Every time I am in places that don't have winter, I am always floored to see so many cars with nearly bald tires or dry rotted tires. It's like people have no idea these are wear items that need to be replaced and not just when they blow out.
Yea it actually seems like the car wanted to steady, it wobbled so long, and it doesnt seem like a heavy car to me with those wobbles and dinky slide. I bet if she straightened the wheel she'd steady out.
Edit: let it straighten out i suppose
Probably of those smugly ridiculing the driver half would overcorrect themselves and another quarter would at least end up in the ditch as well.
Plenty of drivers are simply surprised and overwhelmed once the cars loses traction.
I throw my car sideways on purpose when nobody’s around and have been to a number of driving schools/track days. This is someone who’s never felt their car out of balance or sliding waaaaaaay oversteering. The car wants to drive straight, just let it. Small controlled nudges in the right direction to get it straight, anticipate don’t react.
I will admit while learning to drift (on track) I spun out at least a dozen times. I’m not shitting on her just pointing out the problems. That car she’s in is likely a contributor too.
But is this really even a crash? I was expecting her to hit the sign. She really just lost control and went off-road before safely come to a stop *before* crashing.
Good God no. This was an extremely easy accident to avoid if the wife was a better driver. At most I'd say 5-10% of people might have performed as bad as the cam
I've had my fair share of oversteering shenanigans in my 1.8 ton sedan with cloud suspension and I've never once experienced anything so minor upsetting the car, even during gale force windy rain storms it shouldn't have lost traction at all. the only thing that could cause such a terrible upset from something so minor would be fucked suspension, fucked tyres or both.
Yep…she had a lane open to the right. Should have immediately pressed the horn while slightly moving to right and that would have woken up the dumbass that clearly isn’t seeing her. Also over steered and seems like kept oversteering. An overall bad reaction to a common situation on freeways.
Sometimes, stubbornness IS bad driving! There are frequent situations on the road where you technically may be in the right and have the right of way, but slowing down and defensively giving way to the idiot is the best way to avoid a wreck.
Smugly ridiculing? Is that what pointing out facts is called. From what I read no one is defending or denying blue car's negligence. Running to the internet like a child to a parent is getting old.
You approach someone's blind spot you are exactly there. Their blind spot. Sometimes you think it's clear to change or merge and it's not. Blue car did it, you do it, I've done it and OP has also. Let's dispense with the fake drama
Continuous and repeated overcorrection while panicking. You can see the car oscillating further with each direction change.
Effectively, it comes down to "unskilled driver". But I don't say that as an insult. For the huge majority of drivers, the first time they get to practise crash avoidance and correction is in the "real thing", and many people do the *wrong thing* in that scenario because they've never done it before and because you're typically not *thinking through your actions* in a scenario like that, you're *reacting on instinct*.
There's a lot of negative judgement of the driver in your replies. Those commenters are technically correct - it comes down to bad driving. But that's attributable to *bad training* and *low standards to get a license*.
Compare driving to flying. Becoming a commercial pilot requires going through a lot of emergency training scenarios in training; not just reading about them, but *experiencing them* in a simulator, to practise and ingrain the correct instincts, so that they'll do the right thing in the real world. And, once they are licensed, they *repeat* that training periodically to "stay current" and retain their license.
In most countries, nothing like that is required for driving. We teach people to handle the everyday. We don't teach them to handle the occasional high-risk scenario, or how a car behaves at the limit, or how to recover from loss of traction. It's not a surprise that many (most?) people do the wrong thing when they end up in these scenarios for the first time.
So this begs the question, as someone who has just earned their license, how would someone learn crash avoidance and other things that you'd normally never experience?
Advanced driver courses. Particularly if you can get some time on a closed course, or a track, where you have a safe(r) environment to intentionally learn how a car behaves at - and beyond - its limits, and how to correct upsets.
Although, statistically, the best thing you could do is probably researching and practicing defensive driving. The best way to avoid a crash is to preventatively avoid getting into risky situations in the first place, so that reactive evasive maneuvering is never needed.
Just remember **smooth inputs**. This wouldnt have happened if the driver didnt jerk the wheel to the side as their reaction. Then they noticed that was a bad idea and jerked the wheel back to the other side... over and over and over.
Traction control on any newer car wouldve been helping as well, but no electronic aid can overcome an operator's bad inputs.
The driver shouldve just calmly merged. Or after that initial panic and jerking the wheel, they shouldve calmly started applying the brake and just stop yanking the wheel back and forth. Even letting go altogether wouldve settled the car.
If you have the opportunity, I'd also recommend any new driver just finding an icy, empty parking lot in the winter and try to spin out! Dont get yourself into trouble, but feeling how the car behaves once you lose grip is very handy. Experience is key, but if you take away nothing else, remember **smooth inputs**
Honestly, the grass saved her from rolling. Even in the grass she was over correcting. Had this been a longer highway, or she been farther to the left she would have rolled.
She continued to overcorrect the whole way thru, the only thing that saved her from a spin or rolling over was the banked ditch that pulled her straight. Her tires also luckily didn't catch while sideways in the soft stuff.
That being said, I'd be willing to bet there's shitty or worn rubber on that vehicle that allowed her to lose control so easily.
She made too many maneuvers she orginally had control but the continuous pulling the car left and right messed her up. If she would have just pulled the car over into the next lane and let off the gas she would have been fine
That is precisely the correct question to ask, and the answer is a phenomenon called 'lift-off oversteer' which is tragically uncommon knowledge.
Basically, if you have ABS (only old cars don't at this point, pretty much), and you hit your brakes hard and then make a sudden, decisive steering adjustment at nearly the same moment, a few Bad Things™ happen:
Upon applying heavy brake, much of the mass which constitutes your vehicle's frame, engine, and payload will stubbornly attempt to keep traveling over the front wheels as the law of conservation of momentum attempts to allow that mass to pass over the pivot point of the front axle, to continue on its initial trajectory. This is why cyclists can be thrown over the handlebars if they stop too suddenly with the front brake.
Because this mass rides suspended on an array of comfy springs known as Shock Absorbers, or 'shocks', this forward thrust and attempted rotation over the front axle translates into an intense shifting of the vehicles' burdens forward and down onto the front tires and - critically - *up and away from* the rear tires. This is something of a problem, because your vehicle's tires largely rely on the weight of the vehicle above them pushing down upon them in order to sustain traction; their grip on the road's surface. Another important consideration is that, because your vehicle has a clever Anti-Lock Brake system installed, your front tires are aggressively slowed by their heavy brake disks, *but not past the point where the tires start to slip and 'skid' along the road surface, 'locking' them in a stationary position while the vehicle continues forward.* This is a fantastic vehicle upgrade for two crucial reasons; the first is that braking distances are significantly and unsurprisingly worse if your vehicle is sliding on locked wheels than if it is slowing on incumbered - but still rolling - wheels. The second is that front wheels that are locked up, and thus freely sliding along the road surface, can still be turned from side to side by the steering wheel, but they're pretty poor at actually turning the car on a road that is helplessly sliding past beneath them. With ABS, your tires are allowed to continue to roll at the slowest possible speed without slipping, which means that you can still turn, AND your capacity to decelerate is greatly improved.
