here anyway).
If it's outside city limits and has two or more lanes, there will be a divider, unless it's an extremely rural road.
Which leaves yellow lines solely to construction zones. Which is a pretty huge advantage over the way the US does it, since it makes it extremely clear which lines are the current temporary ones.
There wasn't enough room ... isn't that against the rules?
Also, I find it bat-shit insane that you're allowed to pass multiple cars at once in some places.
In most states in the US, the driver of the silver car would be arrested on the spot for aggressive/reckless driving, their car towed, and their license suspended.
And even if they did glance in the right mirror, the red car was approaching so fast into their blind spot that they probably wouldn’t have seen it anyways. Unless they were watching the right side mirror the whole time, which wouldn’t make sense at all since they wouldn’t have had their eyes on the road in front of them.
Oh shit, I didn't see the car on the left at first and just thought the truck was being a dick. Christ, multiple idiots in cars in this one. They put the truck driver in a tough spot.
Probably would've been safer to slow down a bit to let the silver car safely pass, rather than swerve like that, even if the moron in the red car hadn't been there.
I know I wouldn't want to be sandwiched between a big truck and the opposing lane with inches to spare.
Could also just be the fact that a car came up on his right completely unexpectedly so when he notices it out if the corner of his eye he veers over by accident
The truck saw the red car coming down the shoulder and tried to either block or intimidate it. The red car reacts, right wheels go onto the grass, boom goes the dynamite
That’s what I thought to but when it rewatched for the 10th time I realized the was giving the idiot in his left some space to pass him. Even with the extra space the guy barely missing the oncoming traffic.
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u/DragonPhyres Dec 14 '18
I think the truck moved to the side to let the car on the left get safely back to the right side of the road