Maelochs

When I put my buttocks through a windshield, I never realized the workout video option.... "Buns Stronger than Steel!"

Noddy

Like many on this forum he's taking one tiny little fact and going way too far with it. The tensile strength of a strand of windshield glass is 5x stronger than steel. Unfortunately that has nothing at all to do with objects penetrating windshields like when Bambi is hurled at the glass at 75mph.

Old story: Aircraft canopies are tested for bird strikes by firing dead chickens at them. The USAF was having trouble with canopies routinely shattering and couldn't figure out what was wrong so they contacted the RAF and asked them for help.
The answer that came back was "defrost the chickens".

corrado33

The glass is shattered. The only reason it's still in "one piece" is because it's laminated. It's the plastic between the two glass layers that is still "intact." The glass is 100% shattered.

Do you really want me to find pictures of things flying THROUGH windshields making a neat hole?

I can find many, many more like it.

Maelochs

If glass were really stronger than steel wouldn't we all be driving glass cars and riding glass bikes?

Oh wait ... he said stronger than steel ... not stronger than deer. All good then.

rumrunn6

Sangetsu

most people simply lack the intellect and the concentration to actually operate a motor vehicle

Many people tend to drive distracted. Between looking at phones to catch up on emails, messages, missed calls, and Facebook, or trying to find a good station on the radio, eating chips, drinking cola, lighting a cigarette, or arguing with a passenger. Driving safely only requires that you pay attention to what you are doing. But people nowadays need to be in constant communication with each other, and/or constantly entertained, and driving while doing either (or both) can be dangerous.

Noddy

Ah, yes, the complete nonsense of multi-tasking coupled with the addiction to social media and email compounded by the short attention span epidemic.
I passed someone the other day knowing full well he was not paying complete attention as I was coming up on him. My passenger looked over as we passed and said the guy had a small notebook in his hand at the top of the wheel. This on a 3 lane limited access highway with speeds routinely over 75mph.

nycphotography

No, "always" would be quite the generalization.

"Almost always" leaves it open to discretion and decision making as you have to decide what to hit and what to avoid.

AlmostTrick

For the most part, I attribute cars "hitting stuff" to insufficient following distance or insufficient driver attention.

Pay attention, maintain adequate gaps and it's pretty hard to just run into stuff "in the road", or need to swerve and crash to avoid it.

Drillium Dude 

Although it's safer to hit a deer low (and how much lower can one get than an F1 car?), I'm sure this guy would've been happy to have had the chance to swerve and miss Bambi.

Stefan Johannson, Austrian Grand Prix (practice) 1987:



DD

jon c. 

Sometimes it's hard to maintain adequate gaps when a deer comes flying out the trees.

AlmostTrick

Agreed.

My comment is based on what I see on our roads everyday. Drivers with barely one car length gap, in groups at speeds above the posted limit. Dangerously swerve or hit? Of course.

CliffordK

Are the people advocating "just drive/ride over it" the ones that end up with squirrels in their spokes?



I learned to avoid road debris. See a shopping bag on the road. Safe? You don't know what is inside of it

Let the trucks grind the stuff up if they wish, but steer the cars around the obstructions.

Know who/what is around you, and look back quickly before doing any avoidance maneuvers.

This has also proved helpful on a bike when cars will occasionally pull out in front of me, and I'm forced to react quickly to keep from ramming them.

jefnvk

If you are on a motorcycle/bike, my advice is markedly different than if you are in a much better protected car.

I will never advocate for running over something if you can maneuver around it safely. What I advocate against is swerving in an unsafe manner or taking evasive maneuvers without knowing it can be done safely. No, I don't know what is in a shopping bag, but in almost every situation the damage from that is going to be far less if I panic, swerve, and flip the car or hit something or someone else.