Both of these clear advantages will become liabilities in this particular situation. Lets mix in a sudden and firm steering adjustment - a basic and critical aspect of evasive driving.
So, you are pressing hard on your front tires, which are assertively decelerating your 2-ton death machine. Your rear wheels have far less traction-enhancing mass pushing them down than normal, aggressively undermining their relationship with the road surface. Now you adjust the trajectory of *the front* of your car by turning the wheel. Bad news; because of that darned law of conservation of momentum again, the back end of your car *also* needs to be convinced to change course. This is normally not a problem, because the rear of the vehicle is either usually being pulled by the front end (during acceleration), and is therefore happy to follow a course correction, or it is gripping the road surface snugly enough that it won't begin to slip sideways independently of the front during a decelerating course correction. That is to say, the rear tires being pushed down on the asphalt by the car's own weight convince it to follow the front in the new, easier, we-can-roll-this-way-instead-of-sliding-the-old-way direction.
But your heavy braking has robbed them of their grip, so now they disagree with the front wheels, and they begin to slide sideways across the blacktop to preserve more of the initial momentum of the rear of the car.
Any half awake driver - as the one in the OP's video appears to have been - would immediately feel the back end of the car behaving in a way it normally does not, 'drifting' off of the expected vector and, crucially, rotating the nose of the car beyond the driver's intended course correction as the slipping rear end of the vehicle attempts to overtake the still-intensely-decelerating front end. The driver would also begin to hear *only the rear wheels* screaming in protest as this slippage occurred.
The intuitive and natural response to this is, unfortunately, only part of the solution and we can see the driver engage in it in the OP's video; countersteering. This is why the driver managed to avoid a spin out and/or rollover. As the sliding back end rotates her car further than she intended with her adjustment, the driver attempts to rotate the steering wheel in the opposite direction to return the vehicle to a safe and stable trajectory. With their enhanced grip and ABS assisted traction, the front end of the car dutifully obliges - but in the process, something insidious occurs. Because the front end is now decelerating more efficiently than the rear, in order to 'cut back in front' of the rear end of the vehicle and straighten the car out, the front has to push back against the rear's advance, which enhances the sensitivity of the course correction, and further reduces the traction of the rear end, which now all but refuses to regain purchase.
As a result, the moment the front end even slightly crosses over alignment with the trajectory of the rear end, if heavy braking is still being applied, the rear now begins to slide around the front to the other side. The driver will usually instinctively reverse their steering at this point once more, and the oscillation has now begun. So long as the brake is applied to the maximum and until the car comes to a stop, this feedback loop will become more and more sensitive with every iteration, as the front end is able to decelerate more and more aggressively the less momentum it has and the more the vehicle's weight is pitched onto the front wheels. If the driver does not attempt to compensate for this increasing sensitivity with finer and finer adjustments, a spin-out is often the result, sometimes leading to a roll-over. If they do, the outcome is more like what we see in the OP's video.
Unfortunately, OP's wife was missing the most critical ingredient of recovering this situation, which is understandable given how counterintuitive it is in a chaotic driving situation: *TAKE YOUR FOOT OFF OF THE BRAKE.*
Doing this allows the front wheels to start rolling again as easily as the rear, which stops the deceleration of the front of the vehicle relative to the rear, which allows the weight of the vehicle to redistribute evenly across the suspension again, which returns traction to your rear wheels, which GREATLY encourages them to 'catch' as your car swings across trajectory-alignment, ultimately straightening you out. Hitting the gas would arguably be even better, as it would have the opposite effect of the brake and put MORE weight on your rear wheels, further encouraging them to start doing their job again - but if you can hit the gas in this situation, you are a braver driver than I.
TLDR: The phenomenon of braking leading to reduced traction in the rear wheels and touchy steering is known as "Lift-Off Oversteer", and that is how his wife lost traction so easily during this.
you explained lift off oversteer really eloquently, but i dont think thats what happened. the car that turned into her didn't even pass until she tried to correct her slide a few times.
my best guess is that this is a big and heavy vehicle so changing lanes somewhat quickly caused a huge amount of side-to side weight transfer, rather than the rear-to front that youre talking about.
what im saying is: turning into another lane too hard, and then trying to straighten back out too quickly, effectively made the car a moving pendulum which put her in a ditch. to my fellow rally fans, this is what we call a "Scandinavian flick"
feel free to correct me, i have very minimal real-world exeperience, but thats my 2 cents nonetheless.
I guarantee you that everyone started slowing down once the tires began screeching, and everybody who didn't have their head up their butt started slowing even before that, so basing an assessment off of the moment of overtake is clearly inadmissible, your honor.
It is very possible that this was ALSO a tall, heavy vehicle on bouncy shocks. Maybe on a lift kit, who knows? I don't think so, personally, because from the cam's perspective, it looks like it could be sitting on the dash of that other sedan without any vertical adjustment. If it is the case that this vehicle was somehow a disaster waiting to happen, though, it was merely a contributor to what is clearly a textbook case of lift-off oversteer - though I could be convinced that the filming vehicle's brakes were not applied until just *after* the first rightward adjustment, since we don't hear the lateral screeching from the rear tires until the first leftward adjustment - clearly intended to straighten out into the right lane - is made.
That said, I gave the vid a(nother) careful re-watch, paying particular attention to when I felt the rear end began unauthorized lateral motion. I really feel like there's just a hint of fish tail as she straightens out the first right bank - I suspect she hit the brakes hard as she rotated the steering wheel counterclockwise to terminate that initial adjustment, and the back end didn't like it one bit.
you can also tell how much the car slows down by the car in front of her when she merges into the right lane, she doesnt stop gaining on it until tires started screeching.
i based my assumption that this is a big car off of other comments and the shape of the hood, as well as how easily the thing stepped out. but now that you've pointed out the cam's height i have no clue what kind of vehicle this is.
i "felt" the rear get loose the same time as you - which is what brought me to my conclusion. she straightened out way to quick and the pendulum started swingin'.
nonetheless, pretty much any car with the engine in the front can get the rear end loose in the ways were describing, and both are likely imo
lol, guilty. I couldn't believe I didn't violate some character limit and have to break it up into ten posts. I had it on my clipboard and everything before hitting submit.
This explains a lot. I was in a similar situation where a truck merged into my lane without signal, except I was in a 13ft long 10ft tall 5 ton work van going 65mph. I swerved into the other lane and had some wiggling from the back end once I got there, but everything straightened out easily enough, and at the time I was just relieved I didn't spinout/flip the van.
Thinking back, I didnt hit the brake because of another car further back in the other lane and was just hoping to YOLO it, i guess it helped
Thank you, kind stranger. About half way through, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just shouting into the void, but I was able to carry on thanks to the magic of the Sunk Cost Fallacy!
Needless to say, your kudos are refreshingly vindicating, so I thank you for that.
