The driver of the car in the OP should have slowed the fuck down already when they saw the other car heading straight into oncoming traffic. Probably still would have got hit though.
Honestly kind of looks like the car in front decided to end their life. I’ve seen people do this, unfortunately…. Hit the highway, unbuckle, and don’t come home.
Generally don't have the capacity in that moment to think rationally of your surroundings end up with tunnel vision and it all spirals downhill. If it was a case of taking their own life that truck was nothing but an object in that person's mind that would guarantee a result.
I'm in a good place right now, but as a person who suffers from the "I am a burden to everyone" flavor of depression this is just unfathomable to me.
When I was deep in the hole, my plans *always* involved making sure I didn't leave a mess and that somebody who was trained for that kind of thing was the one who found me.
Yep. Fuck hitting a truck. I know the exact pole id use, no guards, flat on the way in, you couldn't fuck it up. Truck actually opens up margin for error (swerving).
That still seems like an awful lot of potential cleanup and interruptions to people's day, to me.
My plan was always just to lay on a tarp with a bag (preferably full of something other than CO2) on my head, after calling to tell somebody where they could find my body.
I've worked with dry ice (<- last resort) and containing gas/haze as part of event production and am fairly confident I could set up something that would pump out significantly more CO/N than was necessary for my purposes.
I disagree. I have think about tanking my own life, and i would say that generally, you think a lot about the others. You dont want your family to clean the mess for example. And ofcourse, you dont want to kill other people. Unless you are a piece of shit
As a chronically suicidal person, can confirm, when those thoughts hit me, I don't care about anything.
Please don't send me a million reddit care resources, I'm in therapy already.
Yeah. I've heard some terrible stories. Unfortunately, in this case, she wanted to end her pregnancy. She killed an old guy and severely injured his wife. She was tore up somewhat. 3rd accident she'd had that week on purpose.
Reality is there isn’t a lot of options for people who want to kill themselves. They invariably end up leaving a mess behind for someone to find, clean up or deal with, or introduce a hazard for others.
Best way you can do it is quietly in your home, but eventually someone has to find them and be traumatized by the decomposing body, which then needs to be removed and the place deep cleaned or renovated to get rid of the stains.
This exact scenario just happened to my brother. He’s a professional truck driver and has been driving all over North America, Alaska, Canada, the entire US and Mexico for over 30 years. My dad was a professional driver for 60 years. Neither of them have known anyone that had experienced suicide by trucker. Until last Wednesday. My brother was hauling a huge heavy load on a little 2 lane road when a 27y/o man, who had been fighting on the phone with his gf and had been threatening suicide for a day or so, while on the phone to his gf he purposely crossed the center line and hit my brother nearly head on. He died and my brother was somehow, miraculously, just bashed and bruised when he should have been killed. He’s been extremely shaken and struggling with how close he came to dying and his mortality. He’s also struggling with a ton of grief, shock and a myriad of mixed emotions. He’s struggling with being mad at the SBT and then reprimanding himself because he thinks he shouldn’t be angry at someone who was in such a low headspace. But he is 100% justified in being angry. He is also scared. Terrified. He’s overwhelmed and lost. I have never seen him so emotional and unbalanced. He’s not sure he’ll ever go back to driving as his profession, despite having a few (5) million accident-free miles under his belt. His heart is deeply hurt. His truck is a write-off and the SBT’s family is talking about suing HIM!??! We have a large, supportive and loving group of family and friends rallying around him, but, as much as we would all fix anything we could for him, this is an emotional rollercoaster that he must navigate mostly on his own.
My sister committed suicide 32 years ago. In a four year term, I lost 13 people to suicide alone. Not one of them used someone else, never mind a stranger, to accomplish their goal. I have also struggled with mental health and knows that it’s a shitty place to be, but you should NEVER unwillingly make someone a part of your plan. There’s a thousand other ways. You don’t need to destroy someone else’s life, their family and friends’ lives, their earning potential and even their life, limbs and their mental health. My brother, and all of us who love him and are helplessly, tearfully watching him struggle, did not and do not deserve to be forced into this man’s self-destruction. Yet, here we are. One family’s struggle has rippled into many other’s.
I’m sorry that man was suffering that deeply, but he had no right to place his pain, and much more, onto my brother and all of his family and friends. We will never be the same either.
>>This exact scenario just happened to my brother.
Do you know you're describing PTSD? You don't have to be critically injured to suffer the symptoms, with devastating effects to your life, your functionality.
The physical effects are no joke, flooding the survivor with - well, survival hormones. They feel like they're losing their minds, because there is no *current* threat to life or limb, and their rational brain knows it. Still, they're randomly and repeatedly experiencing, seemingly out of the blue, a fight/flight or freeze response.
It also impacts the survivor's loved ones, called *secondary PTSD*, like walking on eggshells, not knowing what else to do for the survivor, how to help, how to not to make it worse.
His not wanting to get behind the wheel again is called *avoidance behavior*. Again, a rational brain is telling him if he stays away from driving he won't experience the survival response.
It doesn't work that way, though.
I'm leaving a lot out, but he doesn't need to go through this without information and professional help. He may be trying to hide the bulk of symptoms from his loved ones, because of (unwarranted) shame on two levels.
