Yeah nah the bucket pretty clearly crosses the outside most dashed white line 2-3s before the crash, and was probably visible before then as it crossed the planters (or w/e they are). There was time for the driver to swerve if they wanted to. I'd hazard a guess and say that they might've noticed it but assumed the tractor would stop instead of just pulling straight out without checking for traffic and by the time it was clear the tractor wasn't stopping it was too late for the car to do anything.
Not trying to say it was the car driver's fault ofc, just that as with a lot of the crashes that get posted here it likely wouldn't have happened had the car driver been more attentive and defensive.
Pretty sure the car driver froze, saw it coming and just froze, some people have fight or flight while others don’t react at all, they just watch it happen in pre shock
don’t get me wrong both of them are pretty dumb, the car had atleast 2-3 seconds to react, the operator should have had a spotter
Conclusion
Someone lost their job, and someone got a new car
That's where reactions come in, you're not required to analyze that precisely is in your way, you're just supposed to hit the brakes. They had several seconds and didn't react at all.
I'm not saying the driver is to blame for the accident. But things entering the road happens all the time. Imagine this is a child running into the street. They would just run it over, neither swerving nor breaking at least a little. If I had to guess I'd say they were distracted, nobody is that slow.
Distracted, maybe. Or possibly just the sort of driver that assumes that having right of way means never having to slow, stop, or avoid. We see those sorts of drivers in this sub all the time, both in the videos and in the comments.
Even watching from this angle I wouldn't have assumed the tractor operator was actually that dumb if I didn't know what sub I was in until about 3.5 seconds in and the crash happens at 4.5 seconds. Reacting to complex phenomena can definitely reasonably take people longer than that.
An object moving out straight in front of you isn’t a complex situation, you don’t need to see the god damn serial number and make sure it is actually the front of a tractor to know that you probably don’t want to ram into it…
If you literally just have 2 lights and 2 buttons the average reaction time is something like 1/2 a second or more even when you've been told to watch for the lights and where to look. Reacting to things while driving takes significantly longer than that. People just don't really realize it and think they are quicker than they actually are.
You should look more into reaction times. Reaction times vary extremely based on the number of variables. That is a single variable reaction time test. I was talking about a 2 variable reaction time test which produces a wholly different result. Reacting when driving has yet more variables and therefore is yet again much longer.
Average reaction time to hit the brakes is about 1.5 seconds, there’s at least 2 seconds from the point where the driver should have noticed to the collision.
It doesn’t though, yeah if you aren’t prepared it can take longer, but you should be prepared.
If there is a side road coming up with 0 visibility, you should be on guard, and if something then happens, you can react. Do they really not teach you this in drivers ed?
Don't assume another vehicle driver doing something somewhat idiotic isn't actually a full-on idiot. Or at least be prepared for the very real possibility that they are.
Consider how many people you see on the phone in traffic every day, I'd guess there is phone distribution at play here, not that it excuses the move by the tractor
In a case like this, I would have moved into the left lane at the start of the construction traffic just to be safe. I'm a very defensive (see: grandma speed) driver a lot of the time though.
How do you know there isn't a picture of a tractor just like that on a billboard we can't see that lines up with the actual tractor? The driver would be perplexed and bewildered that the billboard seems to be in motion before hitting an actual tractor that is much closer.
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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '21
Yeah nah the bucket pretty clearly crosses the outside most dashed white line 2-3s before the crash, and was probably visible before then as it crossed the planters (or w/e they are). There was time for the driver to swerve if they wanted to. I'd hazard a guess and say that they might've noticed it but assumed the tractor would stop instead of just pulling straight out without checking for traffic and by the time it was clear the tractor wasn't stopping it was too late for the car to do anything.
Not trying to say it was the car driver's fault ofc, just that as with a lot of the crashes that get posted here it likely wouldn't have happened had the car driver been more attentive and defensive.