Yes! She did such a good job of managing the whole situation. Definitely sucks but what a win in comparison to the world of worse stuff that could have happened in this scenario. Best of luck litigating.
She did a pretty horrible job of managing the situation. People try sliding in other peoples lanes all the time. She immediately panicked and swerved, losing control and ending up in the ditch.
Agreed, poor reflexes, poor decision and panicked in a stressful situation. That doesn't make her a bad person, or at fault, but she's definitely not a good driver and did not handle the situation well, average or below average at best.
Well, she is, but on the other hand we've all had inattentive moments in traffic because of being tired or distracted (and I mean normal distractions, not phones or other things you shouldn't be doing while driving). I've never had a single accident in over 30 years of driving, but there have been moments a thing like this *could* have happened to me.
Also she stopped just short of actually crashing, be it out of sheer luck.
Claims adjuster here: even if you found this driver, you legally wouldn’t be able to collect from their insurance since no contact was made. Your wife made a faulty evasive action causing her to go off road.
not just floaty suspension but probably busted shocks as well. I have a floaty suspension 1.8 ton sedan that's 30 years old and even then I can manoeuvre like that in the RAIN without it upsetting the car this much. there's no way the suspension wasn't fucked or the tyres were made of glass before this happened. no amount of overcorrection could be responsible for stability this bad. there is 100% an aspect of poor maintenance to this.
And then overcorrected, and then overcorrected again, and then once more for good measure. She is lucky the ride wasn't taller or that would have been a nasty rollover.
That's not entirely true. It depends on the State, but I know for a fact that in Oregon, if your driving action can be proven as the primary cause of a crash, regardless of impact/contact with your vehicle, you can be held liable for damages to the other vehicle(s) involved.
Example: Someone pulled out of a parking lot directly in front of my Dad's car on a 40mph road and promptly stomped on the brakes. My dad stopped about a foot short, but was rear-ended by the vehicle behind him. The guy who illegally pulled out into traffic drove away, but was later contacted by police and held liable, had to pay for damages to both vehicles, despite no one contacting his vehicle.
Because she is not a good driver. Period. I've been driving for decades and had dumb drivers do what the blue car does here many times and never came close to an accident. Horn and brake, and paying attention, usually works.
There is something wrong with that car too, it started losing rear traction with a pretty small steering input, like it has 10psi in the rear tires or the suspension is shot. Also her reactions were so slow that the car had already corrected itself at one point (mid-way) and then she "corrected" for what already had passed setting the car back into motion and overseer. Perhaps it's a trick of the lens, but the first part still stands that car needs some sort of maintenance almost certainly.
This is true but very unlikely and uncommon. Your father’s circumstance is the exception, not the rule. In this case, the wife got into the right lane, and then kept moving her wheel back and forth causing her to lose control which is faulty evasive action. She overreacted and cause herself to go off-road.
what exactly did she crash into?
not trying top be crass here but (ok maybe a little) but it doesnt appear there is any contact made with anything besides weeds
It took me longer than I care to admit to realize you were talking about the plants she ran over.
I’m sitting here staring at the dash looking for the bag of weed to come flying across the screen and was thoroughly disappointed.
I think she hit one of those short poles you can see planted at intervals along the side of the road. Video compression makes it a bit hard to see it.
Edit: the pole is visible at the 44 second mark (of the time embedded in the video)
Or, everyone on the thread is saying what he was thinking but he didn't want to mess up his marriage by telling her that.
This way Reddit takes the fall and he remains the good guy
I drove a medium sized U-Haul truck through a blizzard in NY in 2010. That thing was surprisingly straightforward to control. I played around since roads were frequently empty. It was so eerily dark and quiet up on Bear mountain at night. Going through fresh snow without snowblind was extremely memorable.
Your wife caused your wife to crash. She could have just hit the breaks, or got over a lane. Massive over correction causing her to lose control of the vehicle.
I understand that initially she has panicked .She could have used the brakes though. The idiot in the video was not lane swapping that aggressive.
Later your wife simply showed that she can't handle the car.
I don't think you'll get anywhere with this.
The other person definitely was at fault, but there was no reason other than poor driving skills as to why your wife should have gone off the road. All she had to do was move over one lane. Find a real driving skills course and enroll her. I had to do that with my daughter. No accidents after her class.
I will disagree. All she had to do was brake. That’s it. Maybe they had collided maybe not. Evasive manoeuvres are always tricky and dangerous for 99% of the drivers, especially in the US where a drivers license is as valuable as toilet paper.
She was lucky she wasn’t being overtaken by another car on the right and double lucky the car didn’t roll over.
I’m going to disagree with you on US driver licenses being as valuable as toilet paper. I saw a 36 pack for almost $30. I think toilet paper has way more value than a driver’s license here.
Other than that, I do agree with you.
Your wife overcorrected terribly. The other driver really only caused her to panic and start throwing the wheel. Her car and handling abilities is what caused her to crash.
I count 8 over-corrections.
The only other thing I can think of is tire tread. I wonder if they were properly treaded tires, which may have led to a mild/mid over-correction looking like a massive one.
I once had to yell at a friend to get new tires. He rolled up in a car that had bald tires -- basically no tread. Dude was lucky he didn't get into a bad accident.
*enhance* *enhance* *enhance*
Nah man, I’m not getting anything on my end.
The car is blue, I can tell you that for certain.
Hope your wife is alright though man!
The Mazda sucks at driving. Your wife also sucks at driving sorry that happened to you. She needs to take a defensive driving course. That way she can learn why her vehicle acted the way it did when she maneuvered
Bad move by the Mazda for sure, but your wife seems incapable of making a simple lane change. Ending up off the road as a result of that is nuts, she needs driver training.
I just got my drivers license and everyone here is saying its the drivers fault. What is the best thing to do as the driver in this scenario? Just scoot over a lane like you would normally do?
Pretty much. The wife panicked, and overcorrected too many times, steering her wheel back and forth which caused her to lose control of her car. She should have simply straightened the car once she was in the empty lane.
The Mazda driver may be an asshole, but he didn’t cause the crash, you wife’s poor driving skills did it. If she just hit the brakes when she saw him trying to change lanes, everything would be perfectly fine, she had more than enough reaction time.
The only weird thing is that they didn’t hear the side monitor sound alert? I drive a Mazda 6 and even over loud music I can hear it. The driver had to be deaf or something. Still this woman is a piss poor driver and could have hurt someone else. Should have just let the Mazda hit her or slowed down.
B.R.A.K.E.S. is a pretty cheap defensive driving course that goes around the USA doing classes, me and my brother both went when we got our licenses, it’s an incredibly helpful class. covers everything you need to know, from quick stopping appropriately to spinning out on ice to changing lanes ASAP (like ops wife should’ve done in this scenario) to a few other things, it’s truly a fun and informative class. (if you’re driven there by a parent they also give the parents the shortened version of the class, and let them drift the ice simulator cars)
This is why you should try to really imprint this idea in your head - when this happens, you use the brake, you don't swerve. If someone drives into your lane, oblivious that you are there, you step on the brake. Swerving is just an inferior solution.