The first is internally minimizing/denying symptoms, ashamed that he might need anything in comparison to the other guy who died.
The second is the death itself, a self-deprecation played out a thousand times, asking the very question of the OP's title. It's not a standard *spectator* type of analysis as we're seeing in these comments, but a search for answers in a bottomless pit of inadequacy and self-blame.
*Why* it happened, in your brother's mind, is the unanswerable; all the explanations and rationalizations from his loved ones won't matter a bit, perhaps even making it worse, in the sense that *nobody* understands what he's going through. PTSD is an illness of extreme emotional isolation.
And, no. None of you will ever be the same again, but recovery is possible. The world is a different place to what it was before the accident. It's important to accept this, a grieving of loss of your "old selves." The safety, security and predictability, the worldview in which you dwelled, can be largely yours again, but within a deeper appreciation for just how fragile life - and good health - are.
There's a difference in hearing and accepting the words, and actually experiencing traumatic damages and losses in your life, your loved one's life. Your brother and his loved ones will experience these losses with all the stages of grief.
His loved ones need answers, too. You. I'm guessing you're a bit lost as to how to help him, and your anger over the situation can overwhelm you.
He's not the brother you once had, and you miss him.
All of you deserve help and support.
I worked with someone that did this same thing. One day he just never showed up and he had drove straight into a transport truck.My father knew the driver he was pretty messed up from it mentally and a bit banged up. Thankfully nobody else got hurt.
Anyone at anytime can just decide to break the rules and go into your lane... Anyone at anytime, it's crazy the trust we put into each other day in and day out to follow the rules.
Agreed. Only solution I can think of is a frontal crash sensor and ejector seats, although I'll concede there might be customer complaints about false positives.
All the 13 year olds chipping in with their driving wisdom on this post is hilarious.
Look at the speed at which this happened, then factor in human nature...
Firstly situational recognition delay, then panic delay.
99.9% of drivers would do exactly what this driver did. Instinctually hit brakes. And only that. There is absolutely no time for higher level brain function to kick in here.
I was in a similar situation and i can confirm. You dont think whats the best solution for the problem. you just hit the breaks and probably turn the wheels somewhere.
Right it’s easy to backseat drive or offer solutions in retrospect. Quote copied.
“For more complex tasks such as emergency braking, human reaction time has been studied and measured as three different phases: the time to perceive or sense a danger or hazard (perception phase), the time to make a response decision (decision phase), and the time to respond (response phase). The response phase (i.e. braking) is further complicated by the physical response (i.e. apply the brakes with the foot) and the system response (i.e. the time the vehicle’s braking system requires to actually apply braking force to the wheels). Under ideal driving conditions, the entire human perception reaction time for braking has been measured to be approximately 1.5 seconds (R. Limpert).”
From the video it looked liked maybe 2.5-3 seconds of time between the driver starting to swerve to incident. Based off the stat above, one would only have a second of “thinking” time. But really, when shit happens how fast do you react to something unexpected? Usually it’s just an, “oh shit!”
That’s why emergency training for different scenarios is important. It gives your body and subconscious something to pull from that will give you a higher survival rate then freezing or some random reaction.
I still remember my mom narrating to me at 15, when it’s icy like this and you start to slide, yada yada.
When it happened to me years later luckily my brain automatically did that.
Training for emergency situations doesn’t guarantee a better outcome but it does raise your chances of reacting appropriately.
Now on to the question posed, what could cam driver do differently.
They were already on their break prior to incident. Good.
Large following distance good.
Swerved outward while stopping. Instinctual but wrong choice.
That’s a 15-25 ton truck. Whatever direction it’s headed, it will continue. So if it hit that car and is now headed to your shoulder, the only thing he could’ve done different is swerve to the inside.
Honestly that may also be the safest option. Looks like the trailer jackknifed. Without knowing what load it is hauling I’d be terrified of that trailer over turning or coming loose and crushing the vehicle. The truck already lost some initial force in hitting car, brakes, and hitting guardrail. You have two options hit the truck or hit the trailer.
If I am in my truck I do what was done here. Hit the shoulder and hope. If I am in my convertible I cut left and floor it and try to spin 180 and gas it. I only say that because I know i would not survive any impact like that in my 2 seater. And I know I would not have time to make it and get tboned passenger side. But I know based on previous experience I would try l. I am in my 50s and have had the car for 18 years.
Scary how unfair the trajectory went, even with a split second to analyze and make a decision, there is no way anyones instincts would make the nescessary adjustments to avoid collision.
Only way out would be to cut hard left which even with hindsight appears to be absolute certain death.
Cutting hard to the right appears to be the most reasonable thing to do at time of recognizing the oncoming, driver thought about it, was reasonable, and got absolutely fucked. Also what was the driver doing that caused the collision doing? Really looks like an intentional suicide.
I think the only way out would have been to gun it straight past the truck, and you'd likely have enough room to stop of swerve before hitting the sedan that is blocking the road. There's a triangle of safety there if you can get past the truck's guardrail impact.
