Can a person know for sure how'd they react in a life-or-death situation?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Let’s try it a different way…
my daughter was learning to drive and was operating the vehicle fine under normal conditions, I still did not trust that she would have the instinct to react correctly in an unexpected situation, so I always watched the road and scanned for problems even more intently than if I were driving myself. We were cruising along at 35 or so when a pedestrian stepped from behind a parked car directly into our path. Although I’d never have thought I could react so quickly, somehow my arm shot out and grabbed the wheel just as she started to make the same maneuver. Because both of us were turning the wheel, it turned too far, causing the car to go off the road, into the house where one person was killed & two others were injured.

See, you panicked, took an action that wasn’t necessary & caused more harm than good. What happened in your original scenario is that you reacted & got lucky.
I highly doubt that most people, while sitting in the passenger seat, can jerk the wheel around an obstacle, then move it back to the original position so that the car continues to go straight down the road without practicing it repeatedly. You don’t know exactly how far to turn it to swerve around the obstacle; just a couple of degrees off on either the first or second turn is potentially disastrous.

62

I reacted to the situation as it presented itself, no panic was involved, so no, it couldn’t have happened that way.

Could my actions have caused some other problem? Sure. I never said I could choose the best course of action, only that I can depend on myself to react calmly and base my decision on the information at hand, which is exactly what most people do when the situation requires it.

I expect most people could maneuver around something from the passenger seat, but I have done a fair amount of reluctant passenger-driving without incident. It’s the kind of skill one ought to develop, because who knows when the driver will pass out or die.

63

::: shrug:::
I don’t know if my life has been that exciting but I have been in several life and death situations and I have not frozen yet.
Let’s see now:
*Fought numerous brush fires waiting for the fire dept (try standing behind your house on the top of a hill while a brush fire comes roaring up the hill at you. You have a garden hose to protect your house). Nobody would fault me for running but it was my house, I wasn’t running.
*Had a knife held to my throat in the 8th grade by a gang banger.
*Ran a couple of armed robbers out of the gas station I worked at when I was 18
*Did a swimming rescue of two people that swamped a sailboat about 200 yards offshore. This was Easter time here on the west coast and they were so far into hyperthermia neither one could stand when I got them to shore.
*Numerous driving situations

Of all of these the only one I was trained for was the swimming rescue. ( and that training says DON’T)
Exciting life? I don’t think so, but I have been there and done that.

64

While this might technically meet the definition of life and death this type of thing isn’t what I think of when I think of a life or death situation. I think more along the lines of a deranged gunman loose in the building, a house fire, or being attacked by a wild animal, etc. If swerving to avoid hitting people with your car counts as life or death we all face life or death situations almost every single day.

65

This isn’t a technicality–a quarter of accidental deaths in the U.S. are caused by motor vehicles. It’s exactly this type of skewed risk assessment that makes people irrationally fearful of relatively safe activities like flying on commercial aircraft, yet think nothing of typing a text message when they are supposed to be watching the road and not killing people with their death machines.

Wild animal attacks are seldom fatal. Take sharks, for instance: a town in Florida has had over 230 shark attacks and zero fatalities. That means not one attacked person even reacted so poorly that they died, even though obviously all were in the ocean.

A “deranged gunman” in your building? Your chances for survival are again excellent. Do nothing and you will likely be fine.

House fire? Leave the building, alerting others and bringing non-mobile occupants with you. Do people really think they might just stand around confused and unable to figure this out quickly enough? Sure, maybe it will be too late to execute this, but that’s a different problem. Most house fires do not have fatalities, so people are generally behaving adequately on the fly.

Most of us face life-or-death decisions often and perform well enough to prevent a death, so it seems safe to say you can be sure you will be able to make a reasonable effort appropriate to the situation, not freeze up or panic yourself to death, unless you personally are prone to that type of behavior, in which case, you ought to know that about yourself anyway.

