Taking the kids back to their mother last night we passed this car. Driver was totally fine, said he swerved to avoid a dog. Took out 9 fence posts and the plank missed his head by maybe 4".
Taking the kids back to their mother last night we passed this car. Driver was totally fine, said he swerved to avoid a dog. Took out 9 fence posts and the plank missed his head by maybe 4".
Well, was the dog OK?
There was one of those on Maryland 213 when I used to live on the Eastern Shore. Guy came out of his house one morning to find a car sitting in the middle of his field, idling but stuck in soft ground.
Fence rail hit that one about 8" farther left. Driver DOI, still sitting in the seat with the fence rail through his head. No one heard or saw the accident... had probably been sitting there 6 hours or more.
Jesus. E36 M3 like this has convinced me - if there's a dog in the road, brake, but don't swerve. If you hit the dog, that's sad. But not as sad as taking a fence rail to the head. I love dogs but not as much as I love my wife, kids, and being alive.
Yes, just hit whatever is in the road! Use your brakes obviously but do not swerve. I've had to reiterate that to my wife a bunch because she drives at night for her work a lot and does farm calls. Lots of deer and animals on the roads in the boonies.
A messed up grill/bumper with a wounded (or even dead) animal is much better than a rolled vehicle or a fence post through your noggin.
Do they teach "don't swerve" in drivers ed?
In reply to dculberson : That was why I took the pic, so the kids who are about to start driving will understand that staying on the road is the smart play.
Just this weekend I was chatting with a guy who did $12,000 worth of damage to his car when he swerved to avoid a deer. Bridge abuttment was unforgiving.....
Also, if you hit the deer and do $12,000 damage, your insurance company will basically say "E36 M3 happens" and write you a check. But if you swerve off the road and do $12,000 damage, you've opened the door for them to bring up phrases like "driving too fast for conditions" and "failure to retain control of vehicle", and such.
That's not an E36 :)
In reply to Huckleberry :
It's also not THE E36 M3, but it's A E36 M3.
Looks like there could have been E36 M3 in the seat too.
RossD said:Do they teach "don't swerve" in drivers ed?
Yeah. But like all the other important aspects of driving that require muscle memory in a panic situation you never actually get to practice it.
Duke said:Also, if you hit the deer and do $12,000 damage, your insurance company will basically say "E36 M3 happens" and write you a check. But if you swerve off the road and do $12,000 damage, you've opened the door for them to bring up phrases like "driving too fast for conditions" and "failure to retain control of vehicle", and such.
RossD said:Looks like there could have been E36 M3 in the seat too.
ooh ooh that smell...
A classmate in high school lost her father and a brother when they swerved into the path of concrete truck avoiding a drunk that stumbled on a country road. I dunno but a drunk versus an oncoming truck that will kill you...
nutherjrfan said:A classmate in high school lost her father and a brother when they swerved into the path of concrete truck avoiding a drunk that stumbled on a country road. I dunno but a drunk versus an oncoming truck that will kill you...
Puts forth an intereting question.
In a few years time, when tooling along in your autonomous vehicle and the same situation presents, what will be the outcome?
Can you imagine being the programmer being tasked with coding that scenario? Knowing that the outcome was both predictable and attributable to my work would weight on me.
In reply to NOHOME :
I have my doubts about how effective the programming will be on autonomous cars, because that stuff is really hard. But in a perfectly programmed vehicle, I bet there are very few situations that would result in a "one or the other dies" outcome. It's (theoretically) possible for the car to have so much information about what's going on that it would be able to make a choice resulting in no deaths in the given scenario. It certainly wouldn't swerve into the path of a cement truck because it would know the truck was there. It wouldn't hit the drunk. It might swerve the other way, perhaps into a flattish spot off the road that its LIDAR told it was safe for the car to drive on. Again - all in a perfect world - in the real world who knows.
I swerve for nothing, and this is why.
Although, on the Covered Wagon, that fence slat would be embedded in the radiator and oil cooler. Still not a good enough reason to avoid Fido. I love animals, but I love me more...
I swerve for everything, both real and imagined. 
nutherjrfan said:A classmate in high school lost her father and a brother when they swerved into the path of concrete truck avoiding a drunk that stumbled on a country road. I dunno but a drunk versus an oncoming truck that will kill you...
And now I'm chuckling thinking about last week's The Good Place and the Trolley Problem...
always a good chance the drunk could survive too. They are amazingly resilient because they do not tense up. Braking could dip the nose and scrub off enough speed to simply scoop him up while probably breaking his legs. I personally got hit by a car in a Target Parking lot a couple of years ago. Aside from some bruising and minor abrasions, I came out of it much better than the car did
Before ABS, people were most likely to lock up the wheels, lose directional control, and slide right into whatever was in front of them. ABS was touted as giving drivers the ability to steer clear of danger when braking. The reality is that most drivers now steer into more danger.
I think this is one of the aspects of life where competitive driving as a hobby does a person a ton of good. Being able to read a situation and react super quick without having to think to hard, just do. I know it helped me when a minivan was at a dead stop in a busy road in front of me and i didnt notice until way too late. It was my fault for being in the situation, i should have seen it sooner, but i didnt. My mind was on other things. So im cruising along at 60, minivan stopped in front of me, i hammer the brakes, realize i wont stop in time, to the left is oncoming traffic, to the right the ditch doesnt look bad, no poles, one mailbox. Go for it. Countersteer the slide, come through the ditch fully sideways, manage to miss everything. Didnt even poop. I think my little bit of rallycross time kept me out of a hospital that day. I guarantee my kids are going to get some rally time when they start driving.
In reply to gearheadmb :
I've done the exact same thing in a work van before. Only the setting sun was the main culprit for hiding the stopped car. Pretty sure I was crossed up with all four wheels in the air when I destroyed the mail box.
gearheadmb said:I think this is one of the aspects of life where competitive driving as a hobby does a person a ton of good. Being able to read a situation and react super quick without having to think to hard, just do. I know it helped me when a minivan was at a dead stop in a busy road in front of me and i didnt notice until way too late. It was my fault for being in the situation, i should have seen it sooner, but i didnt. My mind was on other things. So im cruising along at 60, minivan stopped in front of me, i hammer the brakes, realize i wont stop in time, to the left is oncoming traffic, to the right the ditch doesnt look bad, no poles, one mailbox. Go for it. Countersteer the slide, come through the ditch fully sideways, manage to miss everything. Didnt even poop. I think my little bit of rallycross time kept me out of a hospital that day. I guarantee my kids are going to get some rally time when they start driving.
I did the same, had a lady in a minivan cross the road right infront of me. I could not swing right or I still would have hit her, so I went left and unfortunately between the rain and dirt on the side of the road, put it nose first into a ditch. Killed my old Hyundai Tiburon. Worst part was, lady never even knew how close she came to getting centrepunched and just kept right on going like nothing happened.
10 miles from the nearest town with a ripped off bumper, and no radiator. Car got there by running her up to 50mph and shutting down and coasting down to 20, restarting, running up to 50, shutting down.
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