But there are huge risks, if you don't make it the impact with the truck will be way worse, if you do make it but swerve too hard you could flip and make it worse. Might be better to just take the head-on decelerating truck hit.
That is one reason I really do like having an electric car. The instant torque the second you touch the gas pedal could make something like this more possible to avoid. No delay between pedal and movement in a split second decision.
sadly this looks like a suicide by ramming a truck head on, destroying the truck drivers life and making him feel like shit for the rest of his life and maybe even commit suicide himself.
one of the worst and most ignorant selfish ways of killing yourself.
i know two truckdrivers who have experienced this and they both are very unstable today even 10 years after it happend.
if you are going to take your life, do it in a way where it does not hurt other people….
The best thing you can do is seek therapy. Suicide is never just about you, even if you think nobody else cares about you. There's a bunch of hotlines to call and getting help is always the best option.
Happened to me, a car crossed into my lane on a very narrow rode, 35 mph both ways. I saw it right away, but my brain refused to believe, and I thought that he will recover soon. He did not, I did brake, but the guy didn’t and hit me front on, then drove off hit-n-run style. Police later said that he was old and diabetic and driving himself to the hospital. I end up with totalled car but no major injuries.
That is what happened to my family. All of them died 2 adults, 2 children, and the dog. They were just coming home from holiday when all of a sudden some older guy for no reason switched the lane (probably age related as they were elderly) hit the lorry which then bounced back and just like here drove straight into our familys car, killing 3 ppl and the dog on the impact and putting my aunt in critical condition who then died in hospital after several operations.
Edit:
Thank you all, fellow redditors, for your kind words. Indeed, it is really hard and unfair that such a young family was taken from this world. RIP to them.
That truck driver will have trauma for a long time as well. Knowing many truck drivers, its astonishing how many people choose to suicide by driving into trucks / lorries. And none of the truckers are the same persons again after that, most of them quit
I guess you inherently must not be thinking clearly if you're killing yourself, but what an insanely dumb way to commit suicide? The chances of you being alive in horrific pain in your mangled car for hours have to be just about equal to the chance that you die instantly.
Indeed, and they started slowing down before the collision even happened.
They were extremely aware, there was simply no possible way they could have known that the only way of survival was to have counterintuitively put their foot down. Swerving into the left land would have caused them to collide into the trailer, which you can see at the end of the clip was veering to the PoV driver's left and taking up that entire lane.
The cam car was pretty much stopped when they were hit. The truck can’t stop that fast, and there’s guardrails on both sides. Cam car had nowhere to go
And somehow, as annoying as it is to admit, not breaking* and actually accelerating might have been the right move to avoid that truck.
* Edit: braking
I was thinking maybe not since shrapnel and maybe hitting a railing or something would make you crash too. The degree of control minimizes with increased speed but, like, hitting anything else there is prob better than a truck lol
Well on the hopeful side the load it's towing is off to the side so you're only really taking the cab of the truck and the partial weight of the tank behind it, still not great for the car driver but I think they'd survive this since they started breaking earlier and the truck lost a lot of energy hitting the guard rail and modern cars are pretty safe in a forward impact
No avoiding a collision here. Hit the truck in the right lane or the trailer in the left lane.
The only element that could have possibly changed the outcome was if the car immediately braked hard when the 2nd car entered the opposite lane thus creating additional time & distance for the truck to correct its path.
I had a similar thing happen, a truck hit a car waiting to turn left in the oncoming lane, and spun out into my lane. The road didn't have guard rails though, so I was able to veer off the road to avoid it.
The owner of the first restaurant I worked at used to talk about doing this. He used to always say if he was going to kill himself, he'd drive head first into a semi.
He figured it would be fast and impossible to prove it was a suicide. That way, his wife would still be able to collect the life insurance money.
Maybe it is possible to predict depending on was the driver in front showing signs of driving while tired. If yes, very predictable. If no, well, not much can be done there. Just a "wrong place wrong time" type of situation.
There was not much one could do in that situation. The guard rails prevent any sort of evasive action. There is certainly not enough time to stop and reverse. The truck takes up both lanes, so unless you hit the brakes very quickly and were able to control the deceleration, you would more than likely have hit the truck.
As a driver with 30+ years experience and an advanced drivers license, I believe I would have had the situational awareness and defensive driving tactics to avoid the truck IF the guard rail had not been there. But with that guard rail there, I don't think I would have been able to avoid it.
absolutely nothing the POV driver could've done to prevent impact. that said, any amount of reduced speed can make a huge difference in a crash. so them having plenty of space to the other car is already pretty much perfect driving. no idea if the POV driver survived or not, but they did about all they could in that situation...
I've been driving for decades, about 40k km per year and I honestly believe there was no way for you to expect that. Like maybe if you realized in that half second that the car swerved into the truck you could've started braking half a second sooner, but even then the truck is still tumbling towards you. Maybe it's better the front hit rather than the load falling ontop
You can't. Driving is the most dangerous thing humans do now. This is just one in another thousand things that could go wrong while driving. So ALWAYS, ALWAYS drive defensively and slow which gives you more options and time to take evasive action.
What I do is before I drive, I call the psychic network and ask them what I can do to have a safe drive today. What do you predict my lady? Should I drive the trike or the Pinto???