66

I’ve performed well in emergency situations so far but I’d be a fool to think it’ll always be like that. I saw a friend freeze when a robber spun around and pointed a gun at him. He wanted to retreat, but could not. As a car driver he’s presumably encountered life or death decisions often :D, but as a bloke with a gun at his neck it turned out a little differently from what he expected.

67

I answered yes on the basis that some people have actually experienced them before and could safely say they would react in a similar way under similar circumstances (I’m thinking fire fighters, SWAT officers, combat vets, etc. who have been in a similar scenario on multiple occasions and just saying how they’d react to that same set of circumstances)). But if you haven’t had the experience (I haven’t), I don’t think you can answer yes.

68

Here I am wishing for an option other than a simple yes/no.

I have been in enough crisis situations to know that I’ll basically keep my head on straight. I don’t scream or run around in circles. I feel confident that this would not be me in any situation.

But whether I do anything useful is kind of hit or miss. I have experienced paralysis in critical situations. More than once as a passenger in a car, I saw something the driver missed and all I could do was say “Uh uh uh!” until the driver spotted it. (In one case, my brother started swearing about people who don’t know how to drive and I had to point out - after we were safely in the right lane - that he was the one in the wrong lane heading for oncoming traffic.)

Anyway, I settle for answering no. You really don’t know how you’ll react.

Even the people who believe they’d react heroically are often framing the scene in a way that favors their story. For example, one of my friends once insisted that he absolutely would stop a gunman shooting in a theater… but when I asked what he’d do if there was a crowd of people between him and the gunman, he couldn’t figure out how to get through the crowd. So, yeah, maybe he’d be courageous if he was the 5% of the crowd close enough to do anything, but even if the rational light of a hypothetical, he didn’t know how to act if he was the 95%.

69

Way back when, I mostly drove things with a standard transmission.
Later on, when I had been in automatic transmissions for a while, when in panic ( sudden ) situations, no time to think, my left foot was still hitting the clutch.

Then came flying. Train, train, train… Need a plan in my pocket already practiced because for this, there is no time left to think, do it right & right now.

Then came ‘hanger flying’, tall tales and some true. The wise old pelican says that one time this happened ( something that little airplane herders don’t have a way to do in the non existent & not affordable sim and he is alive because he was lucky, smart, blessed by God so that he did such & thus. I listened & practiced in my mind what he did so that when I ran into that boogybear, I might get it to work for me when all else had failed.

Over the years, some of those things happened & I am an old pilot now.

In general, when thinking stops or has no time or the lizard brain is beating on the door, a person will revert to the oldest and/or the strongest habit. That does not always = the smartest thing. Repeat until the smart thing is the longest & strongest habit.

Pilots train & train
My left foot trained & trained for years.

Saw, was in or witnessed may things over the years. Some I was stupid enough to deliberately see if my idea would actually work. I am now an old man. So far so good.

I know a few people who, … well for example, if a wasp or honey bee of some such is within sight or sound, they will drive into a tree, building, run over a baby with a lawn mower because they will be screaming with their eyes clamped shut and their arms waving and running if not restrained someway. They know they do this & still can not lessen the effect it has on them. Makes me nervous if they are mowing grass or driving a car within 1000 feet of me. So panic = death in my mind.

IMO, you can train & practice just in your mind to the point that things that a person is not able to actually practice, you can actually have some of the action & reactions that would be like if you had been able to practice.

What some call mind set is just really a willingness to think of something bad and figure a way out with accounts & stories of people who won & lost by doing this and that. Too many people IMO shrink away with, “How can you even think about that. It is too horrible.”

When it happens because that number comes up, they die or do the wrong thing or just panic and the ones that have thought of that very thing, more than once and made a plan more than likely do not die or panic.

I have not thought of every possibility nor been/done everything but I am an old man who read a lot of books but did not live in the library.

So it is said, I can’t know of every possibility nor be in every circumstance but if you can dream it up, I will think about it and make some plans.

