dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (04/24/84)
Humph. This reminds me of an incident that happened to me a few years
ago. I was driving along a 6-lane highway in the middle of the 3 lanes
going in my direction, travelling at the speed limit or slightly over it.
Traffic is light. There is another car a few car lengths ahead of me
in the right lane, travelling the same speed or slightly slower.
As we pass an intersection, a car comes around the onramp to merge onto
the main highway. The car on the ramp was accelerating normally,
and was positioned such that the car in the right lane should pull
left one lane to let the merging car in, if he felt polite.
Anticipating this, I checked to make sure the left lane was open to
allow me to go there to maintain clearance from the other car.
The guy in the right lane does absolutely nothing. Doesn't speed up,
doesn't move left. He probably hasn't even seen the merging car.
The driver of the merging car figures this out, and slows down to merge
behind the daydreaming driver. Everything is fine.
Suddenly, the car in the right lane locks up his wheels and starts
to slide into my lane. The only reason I can imagine is that he
suddenly woke up, noticed that there was merging traffic nearby
that he should have noticed, and simply paniced. I swerved left,
since I knew the left lane was clear, and avoided him. I don't
know what the merging car did, but he avoided hitting the other guy
too.
In any heavier traffic, this would have had real disaster potential.
Note that the guy, on realizing that he had missed something, did
the *worst possible* thing. The merging car had already slowed down
to pull in behind him; he should have accelerated rather than braked.
Just continuing on without doing anything would also have been fine.
Sliding uncontrolled into the next lane of traffic, while decelerating
rapidly, is not good for the health of the drivers in that lane.
It scares me that there are drivers whose first reaction is to step on
the brakes if anything surprises them.
Morals:
1) Try to leave yourself an "out". Sometime, someone is going to do
the *stupidest* thing in front of you.
2) Incompetent drivers are found outside of the U.S. too. :-)
Dave Martindale
Waterloo, Ontariograham@convex.UUCP (04/26/84)
#R:watcgl:-246600:convex:33000007:000:583 convex!graham Apr 26 14:15:00 1984 > It scares me that there are drivers whose first reaction is to step on > the brakes if anything surprises them. In my experience, this is the "normal" reaction of the "average" driver. It must come from the constant drumming in of phases like "speed kills". Since "speed kills", going slower must be safer, so if anything unusual or surprising happens, go slower to be safer. If its really unusual or very surprising, go a lot slower. Imagine the surprise of seeing a car appear out of thin air... Marv Graham; ConVex Computer Corp. {allegra,ihnp4,uiucdcs,ctvax}!convex!graham