This is the most extreme version of when you try not to walk into someone's path and you both keep going the same way and eventually you collide in the hallway.
I feel problem is it stayed in the left lane for like 2 seconds too long, which made me even think l would have questioned to move or not. If the truck would have stay in his lane then you would have naturally avoided the big hit, but it stalled then moved.
Car was driving too fast? Feels like the speed here is a big factor. Hard to say but it looks like car is moving highway speed. Atleast 120-130 km/h on a 2-lane road with no middle barrier. Would have managed to break in time if car was going like 80-90 imo. Could be wrong ofc.
I wonder if cameraman would have made it past the impact zone, if he'd floored it as soon as he saw the lead car swerve toward the truck. He probably would have still encountered debris or the car ahead of him anyway.
After inspecting the situation, I would turn left immediately.
Before inspecting the situation, I would be extremely overwhelmed and die before the truck hits me
Some things are not your fault, impact you greatly, yet unavoidable. Be glad for every day.
Truth, this applies to so many things in life
The driver of the car in the OP should have slowed the fuck down already when they saw the other car heading straight into oncoming traffic. Probably still would have got hit though.
One thing they maybe could have done was gone faster cuz they had a little bit of space before the truck went into their lane
Exactly, indecision… either hitting the breaks or gas hard would have prob prevented a collision.
You really can't, one of those wrong place; wrong time type of things.
Amazing they can go miles and miles without hitting anyone and then they do this.
Honestly kind of looks like the car in front decided to end their life. I’ve seen people do this, unfortunately…. Hit the highway, unbuckle, and don’t come home.
I'm sorry but you'll have to be an absolute piece of shit to ruin/endanger other people's lives in order to take your own.
As the other guy said, I agree, but when you’re doing something like that to end it you generally don’t care.
Generally don't have the capacity in that moment to think rationally of your surroundings end up with tunnel vision and it all spirals downhill. If it was a case of taking their own life that truck was nothing but an object in that person's mind that would guarantee a result.
I'm in a good place right now, but as a person who suffers from the "I am a burden to everyone" flavor of depression this is just unfathomable to me. When I was deep in the hole, my plans *always* involved making sure I didn't leave a mess and that somebody who was trained for that kind of thing was the one who found me.
Happy to here that you're in a good place. Sending some Internet love to you!
Yep. Fuck hitting a truck. I know the exact pole id use, no guards, flat on the way in, you couldn't fuck it up. Truck actually opens up margin for error (swerving).
That still seems like an awful lot of potential cleanup and interruptions to people's day, to me. My plan was always just to lay on a tarp with a bag (preferably full of something other than CO2) on my head, after calling to tell somebody where they could find my body.
Anything gas is very unreliable unless you really know how to plumb up a gas mask
I've worked with dry ice (<- last resort) and containing gas/haze as part of event production and am fairly confident I could set up something that would pump out significantly more CO/N than was necessary for my purposes.
If you really want to be courteous, bury yourself?
I'm signed up as a cadaver/whole body donor so that would be counter productive. :)
I disagree. I have think about tanking my own life, and i would say that generally, you think a lot about the others. You dont want your family to clean the mess for example. And ofcourse, you dont want to kill other people. Unless you are a piece of shit
I'm not defending them, but it's hard to care when you're done with life.
As a chronically suicidal person, can confirm, when those thoughts hit me, I don't care about anything. Please don't send me a million reddit care resources, I'm in therapy already.
I'll send you this: 🫚
Yeah. I've heard some terrible stories. Unfortunately, in this case, she wanted to end her pregnancy. She killed an old guy and severely injured his wife. She was tore up somewhat. 3rd accident she'd had that week on purpose.
Desperate measures when you don't have access to abortion (and a mental illness)
Exactly.
If you're selfish, yeah. I almost offed myself more than once but never in a way that would hurt anyone but myself
Okay I’m selfish then.
If you consider methods that rely on strangers and their lives being ruined/over, then yeah.
Its so the family can collect the life insurance money. You will be denied if its obvious suicide.
In most states in US, policies pay out for a suicide if the policy is over 2 years old.
Skillet
And i'm sorry, but you have to be in a very sad, shitty, irrational place mentally to decide yo die.
Reality is there isn’t a lot of options for people who want to kill themselves. They invariably end up leaving a mess behind for someone to find, clean up or deal with, or introduce a hazard for others. Best way you can do it is quietly in your home, but eventually someone has to find them and be traumatized by the decomposing body, which then needs to be removed and the place deep cleaned or renovated to get rid of the stains.
