This is the answer. Be aware of the traffic around you so you DO know if you can safely swerve right.
That’s true, another thing I was taught in driver’s ed was to always have (when possible) an ‘escape route’, or at least know what it is. I do regularly keep an eye on my surroundings especially if I anticipate something happening, so I know if I can swerve or slow down very quickly etc. A good example of this is being behind a car I feel like might get into an accident. I make sure I have enough distance between us so that if they wreck, I’m not standing on the brake pedal and getting rear ended. Similarly, there’s a few places I can think of where the right lane of the freeway turns into an exit only lane. I do my best not to be next to people as we approach the exit since more often than not, they’ll come flying back over at the last second.*
However, to stay with the OP, one of the conditions was not being aware, at that second, if there was someone next to you. “you should always know” or “I always check my mirrors” or “you should have stopped driving if you were tired” make the hypothetical not work.
*There used to be an interchange in Milwaukee that as you came up to it the left 2 lanes said [Chicago] and the right lane was [Not Chicago]. I got very used to checking license plates and not being next to anyone with an Illinois plate. Better than half the time people with Illinois plates would realize they were in the wrong lane and zip over.
I keep track of all the cars on the road around me. It’s still possible that a car that was behind me to the right speeds up right then, but even if not I’d swerve to the right, only enough to stay clear of the oncoming car and hopefully there’s enough room for everyone to squeeze through. If not it’s still better that I collide with a car going the same direction as I am then hit one head on. One of the worst things to do here is to hit the brakes, it takes away your ability to maneuver and could make it all worse if there are cars behind you, and if you do move to the right also you could get hit by a car behind you in that lane. I’d probably hit the turn signal out of habit as I started to move to the right. I hope that would warn anyone behind me that something is happening, I’d hate for them to collide with oncoming car after I move.
But one of them was going to grow up to be Hitler.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, but not all vehicles are equipped with the Inspector Gadget/Speed Racer feature that springs one’s vehicle safely over the approaching car. One wishes more car manufacturers offered this important safety feature.
Swerve to the right. As others have said, it is preferable to a head on collision.
In fact, this would be my strategy even if I knew that there was a car there. Depending on how things work out, they will probably be better off for it as well. If they are to the right and back a bit, then the violence involved in my head on collision could impact them as well.
But, what would you do with a Mariachi band?
I’m dying of laughter over here! :D:D:D
On the serious side, I’m with most who would swerve right. Instincts are a bitch to overcome.
Jackknifed Juggernaut, I would swerve right. I think anyone in the U.S. who says otherwise is wrong or deluding themselves. You don’t have time to think; only to react. Swerving right is the most natural reaction.
Sideswiping a car is also less likely to be deadly than hitting someone straight on so this is the right reaction.
I also think you overstate the odds of actually hitting a car in the next lane. At 50 mph, if traffic is travelling at roughly the same speed in each lane, you only have a 50% or greater chance of hitting a car next to you if the cars in the adjacent lane are packed less than two car lengths apart and if nobody is trying to reduce the chance of being sideswiped by avoiding driving right next to you. In the real world, at 50 mph, cars tend to be spread out more (probably more like 3-4 car lengths even in fairly tight traffic) and at least some people really do try to stay out of the blind spots of the cars next to them.
Agreed, except even with that extensive training, there is no real chance to think rationally. This is a matter of reflex. The reflex is going to be to flee the bear coming after you.
A head-on collision at 50 mph isn’t a certain death. Even terrible accidents are surprisingly survivable in modern cars if you wear your seat belt.
At some points, all drivers are less safe than they should be. To think otherwise is to delude yourself. I’ve read that 90% of drivers think they are above average. Since most of them are in the broad, indistinguishable middle, there’s a sense in which most of them are wrong.
Exactly what I would expect.
Why fight the hypothetical? If you’ve driven any meaningful distance, I guarantee you that there was at least one second when you weren’t aware of whether there was a car next to you. If you don’t think this has happened to you, you lack the self-awareness for me to believe that you have perfect awareness of traffic.
This is not the answer to the OP’s question. It’s the answer to a different question that makes you feel superior.
Taking momentum out of the possible crash is good and this seems like a pretty natural reaction. It probably makes it more likely that you catch a driver off guard in the lane adjacent to you but that you wind up with a less serious collision than the one you avoided. Not a terrible outcome.
All true.
Well, thanks for setting me straight great moderator of this thread’s answers and how people feel when posting them.