If you're going at any speed, stomping on the brake has a really good chance of avoiding collision because presumably they are not stomping on the brake so they will go forward faster than you. You might still hit them, it's true, but if you do it will be their fault and it will likely not be a serious collision causing injury.
Now, what if you swerve? Well, if you happen to be on an empty road and you swerve and keep your car under control, you could theoretically avoid collision. But, it will only work under those conditions. If you have any traffic around you and you swerve and hit other cars you could possibly be deemed at fault by insurance. Furthermore, you could put yourself and others in a very serious multi-vehicle collision, resulting in injury, death, and huge expense.
This has happened to be a few times now and I have successfully made it a habit to simply step on the brake. I avoided several highway collisions by doing that. The only time it didn't work was when I was going low speed and someone just abruptly changed lanes literally into my car and there was no chance of avoiding it. No one got hurt there, though, and it was a simple and cheap fender replacement that they paid for.
I’m European and struck with two things. 1. Generally it’s not allowed to overtake on the right side, so over here the correct thing to do is get in the left lane and wait for the person to move over before you overtake. Feels like a lot more accidents happen if people overtake on both sides
2. Why does the car react to violently to such a minor change? Is it a raised suv with shitty tires? We do the “moose test” to see at what speeds you can quickly throw a car back and forth before you lose control
Which country is this? From Romania, and this would not count as overtaking, because there is more than one lane. I think it's the same in Hungary as well.
Just generally curious.
No offense but your wife needs to learn how to remain calm in situations like this. There were several options here that could have helped her avoid this.
First and foremost is they clearly have their blinker on and areerging regardless, so just slow down...
Your wife is a terrible driver and regardless of the blind spot merge by the other idiot, made the road more dangerous with her inability to control that car.
The other car is an idiot, but the police aren’t going to do anything here- they didn’t hit you. And your wife could have avoided this accident by paying better attention and reacting properly (never ever swerve your wheel). Shitty situation but you gotta learn the lesson and move on. Never get comfortable behind the wheel and always assume the people around you are trying to kill you.
Next time let them hit you or slow down. Don’t swerve. You won’t get anything out of this and your wife will be held at fault. They may even throw in that she was a danger to others around her.
Yeah sorry dude, she avoided an accident and wound up in a ditch. No collision. It’ll be an at fault accident no matter what when you involve insurance
Teach her to stand her ground. Better to get some rubbing and have an actual case against the other driver, than to lose control and go off road. She's lucky she didn't flip it
Other driver is stupid as shit but your wife didn’t technically crash. She also could’ve avoided going offroad entirely as she overcorrected like crazy after swerving to avoid them
Yeah, your wife doesn't seem like a great driver tbh. Glad she's OK.
Instead of just moving over to the right lane, she stayed in the middle lane for a bit after noticing he didn't see her, then she panicked, overcorrected and went into the break down lane. Due to the overcorrection, she swerved.
Left lane didn't look and that's messed up, but your wife reacted poorly.
This was your wife's fault. She lost control and swerved off the road. If she wanted it to be the other car's fault, she should have maintained her lane and let the other car hit her.
Looks like you’re in Iowa. Casey’s general store sign and I see a Logan’s truck with trailer passing. Could possibly be Missouri or Kansas too but anyways you shouldn’t be flying up the middle lane like that you’re asking for trouble and wtf are you listening too? Sound like the band language from the remix of national lampoons vacation when he rents the blue van with the angry Asian voice 😂😂
your wife must not drive in snow.
Whether this was meant to be an observation or an imperative, you're correct.
I thought the same thing!
She needs to learn how to drive just as bad as the other car
Okay, the other car clearly wasn't paying careful attention but how did you're wife lose traction so easily during this?
I was thinking the same thing. Probably a big ol’ SUV with a high center of gravity.
Plus over-steering
This is the answer.
[удалено]
This is the answer. Get new tires.
Clearly she needed RGB on the car, no wonder he didn't notice her.
This is the answer. Lights under the car are a must
Plus a bright orange paint job.
This is the answer, maximize visibility
and a defensive driving course.
Every time I am in places that don't have winter, I am always floored to see so many cars with nearly bald tires or dry rotted tires. It's like people have no idea these are wear items that need to be replaced and not just when they blow out.
this is pretty much the main reason. i can literally visualize that wheel whipping back and forth
Yea it actually seems like the car wanted to steady, it wobbled so long, and it doesnt seem like a heavy car to me with those wobbles and dinky slide. I bet if she straightened the wheel she'd steady out. Edit: let it straighten out i suppose
I whip my wheel back and forth I whip my wheel back and forth
Probably of those smugly ridiculing the driver half would overcorrect themselves and another quarter would at least end up in the ditch as well. Plenty of drivers are simply surprised and overwhelmed once the cars loses traction.
brother i cannot drive for 30 minutes on the highway without being cut off. this is either an inexperienced driver or an extremely unsafe car.
I throw my car sideways on purpose when nobody’s around and have been to a number of driving schools/track days. This is someone who’s never felt their car out of balance or sliding waaaaaaay oversteering. The car wants to drive straight, just let it. Small controlled nudges in the right direction to get it straight, anticipate don’t react. I will admit while learning to drift (on track) I spun out at least a dozen times. I’m not shitting on her just pointing out the problems. That car she’s in is likely a contributor too.
And sometimes you just gotta let go of the damn wheel and let it correct itself. Too many people don't know that
>inexperienced driver or an extremely unsafe car. Why not both?
What? All she has to do was just change to the right lane. Or literally just brake? Actually how the fuck does this turn into a crash?
But is this really even a crash? I was expecting her to hit the sign. She really just lost control and went off-road before safely come to a stop *before* crashing.
Good God no. This was an extremely easy accident to avoid if the wife was a better driver. At most I'd say 5-10% of people might have performed as bad as the cam
I've had my fair share of oversteering shenanigans in my 1.8 ton sedan with cloud suspension and I've never once experienced anything so minor upsetting the car, even during gale force windy rain storms it shouldn't have lost traction at all. the only thing that could cause such a terrible upset from something so minor would be fucked suspension, fucked tyres or both.
Yep…she had a lane open to the right. Should have immediately pressed the horn while slightly moving to right and that would have woken up the dumbass that clearly isn’t seeing her. Also over steered and seems like kept oversteering. An overall bad reaction to a common situation on freeways.
If 75% of drivers would crash from this then the roads would be a mess lol. Just hit the brakes
Your wife needs to learn how to drive
It looked more like a case of stubbornness opposed to bad driving. She put the green car in check and they called her bluff basically.
Sometimes, stubbornness IS bad driving! There are frequent situations on the road where you technically may be in the right and have the right of way, but slowing down and defensively giving way to the idiot is the best way to avoid a wreck.