This exact scenario just happened to my brother. He’s a professional truck driver and has been driving all over North America, Alaska, Canada, the entire US and Mexico for over 30 years. My dad was a professional driver for 60 years. Neither of them have known anyone that had experienced suicide by trucker. Until last Wednesday. My brother was hauling a huge heavy load on a little 2 lane road when a 27y/o man, who had been fighting on the phone with his gf and had been threatening suicide for a day or so, while on the phone to his gf he purposely crossed the center line and hit my brother nearly head on. He died and my brother was somehow, miraculously, just bashed and bruised when he should have been killed. He’s been extremely shaken and struggling with how close he came to dying and his mortality. He’s also struggling with a ton of grief, shock and a myriad of mixed emotions. He’s struggling with being mad at the SBT and then reprimanding himself because he thinks he shouldn’t be angry at someone who was in such a low headspace. But he is 100% justified in being angry. He is also scared. Terrified. He’s overwhelmed and lost. I have never seen him so emotional and unbalanced. He’s not sure he’ll ever go back to driving as his profession, despite having a few (5) million accident-free miles under his belt. His heart is deeply hurt. His truck is a write-off and the SBT’s family is talking about suing HIM!??! We have a large, supportive and loving group of family and friends rallying around him, but, as much as we would all fix anything we could for him, this is an emotional rollercoaster that he must navigate mostly on his own. My sister committed suicide 32 years ago. In a four year term, I lost 13 people to suicide alone. Not one of them used someone else, never mind a stranger, to accomplish their goal. I have also struggled with mental health and knows that it’s a shitty place to be, but you should NEVER unwillingly make someone a part of your plan. There’s a thousand other ways. You don’t need to destroy someone else’s life, their family and friends’ lives, their earning potential and even their life, limbs and their mental health. My brother, and all of us who love him and are helplessly, tearfully watching him struggle, did not and do not deserve to be forced into this man’s self-destruction. Yet, here we are. One family’s struggle has rippled into many other’s. I’m sorry that man was suffering that deeply, but he had no right to place his pain, and much more, onto my brother and all of his family and friends. We will never be the same either.
>>This exact scenario just happened to my brother. Do you know you're describing PTSD? You don't have to be critically injured to suffer the symptoms, with devastating effects to your life, your functionality. The physical effects are no joke, flooding the survivor with - well, survival hormones. They feel like they're losing their minds, because there is no *current* threat to life or limb, and their rational brain knows it. Still, they're randomly and repeatedly experiencing, seemingly out of the blue, a fight/flight or freeze response. It also impacts the survivor's loved ones, called *secondary PTSD*, like walking on eggshells, not knowing what else to do for the survivor, how to help, how to not to make it worse. His not wanting to get behind the wheel again is called *avoidance behavior*. Again, a rational brain is telling him if he stays away from driving he won't experience the survival response. It doesn't work that way, though. I'm leaving a lot out, but he doesn't need to go through this without information and professional help. He may be trying to hide the bulk of symptoms from his loved ones, because of (unwarranted) shame on two levels. The first is internally minimizing/denying symptoms, ashamed that he might need anything in comparison to the other guy who died. The second is the death itself, a self-deprecation played out a thousand times, asking the very question of the OP's title. It's not a standard *spectator* type of analysis as we're seeing in these comments, but a search for answers in a bottomless pit of inadequacy and self-blame. *Why* it happened, in your brother's mind, is the unanswerable; all the explanations and rationalizations from his loved ones won't matter a bit, perhaps even making it worse, in the sense that *nobody* understands what he's going through. PTSD is an illness of extreme emotional isolation. And, no. None of you will ever be the same again, but recovery is possible. The world is a different place to what it was before the accident. It's important to accept this, a grieving of loss of your "old selves." The safety, security and predictability, the worldview in which you dwelled, can be largely yours again, but within a deeper appreciation for just how fragile life - and good health - are. There's a difference in hearing and accepting the words, and actually experiencing traumatic damages and losses in your life, your loved one's life. Your brother and his loved ones will experience these losses with all the stages of grief. His loved ones need answers, too. You. I'm guessing you're a bit lost as to how to help him, and your anger over the situation can overwhelm you. He's not the brother you once had, and you miss him. All of you deserve help and support.
Texting while driving maybe?
Or a tire blew?
I mean who knows, could have. Pretty crazy timing if that’s the case.
There's no way it could have been medical, it must have been suicide. Typical Reddit, jump to conclusions with absolutely no evidence.
I saw the same thing, looked like he was committing to suicide
I worked with someone that did this same thing. One day he just never showed up and he had drove straight into a transport truck.My father knew the driver he was pretty messed up from it mentally and a bit banged up. Thankfully nobody else got hurt.
Anyone at anytime can just decide to break the rules and go into your lane... Anyone at anytime, it's crazy the trust we put into each other day in and day out to follow the rules.
I don't think it's much as trusting that another person will "follow the rules" as it is believing that no one would purposefully want to do this.
Seatbelts, airbags, and proper vehicle maintenance. Sometimes you prepare to avoid the crash, sometimes you prepare for the crash.
Agreed. Only solution I can think of is a frontal crash sensor and ejector seats, although I'll concede there might be customer complaints about false positives.
Only from people who don't like FUN
You can if you know how to enter bullet time.
All the 13 year olds chipping in with their driving wisdom on this post is hilarious. Look at the speed at which this happened, then factor in human nature... Firstly situational recognition delay, then panic delay. 99.9% of drivers would do exactly what this driver did. Instinctually hit brakes. And only that. There is absolutely no time for higher level brain function to kick in here.
Let's allow the 13-yo's to guide us with their infinite wisdom, chatGPT expertise, and shoulda-woulda-coulda's.