There are things that I can’t do mentally or physically anymore but I have plans. One is very general, I am not afraid of that but I know I can’t do it anymore so I will not get into that position.

I have several plans for the killer asteroid depending on size, when, where but if I am unlucky, I have a plan for that too. Also a plan for when my plan is totally bad & wrong.

Favorite quote: As I remember it:

" Colonel Blondi Hasler, why do you refuse to take a transmitter with you in the Trans-Alantic races? "

CBH, “Because I chose to go out there & I should be prepared. If I am not, then I will not ask any man to come to my rescue and endanger another or more lives. I will drown like a gentleman.”

So if I chose to do something, I feel it is my responsibility to be as prepared as I possible can, be it flying, boating, motorcycles, cliff climbing, shooting, hunting, whatever. And now I am an old man. So far, so good.

For all PRACTICAL purposes I can know what I will or not do. I am sure there is something out there in the real world that will be totally unknown to me but other than flights of wild imagination, I have not met up with it yet.

Always
never
without exception
impossible
using critical thinking
etc,. etc.

Are gotcha words that are used to limit people & things that we don’t want to believe are possible IMO. :cool:

70

Never swerve to avoid a deer. You may think you are being super calm, cool, and collected and not panicking, but you are increasing the risk to you and to the other people on the road. Keep the wheels straight and hit the brakes.

71

I have hit no deer and harmed no people in hundreds of thousands of miles of driving, so I’ll just keep doing what works for me and taking each situation as it comes. Evading obstacles is generally better than colliding with them.

I saw the immediate aftermath of a horrific situation a few years back. One guy hit a deer and sent it flying into oncoming traffic. The deer-hitter was fine, but the other driver was literally impaled through the chest with the deer’s leg and died on the scene, as did the deer.

72

Back to the original question… What is the use or value of talking yourself into a doubtful state and calling it accuracy? Have some faith and confidence in yourselves, people! Self-preservation is a normal instinct, as is protecting your loved ones, so you probably have it. Do you think people who achieve great things spend a lot of time reminding themselves that they may choke and fail? Psyching yourself out of success is a recipe for failure and I’d rather know I can and will handle anything that comes my way, even if that means I am deluding myself. I’d be scared to leave the house if I couldn’t even count on or trust that I wasn’t going to spaz out when it matters most.

73

Thought I’d chip in with a little anecdote. A few years ago, a fight broke out in my local pub while I was sitting at the bar. One of the guys pulled out a knife.

The next thing I knew, I was in the office behind the bar. I don’t remember any thought process as to the safest place to be or how to react - I was just off my bar stool, behind the bar, and into the staff only office in a split second.

It wasn’t a “life or death” situation, but I was amazed afterwards at exactly how quickly my survival instinct kicked in. If you’d said to me before, “what would you do if there was fight in the pub and somebody pulled a knife?”, I don’t know what I would have said. I guess you only find out when these things happen.

74

I think I see now why you always behave so well in a crisis. You define what you did as the right thing to do and voila! You’ve always done the right thing.

75

When no one gets hurt, it seems reasonable to define whatever you’ve done as the right thing. What more do you want from a near-car-accident, a freezer full of deer steaks?

76

It depends on how long it takes to make a decision. To swerve safely, you have to know that you’re not going to swerve into something (car, truck, school bus, etc) and that the cars around you can safely react to you. If the deer jumps in front of you and you don’t have time to think, you react instinctively. If you take the time to check your mirrors and blind spot, you’ve already plowed through the deer. If your instinctual reaction is deer==>swerve, you’re only right when there doesn’t happen to be something in the space where you swerve.

77

Is that like saying it’s OK to leave a bullet in your gun while you clean it because the only thing you accidentally shot was the carpet?

78

I try to be aware of moving and stationary objects while I drive. If you have tunnel vision, YMMV.

79

That’s not even remotely similar. Avoiding hitting stuff is a high priority while I drive, not comparable to incompetently cleaning a loaded gun.

80

You’re hilarious.