Imagine driving in the left lane of a 4-lane highway, 2 lanes each way. You’ve been driving for a couple of hours, and are now going 50 mph in medium traffic when you approach a bend to the left. Just as you make it around the bend, you see a car coming at you head-on. With much less than a second to react, your only option to save your life is to swerve into the right lane to avoid the head-on collision. But the problem is that you haven’t checked if another car is in the right lane or not. In fact, based on the traffic that you’ve experienced, there’s about a 50% chance that there is. And if you try to check to the right and the blind spot, you’ve lost your chance and are dead or worse. What do you do?
While I’m sure instincts would cause many people to swerve to the right without thinking about it, what is the right thing to do? The possible car to the right could be a van with a full family in it while you’re alone. And you might end up dying anyway and taking them all with you. Should you sacrifice their lives just to save yours? Then again, there could be no one there.
Here’s my answer:
The right thing to do is quite clearly to stay in your lane. It’s basically your fault for not knowing if a car is there or not, as drivers should always be aware of their surroundings. But after 2 hours of driving, you will inevitably have some lapses of focus. That is what I think I’d do if alone. But if I had one of my kids in my car, I think I’d be selfish and take the chance. Not sure what that makes me, but just being honest.
Swerve right. I’d much rather go side to side with another car moving in the same direction of travel as I am, even if I run the risk of pushing an (unrelated) person off the road/into the curb/down the ditch. The other option being hitting a car coming right at me at 50mph.
I’d swerve, but hopefully be fast enough on the horn to get other people to take notice and swerve with me.
I think you’ll generally find in that case a few cars in front of you have also swerved right, now it’s your turn. As awful as it sounds, I’m not going to sacrifice myself on the 50/50 chance that there may be someone next to me.
TL;DR If you do nothing, you’ll die. If you swerve you have a 50/50 chance of not dying. I’m not taking the certain death option.
I would swerve to the right anyway. Even if there is a car there, that collision would be much more survivable for all involved than a head-on collision. Of course you don’t know what the driver coming at you is going to do, they could also swerve into the other lane and you would still have a head-on that also involves a possible car to your right. It is a no win situation but you should try to avoid the head-on if at all possible.
I recall being taught that in this situation you should go to the right. Granted, you have no idea what the oncoming car is going to do, when/if they do realize they’ve drifted across the center line, their instinct is going to be to get back in their lane.
Also, on a busy highway, you’d run the risk of hitting another oncoming car even if you managed to go around the passenger side of the one coming at you. Think about how far you’d have to go, into the oncoming lanes, to clear the car coming at you. I also think you’d be at a higher risk of rolling your car if you’re driving 50mph and trying to pull that off.
In this situation, I expect that, for the vast majority of people, instinct is going to be the only thing that enters into what action they actually take.
If you truly have “much less than a second to react,” I seriously doubt that anyone (save for maybe a very skilled driver, with extensive experience in defensive driving techniques) would actually have the time to process the thought that “there’s a good chance that there’s a car to my right.”
I remember hearing, years ago when I was learning to drive, that it’s better to hit a car moving with you in traffic than to hit a stationary object, and it’s better to hit a stationary object than a car coming at you. So I agree with the other posters; swerve right even if there is another vehicle there. That’s everybody’s best chance to live through this.
I also agree that with only a second to react it’s more about instinct than a rational calculation. Hopefully, my instinct would also be to swerve right.
I think it’s a case of [2 certain deaths] versus [unknown number of injuries, death possible but not certain]. I hope I’d swerve. I don’t know.
ETA: There’s no guarantee that if I hit the rogue car head-on no one else would be injured or killed. I think holding straight is an even worse move than I initially did.
I think you can’t know what the best option is unless you have a full mental picture of what is all around you.
I was always told that you should be constantly checking mirrors and knowing your surroundings so I can’t imagine a situation where I don’t know what is to my right, I mean the only reason I’m in the left lane is because I’m passing something and so I have to be fully aware in order to make that pass safely.
If you don’t know what is to your left, right, front and back at all times then you are a less safe driver.
For the scenario as stated, veer off to the right, braking as necessary to try and hit a gap* that I already know is there*, and risk multiple side collisions rather than a head-on.
I’ve actually been in a similar situation: straight-ish highway, but dark, two lanes each direction, little to no median. I didn’t have time to parse out your dilemma or clear my blind spot. I just swerved.
It basically went, “Huh, those headlights up ahead look weird. Almost as if they’re in my…[swerve right, recover] Holy Shit!” I did the maneuver pretty much without thinking. Sure thought a lot about it afterwards though… The no-doubt-drunk driver continued going the wrong way at highway speeds (about 60 or so—for Austinites, this was on 71 eastbound going to Bergstrom Airport) and I’ve no idea what eventually happened to him/her.
Anyway, in your hypo, the chance of a sideswipe seems like less harm than the certainty of a head-on collision. And this is one of the reasons why driving right next to another car or large truck is something that should be avoided if at all possible.
While I may not know, with certainty, if there is a car to my right in my blind spot, I must surely know the ‘potential’ of there being one there, based entirely on my awareness of the cars immediately near me.
I believe you would have some awareness, as you would have passed those cars, seen them in your mirror quite recently. It’s true they may have moved up and into a position where you may collide with them if you swerve, but I think it’s wrong to count it as ‘no way of knowing’, when you *would *have some recall of where the three cars closest to you were positioned, mere moments ago.
My decision would be based almost entirely on where I knew those cars to be, when I last checked, I should think.
But the vehicle coming at me is a bus full of orphans headed for cancer treatment when the nun driving it had a heart attack. So now you just killed twenty cancer-orphans.