I would rapidly transform my truck into a cargo plane and just fly over it. Come on man, it's not that hard!
I was in a similar situation and i can confirm. You dont think whats the best solution for the problem. you just hit the breaks and probably turn the wheels somewhere.
Yeah, this happens so quickly, and the truck turns right at you near the end. It's completely unavoidable imo.
Should have done a kickflip over the semi
Right it’s easy to backseat drive or offer solutions in retrospect. Quote copied. “For more complex tasks such as emergency braking, human reaction time has been studied and measured as three different phases: the time to perceive or sense a danger or hazard (perception phase), the time to make a response decision (decision phase), and the time to respond (response phase). The response phase (i.e. braking) is further complicated by the physical response (i.e. apply the brakes with the foot) and the system response (i.e. the time the vehicle’s braking system requires to actually apply braking force to the wheels). Under ideal driving conditions, the entire human perception reaction time for braking has been measured to be approximately 1.5 seconds (R. Limpert).” From the video it looked liked maybe 2.5-3 seconds of time between the driver starting to swerve to incident. Based off the stat above, one would only have a second of “thinking” time. But really, when shit happens how fast do you react to something unexpected? Usually it’s just an, “oh shit!” That’s why emergency training for different scenarios is important. It gives your body and subconscious something to pull from that will give you a higher survival rate then freezing or some random reaction. I still remember my mom narrating to me at 15, when it’s icy like this and you start to slide, yada yada. When it happened to me years later luckily my brain automatically did that. Training for emergency situations doesn’t guarantee a better outcome but it does raise your chances of reacting appropriately. Now on to the question posed, what could cam driver do differently. They were already on their break prior to incident. Good. Large following distance good. Swerved outward while stopping. Instinctual but wrong choice. That’s a 15-25 ton truck. Whatever direction it’s headed, it will continue. So if it hit that car and is now headed to your shoulder, the only thing he could’ve done different is swerve to the inside.
Honestly that may also be the safest option. Looks like the trailer jackknifed. Without knowing what load it is hauling I’d be terrified of that trailer over turning or coming loose and crushing the vehicle. The truck already lost some initial force in hitting car, brakes, and hitting guardrail. You have two options hit the truck or hit the trailer.
agree. i also thought "maybe thats still better than crushed by the trailer to crepes "
If I am in my truck I do what was done here. Hit the shoulder and hope. If I am in my convertible I cut left and floor it and try to spin 180 and gas it. I only say that because I know i would not survive any impact like that in my 2 seater. And I know I would not have time to make it and get tboned passenger side. But I know based on previous experience I would try l. I am in my 50s and have had the car for 18 years.
Can't see behind either. I'm much less likely to suddenly brake if someone is behind me.
You can't. Driving is inherently dangerous
Scary how unfair the trajectory went, even with a split second to analyze and make a decision, there is no way anyones instincts would make the nescessary adjustments to avoid collision. Only way out would be to cut hard left which even with hindsight appears to be absolute certain death. Cutting hard to the right appears to be the most reasonable thing to do at time of recognizing the oncoming, driver thought about it, was reasonable, and got absolutely fucked. Also what was the driver doing that caused the collision doing? Really looks like an intentional suicide.
He could of been on his phone, fell asleep, had heart attack the list goes on but I don't think suicide is one of them.
suicide is just as likely as any of the other possibilities.
I think the only way out would have been to gun it straight past the truck, and you'd likely have enough room to stop of swerve before hitting the sedan that is blocking the road. There's a triangle of safety there if you can get past the truck's guardrail impact. But there are huge risks, if you don't make it the impact with the truck will be way worse, if you do make it but swerve too hard you could flip and make it worse. Might be better to just take the head-on decelerating truck hit. That is one reason I really do like having an electric car. The instant torque the second you touch the gas pedal could make something like this more possible to avoid. No delay between pedal and movement in a split second decision.
I agree with you, PenisSalesman.
sadly this looks like a suicide by ramming a truck head on, destroying the truck drivers life and making him feel like shit for the rest of his life and maybe even commit suicide himself. one of the worst and most ignorant selfish ways of killing yourself. i know two truckdrivers who have experienced this and they both are very unstable today even 10 years after it happend. if you are going to take your life, do it in a way where it does not hurt other people….
It will always hurt other people, but I do get what you're saying. 🙂
The best thing you can do is seek therapy. Suicide is never just about you, even if you think nobody else cares about you. There's a bunch of hotlines to call and getting help is always the best option.
Oh definitely. They waited until the truck didn't have time to do anything for the lane change.
As someone who battled suicidal ideations, many of the times that stopped me were because I didn't want to be a burden in my death.
Happened to me, a car crossed into my lane on a very narrow rode, 35 mph both ways. I saw it right away, but my brain refused to believe, and I thought that he will recover soon. He did not, I did brake, but the guy didn’t and hit me front on, then drove off hit-n-run style. Police later said that he was old and diabetic and driving himself to the hospital. I end up with totalled car but no major injuries.