I got in a car wreck a few years back trying to avoid a car drifting into my lane who was oblivious to me, and wound up sideswiping another car with the maneuver. Since I initiated the movement that caused the wreck, I was at fault, especially because the car I was avoiding was oblivious to me even hitting the other vehicle and just continued on. Had I just let them hit me, they'd have been at fault. Since then, I've very much taken a preference towards hitting things in my lane that are unavoidable over potentially being at fault for something else.

Maelochs

jefnvk says: "Don't crash avoiding an accident."

I say: "How sad that you would need to say that ... and how much sadder that people debate the point."

jefnvk

If there was no debate or discussion of the topics, there would really be no reason to even be here. There aren't many unique topics that come up on any given day, that couldn't easily be googled or figured out from old topics, and the ones that do generally can easily be answered with a response or two.

Maelochs

Well .... whatever.

I think that people who choose to support the position of Not avoiding an avoidable accident are on the wrong side of that one ... and I hope I am never on their wrong side.

nycphotography

If he was unable to safely avoid it, the it was unavoidable.

You would prefer he swerve to avoid it, because even though he didn't ahave time to look, that is usually safe?

So the one time when someone run him out of his lane and he swerves to avoid it, except there's a motorcycle in his blind spot and he takes the guy down... I'm assuming you are accepting liability to the motorcyclist since he was following your advice by swerving to avoid the other accident?

Scarbo

OMG--you mean one of these little ****ers can take me down???? I take too much for granted.

Noddy

In racing we call that running out of skills. In the spirit of healthy debate (!) of this forum it wasn't unavoidable it was just unavoidable for HIM.
Having said that - I drum into family and friends NO SWERVING.

Look the swerve is pretty much instinctive behavior - and it honestly is something that advanced driving techniques train you OUT of doing - and that way you don't end up like the large SUV I saw go two wheels in the air avoiding some distracted idiot who came over on them. Hopefully they retained bladder and bowel control during their instinctive maneuver that could have put them over a barrier.

CliffordK

Keep in mind the bike wasn't beamed onto the road from the Starship Enterprise moments before the crash.

If the bike was laying on the road, then the driver wasn't looking far enough ahead, or was over-driving the visibility. Perhaps not paying attention to other vehicle's movements.

If the bike fell off of the car in front of them, then the following vehicle hadn't looked at the load, and was likely following too closely.

If it did fall off a vehicle moments earlier, it might still be bouncing, and could take out the grill, radiator, or perhaps even the windshield.

Adequately paying attention, one could avoid the obstacle without any extreme avoidance maneuvers.

Scarbo

Not always. I'm also a motorcyclist as well as a cyclist; and in motorcycling, swerving is a completely valid strategy for avoiding sudden road obstacles, provided that you remain situationally aware of your immediate surroundings. Sometimes, it is simply not wise to brake for an obstacle. In fact, motorcyclists with an eye towards safety often practice swerving techniques. So, in this sense they become something more than instinctive, or better said, become so through practice.

CroMo Mike 

A guy driving a semi-truck on the interstate near here one day ran over a mattress lying in his lane. The mattress got hung up on the underbelly of the tractor and the resulting friction of the mattress innersprings against the road set the mattress on fire, which set the tractor on fire. It burned to a crisp parked on the shoulder of the highway. Bad day for somebody.


On a lighter note, a pickup truck with a bed loaded with "personal goods" passed me on the interstate one day. Among the items was a cat carrier box. A short way later, the cat carrier fell off onto the road and slid along in an upright position and I could see the cat in there with every hair on his back standing straight up. The cage slid to a stop on the shoulder, still upright. I pulled up beside the truck and motioned back, he nodded ok and took the next turn around to go back.

coominya

I'll try and remember that next time a cyclist pulls out into my lane

Noddy

Which is exactly why I said "pretty much".

I don't know what it is about this forum but the discussion style here is more tiresome, pedantic and nit-picky than the other places I hang out on the web so I think it's time for me to do more elsewhere and a lot less here. I'll be careful not to let the door hit me on the way out.