iceracer wrote:
OK, we all agree that the Morgan was at fault.
What is debatable is ,did the other driver do the "proper" collision avoidance procedure.
Many opinions perceived from a short video.
I would say yes. Lot's of brakes, lots of horn, and give the offending driver as much room as possible.
The trailing car had two reasonable choices beyond brakes and horn. Stay left and hope the Morgan stays right to give him room to slow down or pass. Or, dodge right and hope the Morgan crosses to the left in front of him, so he will have room to slow down or pass on the right. I can tell you which I would choose.
He decided to stay left, at the edge of the road, under hard braking. To drop two wheels off in that situation is what's called a single car accident and the Morgan disappears into the distance.
I, for one, will never leave the pavement, at a high rate of speed, under hard braking, to avoid a stupid driver. The Morgan is a lot softer than a tree, and his life is worth a lot less than mine. It's going to be a two car accident, and the dash camera will tell the story in court.
For the first time in my life I had an occasion to use a horn today. Did it do anything at all void the collision? Very debatable.
The collision was avoided. The horn was used. It had zero effect on the offending driver. Maybe it alerted the guy next to me of the situation because he and I both had to move to the left to avoid colliding.
Here is what happened.
I was sitting in a line at a red light. The road I was on had four south bound lanes and I was the sixth car back from the light in the right hand lane. I had cars behind me and to the left. The light turned green and as I was crossing the side street a guy in a Dodge truck pulled directly into my lane making a right on the red light, he didn't even look to see the line of traffic in front or behind me. His bumper was even with my bumper when he began to pull out. I started honking the horn accelerating when I saw he wasn't stopping. If I had braked he would have hit us directly in the passenger door. The honking did nothing to slow him down he was full on coming. I quick check of the mirror revealed a truck directly to my left side but slightly behind, and a clear lane to the left him. I floored the accelerator and began moving left a little at a time until I saw the guy to my left start to move over then I made a hard left maneuver that barely avoided the collision. I was only about halfway into the lane to the left of me when I cleared the front of the offending Dodge and moved back into my lane. The guy to my left merged back into his lane and the guy in the Dodge, seemingly completely unaware of the chaos he just caused, took up his place behind me. And we continued on our merry way like nothing ever happened.
The only thing the horn may have done is alert the guy to the left of me that something was going on. I don't believe it did anything at all to prevent the accident nor do I believe it had any effect at all on the driver of the Dodge. He was oblivious to the entire situation.
A horn can wake an oblivious driver's brain out of it's slumber.
Saying horn doesn't help is not accurate, saying it always will help is just as inaccurate.
That being said, a horn at least gets the driver to look at me so he can see my middle finger!
In reply to ebonyandivory:
That's the thing, he never looked at us. I couldn't see him from the driver's seat but my wife said he was looking of to his right the entire time. And the guy to my left didn't start to move until I was coming into his Lane. The horn had no effect.
In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:
To tell the truth, in my experience, a lot of people blankly stare straight ahead when they screw up pretending that there's "nothing to see here."
I've gotten the "ignore it" response to hitting the horn, but I've also gotten a "who the berkeley do you think you are!? You don't honk at me!" response too while they continue to do whatever dangerous E36 M3 they were already doing... Both of these happen a little less since I put louder horns on the Jeep (the stock 2 tone setup plus a set of the old Cadillac 4 tones).
It does sometimes catch someones attention and make them go "oh E36 M3" and fix whatever they were doing though. And that's the goal...