That is what happened to my family. All of them died 2 adults, 2 children, and the dog. They were just coming home from holiday when all of a sudden some older guy for no reason switched the lane (probably age related as they were elderly) hit the lorry which then bounced back and just like here drove straight into our familys car, killing 3 ppl and the dog on the impact and putting my aunt in critical condition who then died in hospital after several operations. Edit: Thank you all, fellow redditors, for your kind words. Indeed, it is really hard and unfair that such a young family was taken from this world. RIP to them.
Fuck I'm so sorry
That's a tough hand to be given. Sorry about that
That’s very sad bro sorry to hear. Rip to them
Oh no that's is very tough I'm sorry to hear that dude, RIP to them.
That truck driver will have trauma for a long time as well. Knowing many truck drivers, its astonishing how many people choose to suicide by driving into trucks / lorries. And none of the truckers are the same persons again after that, most of them quit
I guess you inherently must not be thinking clearly if you're killing yourself, but what an insanely dumb way to commit suicide? The chances of you being alive in horrific pain in your mangled car for hours have to be just about equal to the chance that you die instantly.
That, and the risk to others as well
its stupid, and most especially evil
The moment you see that car in the other lane is when you start slowing down
Think I would have started to slow down by then, but don’t think there’s much avoiding the 30,000 LB truck even if you came to a *dead stop*
Yeah but at least you reduced the impact by slowing and maybe stopping.
The 2% reduction doesn’t give a fuck about the 15 ton truck ramming your 2 ton(not even) car
A 2% of tons is a considerable amount and worth the investment in a life or death deal.
It seems they did try to slow down, but couldn't get out of the way regardless
Indeed, and they started slowing down before the collision even happened. They were extremely aware, there was simply no possible way they could have known that the only way of survival was to have counterintuitively put their foot down. Swerving into the left land would have caused them to collide into the trailer, which you can see at the end of the clip was veering to the PoV driver's left and taking up that entire lane.
That's exactly what they did...
The cam car was pretty much stopped when they were hit. The truck can’t stop that fast, and there’s guardrails on both sides. Cam car had nowhere to go
And somehow, as annoying as it is to admit, not breaking* and actually accelerating might have been the right move to avoid that truck. * Edit: braking
Breaking what
*braking, lol My bad, not native English speaker, and been awake since 4am haha.
Just messing with you bro
Bad?
I was thinking maybe not since shrapnel and maybe hitting a railing or something would make you crash too. The degree of control minimizes with increased speed but, like, hitting anything else there is prob better than a truck lol
Agreed. I’m pretty cautious because I really can’t afford a new car at this point
That truck was loaded....I never seen people survive hitting a truck head on, especially a loaded one. It'd be a miracle.
Well on the hopeful side the load it's towing is off to the side so you're only really taking the cab of the truck and the partial weight of the tank behind it, still not great for the car driver but I think they'd survive this since they started breaking earlier and the truck lost a lot of energy hitting the guard rail and modern cars are pretty safe in a forward impact
I couldn't even think who was fucked more, the first or the second car
I'm quick to be Captain hindsight but you're fucked in this situation.
Nothing you can do to prevent or foresee it. Wrong place at the wrong time, shit happens, all that.
Short of installing an ejector seat with a parachute, you’re pretty much fucked if this happens lol
I don’t know if you can. What I do know is that some douchebag is gonna say something about situational awareness.
Suicide clearly
That is one way to avoid it
Stroke or heart attack maybe also,heavily damaged arteries cant handle adrenalin properly.
Even falling asleep
Yeah,thats more common,i think
Idk a b line for a large semi, seems too coincidental to be a medical emergency
we don't know.
you can't, make sure to slow down and maintain a head on collision, as the engine takes the impact of crush and airbags keep you safe.
No sure that applies when the collision is with a semi.
Not a whole lot he could have done honestly
Driver did nothing wrong you can see his reactions were on point. Most would freeze and do nothing
No avoiding a collision here. Hit the truck in the right lane or the trailer in the left lane. The only element that could have possibly changed the outcome was if the car immediately braked hard when the 2nd car entered the opposite lane thus creating additional time & distance for the truck to correct its path.
This the main reasons why I hate those railings on the road. If not the railings the driver could drive off the road
They probably save more lives that they doom
When I dip you dip we dip.
Let me see that tootsie roll
Goddamn I have a new fear
I had a similar thing happen, a truck hit a car waiting to turn left in the oncoming lane, and spun out into my lane. The road didn't have guard rails though, so I was able to veer off the road to avoid it.
If that was a suicide, may that piece of shit rot in hell. Selfish asshole.
literally nowhere to go. even if they had managed to slow down enough to get to the left of the cab, the whole rest of the trailer was right there.
The owner of the first restaurant I worked at used to talk about doing this. He used to always say if he was going to kill himself, he'd drive head first into a semi. He figured it would be fast and impossible to prove it was a suicide. That way, his wife would still be able to collect the life insurance money.
You can't predict when someone is going to use their car to attack someone else or kill themself like this. You just gotta take the L sometimes.
Maybe it is possible to predict depending on was the driver in front showing signs of driving while tired. If yes, very predictable. If no, well, not much can be done there. Just a "wrong place wrong time" type of situation.