As others said, it won’t be a considered decision if you’re driving; it will be all reflex. But it’s certainly a real-world scenario for the programmers of autonomous vehicles. An AV would already know if there’s a vehicle on the right. So let’s assume there is - as the programmer, do you instruct the vehicle to favor the known head-on collision or the known side-swipe? Even knowing the side collision is coming, I think you have to go with that over head on.
This is the deciding factor, I think. If they’re close enough that my swerve is going to hit them, they must be at least partially overlapping with my position along the length of the highway, and a massive head-on collision literally in the lane right next to them is overwhelmingly likely to spread into their lane anyways.
In that case, I’d hope that the third driver is also paying attention, and realizes that hitting their brakes is their best option. If they can drop back even a few feet, they’ll likely clear the lane for me to swerve, avoiding an accident altogether. In fact, I’ve done just exactly that, when I’ve thought that someone in front of me was about to have an accident. Those accidents didn’t actually happened, but if they had, I’d have taken myself out of the equation, which is best I can do as just one driver.
One of my rules for avoiding accidents is “Aim for the hole”. If you know there’s a piece of pavement without any other cars in it, try to put yourself in that spot.
One other solution would be to swerve and speed up. Go right to avoid the head-on collision, move (relatively) forward to avoid the sideswipe. A human driver probably couldn’t pull that off in the time available, but a robocar would react much faster.
I’m curious if that’s true, at least in general. I recall hearing a race car driver saying “aim for the crash”, the idea being that by the time you get there, the whole mess will have slid somewhere else. Granted they’re going at a 2,3,4 times faster than a tired driver on a 50mph road.
Someone else mentioned this, but I think it’s worth reiterating, go right and hope that if there’s another person next to you, they’re playing the same game.
I remember seeing something like this play out years ago. 4 lane road (2 lanes in each direction), speed limit 35, cars probably traveling 30-40. I watched as a car in on coming traffic very briefly went over the center line and then back. Almost as if he was swerving around something in the road (but I don’t know the actual reason). He was far enough over to clip a car, but someone the sheriff that he would have hit saw it, swerved around him (to the right) and back…like nothing even happened. Just went around that guy and kept driving.
That was probably close to 20 years ago and I can still picture it in my head. To this day I can’t believe how fast that cop reacted.
If you keep driving, you’re going to hit head on at 100mph equivalent (both vehicle speeds added) and you’re very unlikely to survive.
If you slam on the brakes, you reduce the speed of the eventual collision, but you’re still very likely to be killed, with ‘severely injured’ being a possibility. If it is a truck coming at you, you’re still dead.
**Swerve right hard. **
The people you may hit in that lane aren’t entirely out of the woods, collision wise or liability wise. They should see it coming too and know you need to move right to survive it. Doesn’t mean that they will react properly or at all, but if you hit someone and their vehicle ‘pushes back’ to keep you there, they might have some legal issues with your next of kin and the state. They could also be injured or killed by flying auto parts or your vehicle being driven into that lane if you don’t get over.
Minor nitpick. That’s actually been disproven a few times now. Two cars hitting each other head on at 50 doesn’t add up like that. If you’re going 50 and hit a car coming at you at 50, you’re going to feel like you were going 50 and hit an unmovable object.
The car traveling towards you at the same speed puts enough force on your car to bring it to a dead stop, just like what would happen if you hit a brick wall.
Perfect world and all that. Same size/mass vehicles, traveling exactly towards each other etc.
Of course, if they are in a Chevy Subdivision SUV, and you are in a Chevy Spark, the world may not be so perfect.
OTOH, if the situation is reversed, then don’t bother swerving, just brace for a little bump.
Anyone who drives 50 mph in the fast lane deserves to die*. So stay in your lane. Also, anyone who drives 50 mph in the fast lane is obviously unaware of his surroundings. But the driver tailgating the slow driver in the fast lane may get the biggest surprise here.
*Hypothetically. I’m not really wishing death on anyone here.
I would move right. My chances of surviving a head-on collision are not too good but I’ll take my chances on a side collision with a car going the same speed and direction as me.
I used to work for Ford writing software to analyze just that kind of crash–head-on into a concrete barrier–and your explanation is exactly correct.
Given the scenario in the OP, I would freak out, plow straight into him, and die. “Much less than a second”? That’s not enough time for me to form a coherent thought; I wouldn’t even register what those headlights were before plowing into them.