A variation on this is the SovCits where they turn on their dashcam to show everyone how they are going to pwn the police then come out with, “I’m not driving, I’m traveling.” or “A municipal judge said that car registration is optional not mandatory. You have to do what judges say.”
Yeah same here. Is it that he didn’t let him merge? That seems a stretch, he doesn’t seem to speed up or slow down significantly. And even if he did speed up, while that is kind of a dick move, its still like 99% on the caravan, he was well past the end of the second lane of traffic, he should have just braked and merged in behind him (did he like forget he was towing a bloody caravan when he decided to race the truck to the end of the merge!?)
It seems that they only thing the truck could have done would be to continue at 15 mph until overtaken, or maybe even hit the brakes. If they had accelerated at the same rate that they had been doing, an accident still would have occurred, only with the back of the caravan instead of its auto. The increased acceleration that happened seems like the second best option since it would give the caravan more time to hit the brakes or even to get past the obstruction in the center to allow them to swerve around the truck.
Yeah though that doesn’t make him “mostly” at fault. Yeah accelerating was a dick move (rewatching the video he does accelerate as the lane ends) but its still almost entirely the fault of the caravan. Especially as they are towing a caravan. Of course people are not going to want you ahead of them on a single lane road! (that’s the whole reason people hate caravans)
That gives me more sympathy for the truck driver, its not a dumb “Look at me show you how fast I can drive and ‘win’ this merge” thing, its a “I don’t want to be stuck behind this caravan for the next hour” thing. Its his right of way, there is no way he could be expected to predict someone towing a caravan would decide to race him to the end of the merge.
Which is what they should have done. In any merging situation the correct thing to do (as the party with the right of way) is neither accelerate or brake but try and keep your speed as constant as possible, so that the people who are merging can predict where you will be as they merge in.
But given the situation I can’t say as I wouldn’t have done the same thing. Being stuck behind a caravan on a single track road is a fecking nightmare (and there are many roads like this in the UK where you have an overtaking lane then single track road for many miles afterwards). I would be extremely tempted to make sure he didn’t get past me, and wouldn’t have imagined for a second the guy in the caravan would decide to cane it past the end of the lane and try and overtake me. That is a properly bonkers thing for them to do.
I think any reasonable person would think the caravan driver was 100% in the wrong.
On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of motorcycle helmet can footage where the biker is splitting lanes at a large speed differential and ends up endo-ing over a stopped car. And they post them!
As to the OP, I’ve seen many a video where the commenters take one of the cammers to task for actually being the one in the wrong, but I’ve never seen a video of just those types.
This is the lorry driver’s account Cut & pasted from Facebook
“Ok just to set the record straight as I can’t sleep. When I was stopped at the lights there was one car by the side of me the red one. There was a box van behind me that had been there from the time just after I came off the M5. We pulled off from the lights. I only have 6 tons on so was short shifting 480 horse truck gross weight no more than 22 to will get to 30 quite quick. As I was going through the gears the red car passed me I looked in the mirror and saw the box van was not trying to pass I did see a car and caravan but this was behind and to the right of the box van and looked like he was going to pull in behind the box van less than 8 - 10 seconds later glanced in the mirror as something caught my attention. This is when I hit the horn and the brakes as hard as I could. Stopped lorry in around 20 yards and got up on the curb as much as I dare as anyone who knows where this happened will tell you there are large concrete blocks just off the path where I stopped. I was not trying to block him out as estimates suggest he came through the lights at about 50 mph. Hope this makes sense as not had much sleep since. Oh and I am not a newbie. Had a class 1 for 24 years. Cheers.”
This is a pertinent comment from Trucknet:
I like to see a wheelie-shed smashed to bits as much as the next man… but I’m going to play devil’s advocate here.
You can see the point at which he realises the shed dragger is going for it because he starts holding it in gear longer and his clutch work becomes a bit more rapid. He’s desperate not to let that chemical toilet cubicle through.
He could’ve continued at his leisurely pace, but instead chose to gun it and force an accident. Bravo. Very professional.
According to the Facebook comments, he’s jacking his job in because of it. A wise decision I’d say.
