At the site where I originally first saw this video (reddit)
almost everyone is saying that the guy in the grader should be fired or beaten or punished for bailing, causing the other two cars to be swept away. Many are also arguing that, obviously, driving away is the fastest and most effective way of escaping the flood.
I totally disagree. The evidence in the video shows that those who ran were not in danger of being swept away. The guy in the stuck grader who bailed and ran? Not swept away. The people on foot got to safety before the drivers could even start their cars. In fact, the only people swept away were those who chose to save their cars too.
So, who was in the wrong? The grader driver or the car drivers?
It’s hard to say with the video starting when it did. Some comments there talk about the guy “trying to save the grader”, but it’s not clear that this is what he was actually doing.
I do wonder why he left it in gear when he bailed out, but I’ll admit I have no idea how complicated the transmission is on such a vehicle, so it may be that he thought he didn’t have time to put it in park, or such wasn’t even possible, or some such thing.
But the car/truck drivers also clearly made a bad choice. It should have been clear that the grader was in the way (they wasted a lot of time pointlessly honking their horns), and that giving up your truck/car was a better deal than risking your life.
To my eyes, the grader isn’t going appreciably faster at the start when he’s in it, than after he jumps out. I don’t think either of those cars would have made it even if he’d been in the grader trying to keep on going. That water comes through so fast.
It’s probably a dumb move to abandon a moving vehicle in the road like that. Under the circumstances I’m not going to judge the guy to hard for not thinking clearly - and I doubt if his actions made any practical difference.
And also … Holy Crap that’s a wicked looking flood! :eek:
I think the point is that if the grader had stopped where the guy abandoned it the other drivers would have been able to get by - several people run past it at that point, and it looks to me as if there would be a sufficient gap for a car. Because it continued moving to a point where the way was narrower, it blocked a potential escape route for other vehicles.