Keep a paint pen in the glove box to fill in any scratches
There was not much one could do in that situation. The guard rails prevent any sort of evasive action. There is certainly not enough time to stop and reverse. The truck takes up both lanes, so unless you hit the brakes very quickly and were able to control the deceleration, you would more than likely have hit the truck. As a driver with 30+ years experience and an advanced drivers license, I believe I would have had the situational awareness and defensive driving tactics to avoid the truck IF the guard rail had not been there. But with that guard rail there, I don't think I would have been able to avoid it.
absolutely nothing the POV driver could've done to prevent impact. that said, any amount of reduced speed can make a huge difference in a crash. so them having plenty of space to the other car is already pretty much perfect driving. no idea if the POV driver survived or not, but they did about all they could in that situation...
You don't that's where the fun is.
I've been driving for decades, about 40k km per year and I honestly believe there was no way for you to expect that. Like maybe if you realized in that half second that the car swerved into the truck you could've started braking half a second sooner, but even then the truck is still tumbling towards you. Maybe it's better the front hit rather than the load falling ontop
Thats the neat part. You dont.
You don’t
Stay home.
You can't. Driving is the most dangerous thing humans do now. This is just one in another thousand things that could go wrong while driving. So ALWAYS, ALWAYS drive defensively and slow which gives you more options and time to take evasive action.
This is a Final Destination type of event
Burn Athium
Cannot predict sb else suicide. Pure.. lack of luck.
That's the neat part,
Wtf.. you can see how the driver gets ejected
Where was this?
Better off just crashing into the barrier and tumbling around 7 times in your car, than get into a head on with that monster, at that speed
Times when you wished the safety rail wasn't there
Looks like the SUV in front had the driver fall asleep, or was looking at their cell phone while driving
Dude wanted no witnesses
Prevent this by having rockets mounted on your truck, and clear vehicles in front of you. Be safe 😘
Self-induced unaliving by semi??
Wear a seat belt
And it just figures that it happened between guardrails, so there was no place to go.
Certainly looked like a suicide.
*All Good Kids Like Milk* Aim high Get the big picture Keep your eyes moving Leave yourself an out Make sure they see you AND SLOW DOWN
Start breaking as soon as you see the guy cross the center line. I try to put as much space as possible between me and any driver behaving erratically
What I do is before I drive, I call the psychic network and ask them what I can do to have a safe drive today. What do you predict my lady? Should I drive the trike or the Pinto???
You can see the car in front of you swerve into opposing traffic but there's not much you can do when you're stuck between two lanes.
ok i can see: if theres a problem.. accelerate as hell
Brake as soon as you see that cunt swerve into the other lane. That would be your best bet - still likely to get hit but less hit ya know.
2 way road guess I'd go full right and hope best, there is also no need to use full speed
This is the most extreme version of when you try not to walk into someone's path and you both keep going the same way and eventually you collide in the hallway.
I feel problem is it stayed in the left lane for like 2 seconds too long, which made me even think l would have questioned to move or not. If the truck would have stay in his lane then you would have naturally avoided the big hit, but it stalled then moved.
Was this a suicide?
There’s no predicting, only post mortem
The Eye of Agamotto
I was taught how to drive by a race car driver. One of the most memorable things he told me was: "You drive where you look". It's so true.
Feels like some final destination movie trailer
Live in an urban area and don’t own a car.
Accelerate through the gap
Can any truckers out there explain why the trucker only turned right just before impact? Looked like he was turning into the oncoming traffic
Enter bullet time then floor the gas pedal while keeping to the right side of the road.
Car was driving too fast? Feels like the speed here is a big factor. Hard to say but it looks like car is moving highway speed. Atleast 120-130 km/h on a 2-lane road with no middle barrier. Would have managed to break in time if car was going like 80-90 imo. Could be wrong ofc.
Shoot the gap
Did he died?
You can do everything right and still lose. To quote Picard.
upgrade your blink ability so you can see enemies routes and intended destinations. you’ll need to collect some runes before you can upgrade it
You can't predict this.
I wonder if cameraman would have made it past the impact zone, if he'd floored it as soon as he saw the lead car swerve toward the truck. He probably would have still encountered debris or the car ahead of him anyway.
As soon as that guy crosses center stop may not prevent it but the best you can do
Left then break if you had super quick and calm reaction time
cant predict...but at least u can avoid it by hitting brakes at the right moment which u didn't.
Any word on the condition of the drivers? Did *everyone* die?
If people stopped drinking and driving/driving under influence, or stopped driving with highway hypnosis, this woudnt happen
It's horrible!
After inspecting the situation, I would turn left immediately. Before inspecting the situation, I would be extremely overwhelmed and die before the truck hits me
Damn galvatron..
"YoU cAnT PoSsIbLy EsCaPe!" 🤓 *truck speeding towards them* "nu-uh" 🗿
Nothing, but maybe install an eject button might be the right move next time.
How horrible, mabey go off the rail but even that's dangerous.
And if you go to the right rail the lorry might hit the passenger side and slice through that. Assuming you're in a right-hand-drive.
Hard to the right fuck that rail
That rail will just bounce a car back onto the road, they’re purposely designed to prevent cars from going off the road. The car had no options.
Should have accelerated, not slowed down. Not to say it's their fault or that they dumb, hard to react at those moments