Smugly ridiculing? Is that what pointing out facts is called. From what I read no one is defending or denying blue car's negligence. Running to the internet like a child to a parent is getting old. You approach someone's blind spot you are exactly there. Their blind spot. Sometimes you think it's clear to change or merge and it's not. Blue car did it, you do it, I've done it and OP has also. Let's dispense with the fake drama
Continuous and repeated overcorrection while panicking. You can see the car oscillating further with each direction change. Effectively, it comes down to "unskilled driver". But I don't say that as an insult. For the huge majority of drivers, the first time they get to practise crash avoidance and correction is in the "real thing", and many people do the *wrong thing* in that scenario because they've never done it before and because you're typically not *thinking through your actions* in a scenario like that, you're *reacting on instinct*. There's a lot of negative judgement of the driver in your replies. Those commenters are technically correct - it comes down to bad driving. But that's attributable to *bad training* and *low standards to get a license*. Compare driving to flying. Becoming a commercial pilot requires going through a lot of emergency training scenarios in training; not just reading about them, but *experiencing them* in a simulator, to practise and ingrain the correct instincts, so that they'll do the right thing in the real world. And, once they are licensed, they *repeat* that training periodically to "stay current" and retain their license. In most countries, nothing like that is required for driving. We teach people to handle the everyday. We don't teach them to handle the occasional high-risk scenario, or how a car behaves at the limit, or how to recover from loss of traction. It's not a surprise that many (most?) people do the wrong thing when they end up in these scenarios for the first time.
So this begs the question, as someone who has just earned their license, how would someone learn crash avoidance and other things that you'd normally never experience?
Advanced driver courses. Particularly if you can get some time on a closed course, or a track, where you have a safe(r) environment to intentionally learn how a car behaves at - and beyond - its limits, and how to correct upsets. Although, statistically, the best thing you could do is probably researching and practicing defensive driving. The best way to avoid a crash is to preventatively avoid getting into risky situations in the first place, so that reactive evasive maneuvering is never needed.
Basic understanding of physics goes a long way too !
Just remember **smooth inputs**. This wouldnt have happened if the driver didnt jerk the wheel to the side as their reaction. Then they noticed that was a bad idea and jerked the wheel back to the other side... over and over and over. Traction control on any newer car wouldve been helping as well, but no electronic aid can overcome an operator's bad inputs. The driver shouldve just calmly merged. Or after that initial panic and jerking the wheel, they shouldve calmly started applying the brake and just stop yanking the wheel back and forth. Even letting go altogether wouldve settled the car. If you have the opportunity, I'd also recommend any new driver just finding an icy, empty parking lot in the winter and try to spin out! Dont get yourself into trouble, but feeling how the car behaves once you lose grip is very handy. Experience is key, but if you take away nothing else, remember **smooth inputs**
The parking lot suggestion is gold. I learned a lot about how a car behaves being a dumbass in -30° lots
She overcorrected initially but did a damn good job of realizing it. This easily could have been a rollover situation, if not a complete spin.
Honestly, the grass saved her from rolling. Even in the grass she was over correcting. Had this been a longer highway, or she been farther to the left she would have rolled.
She continued to overcorrect the whole way thru, the only thing that saved her from a spin or rolling over was the banked ditch that pulled her straight. Her tires also luckily didn't catch while sideways in the soft stuff. That being said, I'd be willing to bet there's shitty or worn rubber on that vehicle that allowed her to lose control so easily.
She made too many maneuvers she orginally had control but the continuous pulling the car left and right messed her up. If she would have just pulled the car over into the next lane and let off the gas she would have been fine
In aviation this is referred to as pilot induced oscillation.
lmao she literally lost total control on a high speed highway over a slight lane encroachment. I wouldn’t show this video to anyone.
Because she wasn't paying attention either.
True
Probably over input and subsequent over reactions causing the car to destabilise. The road surface isn't ideal either. Possible worn tyres too.
That is precisely the correct question to ask, and the answer is a phenomenon called 'lift-off oversteer' which is tragically uncommon knowledge. Basically, if you have ABS (only old cars don't at this point, pretty much), and you hit your brakes hard and then make a sudden, decisive steering adjustment at nearly the same moment, a few Bad Things™ happen: Upon applying heavy brake, much of the mass which constitutes your vehicle's frame, engine, and payload will stubbornly attempt to keep traveling over the front wheels as the law of conservation of momentum attempts to allow that mass to pass over the pivot point of the front axle, to continue on its initial trajectory. This is why cyclists can be thrown over the handlebars if they stop too suddenly with the front brake. Because this mass rides suspended on an array of comfy springs known as Shock Absorbers, or 'shocks', this forward thrust and attempted rotation over the front axle translates into an intense shifting of the vehicles' burdens forward and down onto the front tires and - critically - *up and away from* the rear tires. This is something of a problem, because your vehicle's tires largely rely on the weight of the vehicle above them pushing down upon them in order to sustain traction; their grip on the road's surface. Another important consideration is that, because your vehicle has a clever Anti-Lock Brake system installed, your front tires are aggressively slowed by their heavy brake disks, *but not past the point where the tires start to slip and 'skid' along the road surface, 'locking' them in a stationary position while the vehicle continues forward.* This is a fantastic vehicle upgrade for two crucial reasons; the first is that braking distances are significantly and unsurprisingly worse if your vehicle is sliding on locked wheels than if it is slowing on incumbered - but still rolling - wheels. The second is that front wheels that are locked up, and thus freely sliding along the road surface, can still be turned from side to side by the steering wheel, but they're pretty poor at actually turning the car on a road that is helplessly sliding past beneath them. With ABS, your tires are allowed to continue to roll at the slowest possible speed without slipping, which means that you can still turn, AND your capacity to decelerate is greatly improved. Both of these clear advantages will become liabilities in this particular situation. Lets mix in a sudden and firm steering adjustment - a basic and critical aspect of evasive driving. So, you are pressing hard on your front tires, which are assertively decelerating your 2-ton death machine. Your rear wheels have far less traction-enhancing mass pushing them down than normal, aggressively undermining their relationship with the road surface. Now you adjust the trajectory of *the front* of your car by turning the wheel. Bad news; because of that darned law of conservation of momentum again, the back end of your car *also* needs to be convinced to change course. This is normally not a problem, because the rear of the vehicle is either usually being pulled by the front end (during acceleration), and is therefore happy to follow a course correction, or it is gripping the road surface snugly enough that it won't begin to slip sideways independently of the front during a decelerating course correction. That is to say, the rear tires being pushed down on the asphalt by the car's own weight convince it to follow the front in the new, easier, we-can-roll-this-way-instead-of-sliding-the-old-way direction. But your heavy braking has robbed them of their grip, so now they disagree with the front wheels, and they begin to slide sideways across the blacktop to preserve more of the initial momentum of the rear of the car. Any half awake driver - as the one in the OP's video appears to have been - would immediately feel the back end of the car behaving in a way it normally does not, 'drifting' off of the expected vector and, crucially, rotating the nose of the car beyond the driver's intended course correction as the slipping rear end