Close Call

Awe man! I was looking for another one of those 'runaway Prius' stories.

Bob Wilson

 

Hi Speed...,

Ok apparently not. I just have a bad attitude anybody behind me when I am in the left lane. If the next lane over is doing 35, there is no way I am going any faster than 50. Even if there is nobody in front of me. Its just too dangerous. And many times I have been badly tailgaited in such situations, and there is no where to go, but ahead. To be able to exit the lane would require slowing to almost a stop and then forcing the car in sideways with feet fore and aft to spare.

When safely speeding you need to maintain a 200 yard or better situational awareness (knowledge of all cars and their relative speed to your car). If you cannot see around cars that far ahead, its just not safe to speed. Your experience surely illustrates this.

Like somebody pointed out, its 100 yards till you get on the brake pedal, and the second hundred to get down to a non-life-theatening speed. This of course assumes good road conditions, and everybody else on the road has a well maintained car, and is not yacking on the cell phone.

One of the main reasons to maintain such awareness is that somebody who slows sudenly, even gradually slowing, sticks out like a sore thumb. And that is the que to put the observational powers into high gear.

 

I know how that is - I was a passenger once with a friend driving, traveling south in the right lane of a two-way city street. We had been stopped at a light where the cross street was one-way going west, and when the light changed my friend accelerated normally down the block and into the next intersection, where the cross street was one way going east ...

... and in the leftmost lane of that one-way street was an eastbound driver coming full speed at my door.

My friend could do very little besides accelerate some and veer left, neither of which could have prevented a collision, but the eastbound driver finally saw us and completed a panic stop about 24 inches from my right hip.

My friend just continued across the intersection and pulled over to breathe; the other driver just resumed driving and was gone.

And after breathing for a while my friend and I realized it was hard to be sure what had happened. Could our light at the 2nd intersection possibly have been red? Neither one of us thought so, but how else to explain cross traffic that isn't even slowing down? And anyway, shouldn't we have seen it coming?

It bugged me so much that just a few minutes after my friend dropped me off I went back to the scene myself with a timer (it was very close in time and late at night, so the signal timing should not have changed), and watched the signals at both intersections through several cycles. The one at the crossing where we had been stopped was actually the later one to go green, meaning that by the time we accelerated down the block and reached the next signal, it was not only unmistakably green but had been green for something like 13 seconds. The other driver had just been tooling down a straight clear street ignoring 13 seconds of red. And because they were on a one-way in the leftmost lane and there were some sight obstructions at the corner, there really wasn't any way we could have spotted them earlier than we did. All the luck in that story was in the other driver finally getting a clue and hitting the brake.

And I can still replay that sick feeling of not being able to remember what color the signal was right after the fact, before going back to time it.

-Chap

 

It's also a testimonial to the overcrowding on urban highways. There is virtually no way to keep assured clear distance in front of your car. It gets filled in as fast as you create it.

Tom

 

Yes, there is, set a speed limit that ensures that the reduced separation between vehicles is safe.

 

Only if you are able and willing to enforce it, and then you end up reducing the amount of traffic that can move on existing roads. All of the tail-gating is already illegal. So is the speeding. Traffic enforcement in major cities is a joke. You will need a better plan than that. How about a complete overhaul of most urban driver's attitudes? It would probably be easier to simply eliminate half of all urban populations.

Tom

 

My ack surface is fine.

Most of those pieces of tire you see on the roads are retreads. Personally, I think retreads are a bad idea, but truckers use them to save a lot of money on tires. They fail more frequently than a regular tire. I think that there is a law that trucks can't put retreads on the front, since when a front tire blows, the vehicle is more likely to lose control than if a back tire blows.

 

I had a roll of carpet nearly 2 ft diameter fall off a truck, and roll straight at me. I was traveling at least 70 (not a lane hogger). I knew the left lane was clear and swerved, just touching the brakes. No drama, the Prius handles fine. People who whine about Prius handling problems, should know that it seems to me to be fine for any emergency I've ever had to deal with. I drive 90 miles a day on LA freeways.

 

I'd argue that only inspecting them when you fill with air would be a mistake. With TPMS, and the fact that the tires hold air well, I rarely have to stop to check air pressure.

One thing I picked up from my uncle who was a pilot is a quick "pre-flight" check if you will. I don't do it before I get in the car every time, but at least once a week, usually more often, I do a quick once around the car. Tire tread depth, sidewalls, bumpers, doors, any chips in the glass, nope we're good to go.

 

The 2 (3) second rule is fine for legal speeds. But is woefully inadequate for illegal speed safety. As you found out, cars do not just stop at the maximum braking power sometimes. Sometimes they go smack in front of you and stop allot faster than the braking power of any vehicle brakes. This is why the situational awareness is so important.

If the other drivers wont let you drive safe, are you going to be a lemming and run off the cliff too?

The issue is, is safetly more important to you than the effects of letting that agressive driver get in front of you. Personally, I want those guys out front, so I can keep an eye on them all the time. The real problem is when they are beside you and try to drive over your hood. At least when they PIT maneuver themselves 100 yards ahead, you got time to react.