Yes, and whether or not braking is the sole course of action. It may be preferable to break gently and steer into a different lane, for example.
Like you, I also instinctively look into the rearview mirror before assessing a course of action. It seems prudent. It drives my wife insane, because she doesn’t have a mirror and doesn’t always understand why I’m not, you know, hauling down on the brakes as hard as I can. But you absolutely want the most situational awareness before doing anything drastic behind the wheel, and knowing what’s coming up behind you is a situation you certainly want to be aware of.
That’s crap if true in your state. Here in Maryland, my wife was stopped behind someone at a red light. The cars were separated by the standard required distance (something like be able to read the car in front’s license plate and see their bumper). Driver behind her not paying attention (on cell phone) plowed into my wife’s car pushing her into the first car. My wife was not held responsible in any way. In fact the “rammer” was held in total fault.
I suspect it would have been the other driver, for what around here is called “failure to yield right of way”. You’re not entitled to pull out from a side road or parking area unless the road you’re pulling into is clear, any more than you’re entitled to ignore a yield sign.
If she’d had the sense to at least hit the hazard lights, those would have been visible. I can’t tell from the article whether she’d done that.
But yeah, parking in the highway lane is not a bright idea. If you’ve got time to get out of the car, you’ve got time to pull off the road. And seriously, she expected wild ducklings to just let her pick them up rather than trying to avoid her?
People who have little experience with wild animals have little idea how wild animals feel about being around humans. Just a few days ago near Los Angeles a bear wandered through the suburbs; video here, watch at 0:24 as people casually stand within killing distance to get good video. And every year a handful of people get launched into orbit after irritating the bison at Yellowstone.
I was in exactly that situation years ago on a two-lane highway. As part of general situational awareness I knew that the car behind me was too close for the speed we were doing. When the car in front braked very suddenly for some reason I now forget – an animal on the road or something – my reflexive reaction was to brake AND swerve off onto the shoulder. The car behind me just barely avoided rear-ending the first car despite all the extra room it now had. I would have been rear-ended for sure.
Yes, this has happened to me as well. Brake - glance in rear-view - see there’s a car way too close, swerve into shoulder. Worked twice for me, and once, I just didn’t have a shoulder or empty lane to swerve into, so I squeezed on my brakes as best I could to not hit the guy in front of me but give the guy behind me as much distance to stop. Unfortunately, he was in a Ford F250, so his stopping distance was not the best. That said, he didn’t hit us too hard. Enough for an insurance claim, but nobody was hurt.
I don’t think I’ve ever full-out slammed on my brakes. There’s always been a bit of a curve to the brake pressure depending on the circumstances.
Some years ago I was coming back from the Seattle Boat Show with a friend, using the Mercer Island floating bridge. There was a fair amount of traffic in both eastbound lanes, when the driver in front of me came to a complete stop. I was looking for a break in the traffic in the other lane so I could get around, when the backup lights on the stopped car came on, and the car suddenly, with increasing speed, came back at me. Now I can guarantee that this is a situation without a solution for the targeted car and driver, and all you can do is watch events unfold with wonder and disbelief.
Luckily there was not too much of a space between me and the car ahead, so he was not going too fast when he hit. My passenger had his glasses knocked off, and his door wouldn’t open, and my car was shortened by about six inches. After all the dust had settled, and a State patrolman showed up, it turned out that the driver of the car ahead had started to feel faint, and had got the car stopped. His engine was still running, and his wife had tried to get things turned off. Unfortunately for me, she accidentally put the car into reverse with the engine still running. It was probably a good thing that my car was just behind and could serve as a barrier, as who knows what would have happened if there had been more free room for the car to accelerate in.
Anyway, even though mine was the second car, the patrolman rapidly determined that the car in front was the one at fault.