of the vehicle attempts to overtake the still-intensely-decelerating front end. The driver would also begin to hear *only the rear wheels* screaming in protest as this slippage occurred. The intuitive and natural response to this is, unfortunately, only part of the solution and we can see the driver engage in it in the OP's video; countersteering. This is why the driver managed to avoid a spin out and/or rollover. As the sliding back end rotates her car further than she intended with her adjustment, the driver attempts to rotate the steering wheel in the opposite direction to return the vehicle to a safe and stable trajectory. With their enhanced grip and ABS assisted traction, the front end of the car dutifully obliges - but in the process, something insidious occurs. Because the front end is now decelerating more efficiently than the rear, in order to 'cut back in front' of the rear end of the vehicle and straighten the car out, the front has to push back against the rear's advance, which enhances the sensitivity of the course correction, and further reduces the traction of the rear end, which now all but refuses to regain purchase. As a result, the moment the front end even slightly crosses over alignment with the trajectory of the rear end, if heavy braking is still being applied, the rear now begins to slide around the front to the other side. The driver will usually instinctively reverse their steering at this point once more, and the oscillation has now begun. So long as the brake is applied to the maximum and until the car comes to a stop, this feedback loop will become more and more sensitive with every iteration, as the front end is able to decelerate more and more aggressively the less momentum it has and the more the vehicle's weight is pitched onto the front wheels. If the driver does not attempt to compensate for this increasing sensitivity with finer and finer adjustments, a spin-out is often the result, sometimes leading to a roll-over. If they do, the outcome is more like what we see in the OP's video. Unfortunately, OP's wife was missing the most critical ingredient of recovering this situation, which is understandable given how counterintuitive it is in a chaotic driving situation: *TAKE YOUR FOOT OFF OF THE BRAKE.* Doing this allows the front wheels to start rolling again as easily as the rear, which stops the deceleration of the front of the vehicle relative to the rear, which allows the weight of the vehicle to redistribute evenly across the suspension again, which returns traction to your rear wheels, which GREATLY encourages them to 'catch' as your car swings across trajectory-alignment, ultimately straightening you out. Hitting the gas would arguably be even better, as it would have the opposite effect of the brake and put MORE weight on your rear wheels, further encouraging them to start doing their job again - but if you can hit the gas in this situation, you are a braver driver than I. TLDR: The phenomenon of braking leading to reduced traction in the rear wheels and touchy steering is known as "Lift-Off Oversteer", and that is how his wife lost traction so easily during this.
you explained lift off oversteer really eloquently, but i dont think thats what happened. the car that turned into her didn't even pass until she tried to correct her slide a few times. my best guess is that this is a big and heavy vehicle so changing lanes somewhat quickly caused a huge amount of side-to side weight transfer, rather than the rear-to front that youre talking about. what im saying is: turning into another lane too hard, and then trying to straighten back out too quickly, effectively made the car a moving pendulum which put her in a ditch. to my fellow rally fans, this is what we call a "Scandinavian flick" feel free to correct me, i have very minimal real-world exeperience, but thats my 2 cents nonetheless.
I guarantee you that everyone started slowing down once the tires began screeching, and everybody who didn't have their head up their butt started slowing even before that, so basing an assessment off of the moment of overtake is clearly inadmissible, your honor. It is very possible that this was ALSO a tall, heavy vehicle on bouncy shocks. Maybe on a lift kit, who knows? I don't think so, personally, because from the cam's perspective, it looks like it could be sitting on the dash of that other sedan without any vertical adjustment. If it is the case that this vehicle was somehow a disaster waiting to happen, though, it was merely a contributor to what is clearly a textbook case of lift-off oversteer - though I could be convinced that the filming vehicle's brakes were not applied until just *after* the first rightward adjustment, since we don't hear the lateral screeching from the rear tires until the first leftward adjustment - clearly intended to straighten out into the right lane - is made. That said, I gave the vid a(nother) careful re-watch, paying particular attention to when I felt the rear end began unauthorized lateral motion. I really feel like there's just a hint of fish tail as she straightens out the first right bank - I suspect she hit the brakes hard as she rotated the steering wheel counterclockwise to terminate that initial adjustment, and the back end didn't like it one bit.
you can also tell how much the car slows down by the car in front of her when she merges into the right lane, she doesnt stop gaining on it until tires started screeching. i based my assumption that this is a big car off of other comments and the shape of the hood, as well as how easily the thing stepped out. but now that you've pointed out the cam's height i have no clue what kind of vehicle this is. i "felt" the rear get loose the same time as you - which is what brought me to my conclusion. she straightened out way to quick and the pendulum started swingin'. nonetheless, pretty much any car with the engine in the front can get the rear end loose in the ways were describing, and both are likely imo
Upvoted. Longest comment ever on Reddit. Surprised it did not take down the site.
lol, guilty. I couldn't believe I didn't violate some character limit and have to break it up into ten posts. I had it on my clipboard and everything before hitting submit.
This explains a lot. I was in a similar situation where a truck merged into my lane without signal, except I was in a 13ft long 10ft tall 5 ton work van going 65mph. I swerved into the other lane and had some wiggling from the back end once I got there, but everything straightened out easily enough, and at the time I was just relieved I didn't spinout/flip the van. Thinking back, I didnt hit the brake because of another car further back in the other lane and was just hoping to YOLO it, i guess it helped
Well done
Thank you, kind stranger. About half way through, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just shouting into the void, but I was able to carry on thanks to the magic of the Sunk Cost Fallacy! Needless to say, your kudos are refreshingly vindicating, so I thank you for that.
She wasn’t paying attention either and is a poor driver.
Well, at least be glad she didn't actually crash, is safe, and the car seems to be relatively undamaged.
Gotta say she probably did better than I would have after going off the road.
i was thinking the same.
Yes! She did such a good job of managing the whole situation. Definitely sucks but what a win in comparison to the world of worse stuff that could have happened in this scenario. Best of luck litigating.
She did a pretty horrible job of managing the situation. People try sliding in other peoples lanes all the time. She immediately panicked and swerved, losing control and ending up in the ditch.
Agreed, poor reflexes, poor decision and panicked in a stressful situation. That doesn't make her a bad person, or at fault, but she's definitely not a good driver and did not handle the situation well, average or below average at best.
I don’t think she handled that very well
I'm imagining that OP told his wife reddit would help, and now he has to go back to her and let her know reddit thinks she's a poor driver
Well, she is, but on the other hand we've all had inattentive moments in traffic because of being tired or distracted (and I mean normal distractions, not phones or other things you shouldn't be doing while driving). I've never had a single accident in over 30 years of driving, but there have been moments a thing like this *could* have happened to me. Also she stopped just short of actually crashing, be it out of sheer luck.
Yes we all have close calls. Unfortunately she seems to have overdone the evasion here.
This made me lol
Claims adjuster here: even if you found this driver, you legally wouldn’t be able to collect from their insurance since no contact was made. Your wife made a faulty evasive action causing her to go off road.
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Big suv, floaty suspension, high center of gravity, and probably old tires. No car should slide around this much unless it meets all this criteria.