File drawer selection effect: the ones where there is no wreck at all are less likely to be uploaded (tho there are some channels for close calls).
You might actually be right. Not everyone reacts to threat or uncertainty in the same way; if your instinctive reaction is to take your foot off the accelerator pedal when you see something that might be risky, you’re already doing better than a lot of the dashcam drivers I’ve seen; most commonly, I see:
- Dashcam driver sees something bad about to happen (an overheight truck ahead of them about to hit a bridge for example) and doesn’t slow down.
- DD gets into a tussle over priority at a lane merge - the other driver might even be clearly in the wrong, but DD keeps pushing forward and trying to prevent the other car merging in.
- Some lunatic does something reckless, but it’s just a near-miss; DD accelerates wildly to tailgate them or get alongside to complain.
Sadly, a lot of drivers have ‘it’s my right of way’ as their primary focus, instead of ‘is it safe?’
Yes the pickup driver was an idiot, but IMO the driver of the blue semi truck was also a stubborn idiot. Tap your brakes, let him in, everyone goes on with their day.
It’s obvious the whole thing could have been avoided if the semi driver just backed off. Who cares if the pickup truck is in the wrong! Well, that’s obvious. Mr. Macho.
I’m just surprised so many posters sided with the semi. I shouldn’t be, but I am,
This is that thing where some drivers think you should merge as soon as you are told there is a merge point somewhere ahead (and a subset of those drivers see it as their duty to prevent anyone from merging later than that).
Yep, but it’s better to use all lanes for as long as you can, then merge like a zip.
When people do this well it goes very smoothly with all drivers assessing how the merge will happen some distance before it occurs and identifying the gap they will be taking while also allowing a gap to form in front so it all happens relatively seamlessly.
Absolutely. Zipper Merge (or Merge-in-Turn here in the UK) should be the most effective use of road space and thinking time etc, but sometimes the monkeys lose a grip on their training when they see another monkey maybe getting a slight advantage that they themselves could have exploited
But the trick is to merge as late as practical, and I think that the pickup waited beyond that point and, in addition, was not behaving like a zipper in that there was another vehicle in the other lane which it was not getting behind. Which isn’t to say that the truck should not have backed off, but it was still a dick move to try to squeeze in there so tightly and out of turn.
Based on the video, and those 2 comments, I’m still inclined to believe the truck driver’s version of events. It’s bad enough getting into an accident in a personal vehicle, doing it in a company vehicle must be even worse.
Is the commenter a truck driver? I’m not, but isn’t it natural to use more acceleration in higher gears, and for changes to be a bit quicker/easier than when in first or second?
I think the only thing the truck driver could have done better is to look in his mirror more often, which may have helped him to avoid the accident. The caravan puller is by far the bigger idiot here.
Idiots, Oklahoma version.
I was pulling a camper trailer, turning left (westbound) out of a side street onto Route 66 in Claremore OK. At that point, Rt 66 was two lanes in each direction. Traffic was stopped going west, but there was an opening in the traffic at my side street, so I pulled through. The left lane was backed up both left and right from my side street, but the right was clear. So of course I pulled into it. Then i could see what was happening - the right lane was closed just past the stoplight 1/2 mile ahead, and all the sheep had already lined up in the left lane. No zipper action.
The idiot part of the story is that one of them actually tried to block me in the right lane! Oh no I was getting ahead of them! This will not do!
There was no way to know what was happening before I turned, and of course nothing that could be done once I had. So I avoided the monkey, drove up to the stoplight, and easily zippered into traffic at the merge. For all I know, the monkeys are still sitting there in the one lane.
I’m starting to see more road signs that say “use all lanes until merge point” or something to that effect. It makes me smile when I see that. The truck driver was a jagoff, in my opinion. Just let him in. What is a car length to you? I don’t get why people get so het up about this shit.
The really stupid part, is that if people are zipper merging properly, then neither lane is going much faster than the other, so nobody “loses.” I guess a tie is worse than a loss to some people, though.
It’s actually the early-mergers that cause the very problem that frustrates them; if people merge early it congests the lane they’re merging into, slowing it down, and thus the lane people are merging out of is faster and uncongested for people to overtake them and proceed to the merge point.