Motor vehicles / cars crashing into buildings

Just post rationalising off the premise that everyone is already driving dangerously and at speeds exceeding the limit so of course you need to be able to go ‘faster’ to protect yourself. It’s like an arms race.

I’ve also heard people in the countryside saying it’s the slow (usually means legal limit, appropriate for the conditions) drivers that cause accidents, quite counter intuitive but hey

It's bullshit. The right thing to do when things are going wrong is to remove energy and buy a bit of time to think about it

Accelerate out of danger? I’d rather be behind idiot drivers than in front, that way you control the distance between you and them.

There's an argument for being able to get out of someone's blind spot more quickly if you're overtaking on a motorway and going .3mph faster than them, obviously it's a pretty bad one as you may as well stay behind them and go .3 mph slower, but even in that situation cars could be speed limited with a 5mph, 5 second boost you can use once every few minutes at most to satisfy that argument.

In almost all situations, if you feel like there's actual danger the right answer is to remain in a straight line (or straight along the road) and brake. This is also the answer to the supposed conundrum of "how will the self driving car know whether to flatten the granny in the road or the child on the pavement?!"

What do you lot know about driving? You need police driver training.

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Bridge wasn't wearing hi-vi... oh...

In almost all situations

That's kind of the point though. In some (very few) rare situations slowing down isn't necessarily the answer. (See how many caveats there were on that sentence...)

For example, contrived situation but quite common, being stationary and seeing a car reversing towards you. You can beep all you like but at some point moving away (which involves accelerating) is going to give you a chance of avoiding being hit. Do it in a panic and there's a good chance that you might end up hitting something/someone yourself.

Like most things, the answer is to do as much to avoid being in the situation in the first place (in this situation giving more room to the car in front) but sometimes even with the best judgement someone just does something so unexpected that you end up having to take avoiding action.

In my own experience I've had someone overtaking me on a motorway blow a tyre, swerve into the central reservation and then bounce off heading for me. In my split second WTF decision making I could have braked sharply (where I could either have been hit from behind by the person near tailgating me, or even by the careering car depending on how it's velocity changed post impact) or boot it into the clear lane ahead of me. I chose the latter and got away with it.

(The person tailgating me had been there for only a couple of seconds having pulled in behind me in order to overtake me. The lane to my left wasn't clear as I was overtaking someone myself.)

Bridge wasn't wearing hi-vi... oh...

Looks like the bridge was wearing a pelmet though.

"how will the self driving car know whether to flatten the granny in the road or the child on the pavement?!"

hopefully the self driving car won't be in that situation as its only job is to actually pay attention to the road, won't be able to break the speed limit, and won't be distracted by a facebook notification.

This happened over the weekend, there are some pics online but they are on those incredibly spammy local news websites with a million pop-ups

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-66148284

being stationary and seeing a car reversing towards you. You can beep all you like but at some point moving away (which involves accelerating)

Doubt you'll need to go over the speed limit in this situation so it would make absolutely no difference if your car was limited.

In my own experience I've had someone overtaking me on a motorway blow a tyre

This is the kind of thing people are thinking of when they "need" the car to be able to go to 180mph for safety. Even though you may have come off worse with a limited car, overall people would be a lot safer. I'm sure with modern collision detection a limit could be briefly deactivated in an emergency, or maybe the occasional speed limit breaking boost could be an extra decent bit of power for a few seconds but everything that just happened is noted on a black box and uploaded to your insurers every time you "need" to break the speed limit.

Would be great. If every car was limited like loads of vans, no one would need fast cars. Maybe.
But I live in Germany, and we won't have any of that, because freedom!

And on the fast cars are safer because wrooom, my dad always said he needed fast cars and called it "active safety".

spotted yet another inept wankpanzer pilot parked in a wall on my ride home.
luckily ? they'd managed to avoid the tree on the way in.
this is the street view from a bit further back.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/C5H4KngJygC82a746
the path is a shared use national cycle network route. they'd flattened the parking signpost and gone through the pretty substantial wall.

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I've had the odd situation where I have had to "accelerate out of danger". One I remember was a lorry (illegally) pulling out into lane 2 on a French motorway (most are only 2 lanes) despite me being in the space he wanted at the time, and too far forward alongside him for braking to be the better idea. I was certainly glad on that day to be in an Aston Martin with the power to push it to 190 mph than my diesel Focus with fuck all.

oh yeah, this section is currently under a 40mph temporary speed limit due to roadworks a bit further on...

“A car left the road”.
No fault of the driver?
I hate when they refuse to assign responsibility but maybe it’s a liability issue.

Hope the bridge is arrested for wasting police time.

Missouri:

https://twitter.com/DeionBroxton/status/1681425521987469312

Blimey.

The filming seems strange though, it looks like they were almost expecting it and had their phone out

It’s a security camera with a 360 lens

So what would you have done if you were in your focus?

Been squashed by a lorry driver.

Likewise describing road incidents as ‘accidents’.
Usually they are due to reckless or careless behaviour and there’s nothing accidental about them.