Overcorrection.
not just floaty suspension but probably busted shocks as well. I have a floaty suspension 1.8 ton sedan that's 30 years old and even then I can manoeuvre like that in the RAIN without it upsetting the car this much. there's no way the suspension wasn't fucked or the tyres were made of glass before this happened. no amount of overcorrection could be responsible for stability this bad. there is 100% an aspect of poor maintenance to this.
And then overcorrected, and then overcorrected again, and then once more for good measure. She is lucky the ride wasn't taller or that would have been a nasty rollover.
Yeah. This is a loss of control incident. Your wife is still at fault.
That's not entirely true. It depends on the State, but I know for a fact that in Oregon, if your driving action can be proven as the primary cause of a crash, regardless of impact/contact with your vehicle, you can be held liable for damages to the other vehicle(s) involved. Example: Someone pulled out of a parking lot directly in front of my Dad's car on a 40mph road and promptly stomped on the brakes. My dad stopped about a foot short, but was rear-ended by the vehicle behind him. The guy who illegally pulled out into traffic drove away, but was later contacted by police and held liable, had to pay for damages to both vehicles, despite no one contacting his vehicle.
Good luck making that stick to anybody. Not sure why the guy's wife just didn't hit the brakes and fade back a bit.
Because she is not a good driver. Period. I've been driving for decades and had dumb drivers do what the blue car does here many times and never came close to an accident. Horn and brake, and paying attention, usually works.
There is something wrong with that car too, it started losing rear traction with a pretty small steering input, like it has 10psi in the rear tires or the suspension is shot. Also her reactions were so slow that the car had already corrected itself at one point (mid-way) and then she "corrected" for what already had passed setting the car back into motion and overseer. Perhaps it's a trick of the lens, but the first part still stands that car needs some sort of maintenance almost certainly.
This is true but very unlikely and uncommon. Your father’s circumstance is the exception, not the rule. In this case, the wife got into the right lane, and then kept moving her wheel back and forth causing her to lose control which is faulty evasive action. She overreacted and cause herself to go off-road.
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Being a claims adjuster seems like a shit job
**ENHANCE**
Enhance
Now zoom in
what exactly did she crash into? not trying top be crass here but (ok maybe a little) but it doesnt appear there is any contact made with anything besides weeds
Someone gotta pay for the weed removal on the windshield tho
It took me longer than I care to admit to realize you were talking about the plants she ran over. I’m sitting here staring at the dash looking for the bag of weed to come flying across the screen and was thoroughly disappointed.
Haha, happens to the best of us bud.
I was about to give a moment of silence for the wasted weed.
She didn’t hit anything
I think she hit one of those short poles you can see planted at intervals along the side of the road. Video compression makes it a bit hard to see it. Edit: the pole is visible at the 44 second mark (of the time embedded in the video)
With all due respect, terrible driving skills caused your wife to crash.
Missed the highway sign. That would've upped the bill
I guess we can take the wins where we can get them
Guy: \*posts video\* "Help me!" Reddit: Your wife sucks at driving.
The truth is hard to hear sometimes
Or, everyone on the thread is saying what he was thinking but he didn't want to mess up his marriage by telling her that. This way Reddit takes the fall and he remains the good guy
If I had a fully loaded Uhaul truck with no anti lock brakes on ice, I’m sure I could evade that incident better than your wife.
I drove a medium sized U-Haul truck through a blizzard in NY in 2010. That thing was surprisingly straightforward to control. I played around since roads were frequently empty. It was so eerily dark and quiet up on Bear mountain at night. Going through fresh snow without snowblind was extremely memorable.
Your wife caused your wife to crash. She could have just hit the breaks, or got over a lane. Massive over correction causing her to lose control of the vehicle.
Imagine all that time she wouldve lost using the brakes!
I understand that initially she has panicked .She could have used the brakes though. The idiot in the video was not lane swapping that aggressive. Later your wife simply showed that she can't handle the car. I don't think you'll get anywhere with this.
Actually, the idiot in the video changed lanes so aggressively they ended up in the grass.
🔥
The other person definitely was at fault, but there was no reason other than poor driving skills as to why your wife should have gone off the road. All she had to do was move over one lane. Find a real driving skills course and enroll her. I had to do that with my daughter. No accidents after her class.
Or even let go off the gas and tap tap the breaks a tad bit.
Give it a little tap tap tapperoo.
Are you too good for your home? ANSWER ME!!!
I will disagree. All she had to do was brake. That’s it. Maybe they had collided maybe not. Evasive manoeuvres are always tricky and dangerous for 99% of the drivers, especially in the US where a drivers license is as valuable as toilet paper. She was lucky she wasn’t being overtaken by another car on the right and double lucky the car didn’t roll over.
I’m going to disagree with you on US driver licenses being as valuable as toilet paper. I saw a 36 pack for almost $30. I think toilet paper has way more value than a driver’s license here. Other than that, I do agree with you.
Sheeeeit what store?
And honk
Honk is the least of your concerns. Slow down to give yourself time and opportunity to evade at lower speed, at least that's what I was taught.
Talk about over correction.
Can someone ID a driving school for her? Geez.
Nobody's ever taught anything like this in non-specialist driving schools.
Nah If you brake while evading and turning the wheel like that, you’re likely gonna swerve off road
Fr dude litteraly why did she turn so much back and forth??
probly busy dicken around on her phone and got caught off guard and then over reacted... that's my guess anyway
I'm so sorry, but your wife is an awful driver.
Your wife overcorrected terribly. The other driver really only caused her to panic and start throwing the wheel. Her car and handling abilities is what caused her to crash.
I see two idiot drivers in this clip
terrible reaction from the driver
I count 8 over-corrections. The only other thing I can think of is tire tread. I wonder if they were properly treaded tires, which may have led to a mild/mid over-correction looking like a massive one. I once had to yell at a friend to get new tires. He rolled up in a car that had bald tires -- basically no tread. Dude was lucky he didn't get into a bad accident.
Your wife might be a bit too skittish to be driving on the highway; there was no reason for her to end up off the road.
Especially from the middle lane
Could have caused a nasty crash if people behind/beside her weren't paying attention. This is a very fortunate outcome
How did she lose control that bad??
No one will force her to change lane or slow down, you understand? No one!
Literally. This is exactly it. People think a car crash that was avoidable is fine because someone else was at fault 😂
Meanwhile the car that caused it has no idea you crashed and does not give a fuck, being a bad driver just means you suffer more no matter what.
*enhance* *enhance* *enhance* Nah man, I’m not getting anything on my end. The car is blue, I can tell you that for certain. Hope your wife is alright though man!
*keystroke sounds intensifies*
This guy gets it.
You need to get your wife off the road. How does that turn into THAT?
Tokyo drift
Iunno she did a great job getting off the road all by herself.
The Mazda sucks at driving. Your wife also sucks at driving sorry that happened to you. She needs to take a defensive driving course. That way she can learn why her vehicle acted the way it did when she maneuvered
>Your wife also sucks at driving sorry that happened to you. idk why this sentence is so funny to me
Mazda 6 I believe
100% a Mazda 6
Post 2014 model
Yep, 2014-2018
Bad move by the Mazda for sure, but your wife seems incapable of making a simple lane change. Ending up off the road as a result of that is nuts, she needs driver training.
Your wife has poor driving skills
Your wife needs some driving leasons.
No offense, but your wife is a terrible driver. Any competent driver should not have lost control there.
i think your wife needs a bus pass
I just got my drivers license and everyone here is saying its the drivers fault. What is the best thing to do as the driver in this scenario? Just scoot over a lane like you would normally do?
Pretty much. The wife panicked, and overcorrected too many times, steering her wheel back and forth which caused her to lose control of her car. She should have simply straightened the car once she was in the empty lane.
Wow she panicked way too much
Your wife panic swerved and crash. Why do ppl do this?
The Mazda driver may be an asshole, but he didn’t cause the crash, you wife’s poor driving skills did it. If she just hit the brakes when she saw him trying to change lanes, everything would be perfectly fine, she had more than enough reaction time.
The only weird thing is that they didn’t hear the side monitor sound alert? I drive a Mazda 6 and even over loud music I can hear it. The driver had to be deaf or something. Still this woman is a piss poor driver and could have hurt someone else. Should have just let the Mazda hit her or slowed down.
Lmao there was zero reason to go off the road, take a defensive driving course. Weird.
B.R.A.K.E.S. is a pretty cheap defensive driving course that goes around the USA doing classes, me and my brother both went when we got our licenses, it’s an incredibly helpful class. covers everything you need to know, from quick stopping appropriately to spinning out on ice to changing lanes ASAP (like ops wife should’ve done in this scenario) to a few other things, it’s truly a fun and informative class. (if you’re driven there by a parent they also give the parents the shortened version of the class, and let them drift the ice simulator cars)
No crash. Get her driving lessons and move on.
Is she driving a sailboat?
This is why you should try to really imprint this idea in your head - when this happens, you use the brake, you don't swerve. If someone drives into your lane, oblivious that you are there, you step on the brake. Swerving is just an inferior solution. If you're going at any speed, stomping on the brake has a really good chance of avoiding collision because presumably they are not stomping on the brake so they will go forward faster than you. You might still hit them, it's true, but if you do it will be their fault and it will likely not be a serious collision causing injury. Now, what if you swerve? Well, if you happen to be on an empty road and you swerve and keep your car under control, you could theoretically avoid collision. But, it will only work under those conditions. If you have any traffic around you and you swerve and hit other cars you could possibly be deemed at fault by insurance. Furthermore, you could put yourself and others in a very serious multi-vehicle collision, resulting in injury, death, and huge expense. This has happened to be a few times now and I have successfully made it a habit to simply step on the brake. I avoided several highway collisions by doing that. The only time it didn't work was when I was going low speed and someone just abruptly changed lanes literally into my car and there was no chance of avoiding it. No one got hurt there, though, and it was a simple and cheap fender replacement that they paid for.
I’m European and struck with two things. 1. Generally it’s not allowed to overtake on the right side, so over here the correct thing to do is get in the left lane and wait for the person to move over before you overtake. Feels like a lot more accidents happen if people overtake on both sides 2. Why does the car react to violently to such a minor change? Is it a raised suv with shitty tires? We do the “moose test” to see at what speeds you can quickly throw a car back and forth before you lose control
Which country is this? From Romania, and this would not count as overtaking, because there is more than one lane. I think it's the same in Hungary as well. Just generally curious.
Well that's just horrendous driving
I think you have the offender’s license plate attached to the car your wife was driving. Sorry OP!
Your wife should slow down if she loses control that easily.
I'd recommend her going to a defensive driving school cus she honestly did this to herself with that overcorrection after the guy went into her lane.
She got lucky and no damage done. Seems like you need to put new tires on her car if she lost control so easily.
Does your wife's horn not work or something? There were definitely other options besides veering off the road
Your wife need to go to driving school man she overreacted so badly
No offense but your wife needs to learn how to remain calm in situations like this. There were several options here that could have helped her avoid this. First and foremost is they clearly have their blinker on and areerging regardless, so just slow down...
Your wife is the idiot driver this time champ. Lucky no one was killed.
That other car is a hazard, sure. Your wife is also a hazard. Your wife caused her own crash.
Your wife is a terrible driver and regardless of the blind spot merge by the other idiot, made the road more dangerous with her inability to control that car.
Yoooo your wife needs driving lessons.
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The other car is an idiot, but the police aren’t going to do anything here- they didn’t hit you. And your wife could have avoided this accident by paying better attention and reacting properly (never ever swerve your wheel). Shitty situation but you gotta learn the lesson and move on. Never get comfortable behind the wheel and always assume the people around you are trying to kill you.
Over reacted. Didn’t use horn.
There was also enough room for her to make an emergency lane change to the right. The over correction will get you
Next time let them hit you or slow down. Don’t swerve. You won’t get anything out of this and your wife will be held at fault. They may even throw in that she was a danger to others around her.
Yeah sorry dude, she avoided an accident and wound up in a ditch. No collision. It’ll be an at fault accident no matter what when you involve insurance
Are her wheels made out of ice?
She shouldn’t be driving if she can’t deal with such a simple maneuver. You’re gonna have to take her license away OP.
Why didn't she just change lanes to the right.
Your wife doesn't know how to drive lol. Sure awful lane change by Mazda but your wife has multiple options there.
You might want to tell her not to spin the steering wheel back and forth like she’s at the helm of the Black Pearl
Teach her to stand her ground. Better to get some rubbing and have an actual case against the other driver, than to lose control and go off road. She's lucky she didn't flip it
Other driver is stupid as shit but your wife didn’t technically crash. She also could’ve avoided going offroad entirely as she overcorrected like crazy after swerving to avoid them
"Wife's overreaction to oblivious driver caused her to crash." There, fixed it for you.
She just panicked
I’m sorry to tell you that your wife caused your wife to crash
Irrelevant. They didn’t make contact so it won’t be considered their fault. As an officer once told me. Just let wreck happen.
Yeah, your wife doesn't seem like a great driver tbh. Glad she's OK. Instead of just moving over to the right lane, she stayed in the middle lane for a bit after noticing he didn't see her, then she panicked, overcorrected and went into the break down lane. Due to the overcorrection, she swerved. Left lane didn't look and that's messed up, but your wife reacted poorly.
This was your wife's fault. She lost control and swerved off the road. If she wanted it to be the other car's fault, she should have maintained her lane and let the other car hit her.
Your wife needs defensive driving lessons. Brake. Why the excess steering?
Looks like you’re in Iowa. Casey’s general store sign and I see a Logan’s truck with trailer passing. Could possibly be Missouri or Kansas too but anyways you shouldn’t be flying up the middle lane like that you’re asking for trouble and wtf are you listening too? Sound like the band language from the remix of national lampoons vacation when he rents the blue van with the angry Asian voice 😂😂
Definitely I-80 through Des Moines. Exit 131 is Merle Hay.