Do people really not know this?! If no one is injured and both vehicles are drivable, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE ROAD!!!
I’m coming in to work this morning, and traffic completely stops. This road gets a lot of traffic this time of day but is still almost always clear. It’s a major cross-county road, this section going through a residential area, two lanes in both directions, big hill.
At the bottom of the hill is an intersection with a traffic light. This intersection is maybe 100 feet past a dogleg curve to the right that you can’t see around when coming down the hill at this time of year because of the dense foliage on the side of the road. Just in front of the light in the right lane, two idiots, stopped, staring at their cars, apparently oblivious to the pile-up behind them.
As I pull around them I stop, roll down my window and shout at them, “Hey! If no is hurt, get the hell out of the road! There’s a side street right in front of you! This is not a crime scene; the CSI team is not on their way to take pictures and collect evidence! Not to mention you’re standing in between your cars, sitting at the bottom of a hill around a blind corner. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE ROAD!!!”
They’ve actually started posting signs on Ontario highways asking people to do exactly this. It’s become a serious impediment to traffic and mobility; a tiny accident, and the drivers decide to hold up the 401, already one of the busiest highways in the world. A $1000 accident causes millions of dollars in lost productivity. I fully expect the province to start running PSAs on TV within a few years.
When I was a kid - I think this was 1991 - my buddy was hit from behind hard enough to throw the car - which was stationary, waiting at a light - into the next car and damage it badly. But all the cars were sort of drivable, nobody was hurt, so everyone got off the (busy, important) road into a nearly parking lot to await the police.
It seems like it’s just in the last twenty years that people have decided that in the event of any collision at all, even ones light enough that no lights are broken, they have to stop in place and protect the scene like Gus Grissom and his crew are going to show up and CSI the hell out of the situation. I am not sure how this change came about, but it’s amazing to see two people to decide to screw up a huge, busy freeway for a bump that will take the autobody show twenty minutes to fix.
They probably thought that the responding officer had to see the two cars exactly as they ended up to calculate the velocity and arc of vehicle one as well as the velocity and arc of vehicle two, given some handy table of sedan weights and bounce factors,
and testing the average of the alloy hardness and resistance to scratching by the average of the Mohs and the Rockwell hardness tests… and that he’s going to do all of these things after stopping traffic and manually use a tape measure to measure skid distances.
He then calculates all of these things while sitting in his cruiser and wishing you’d both taken the day off.
(He may actually do that last part)
No matter what anyone tells you, its not, “Vehicle 1… registration & inspection valid… insurance… valid… no wants or warrants on the license… Vehicle 2… registration & inspection valid… insurance… valid… no wants or warrants on the license…
Jesus, these people are jerks… please someone tell me that its not just Monday…”
I was rear-ended sitting at a red light once. My car was fucked up, but the engine still ran and it still rolled so I moved out of the way. A woman on the sidewalk was telling me to stop and wait for the police, but I knew exactly what the police would do, which is collect everyone’s information, make sure said info was distributed to all involved parties, then send us all on our way. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what they did.
The police wrote an incident report but did not attempt to assign blame, because, “we weren’t there, we didn’t see what happened.” This angered one of the other involved drivers, but really it was the most prudent action. No one was injured, and the insurance companies are ultimately going work it out amongst themselves, so just let them.
It’s so different from the way I was taught. Hell, when I had my POS Corolla that stalled out randomly at lights and sometimes genuinely broke down, I actually pushed it out of the way. It’s not that hard…I put it in neutral and pushed it from the steering wheel. It’s like no one knows what to do. Part of the problem is all these single people driving their huge honkin SUVs, so they couldn’t push them if they wanted to. But besides that, if it’s driveable, move the damn thing! You should get out of the road whenever you can.
A lot of people have the idea they should stay in their car and wait until help arrives. Which makes perfect sense if your car can’t move, and it’s not on fire.
I once had some idiot yell at the cops trying to get them to arrest me for hit and run because I refused to sit int he middle of the highway blocking traffic for a minor fender bender which HE CAUSED, by the way, and in which the only damage was a scratch on my bumper.
I moved my car over to the shoulder and he stayed in the middle of the highway until the cops made him move.
That’s what was taught in driver’s ed when I was in school, way back in the mid '70s. It was also the law, at least in every city I lived. If you moved your vehicle before the police arrived you’d be cited for leaving the scene of an accident. An exception was made in bad weather the police would announce bad weather rules in effect, allowing you to move vehicles to the side, but only in non injury accidents. They wanted to see the final positions of all vehicles involved to help determine fault.
Things have changed since then, but that doesn’t mean that people who still think it’s the law are just making it up.
Like Doug K., I recall being told that you don’t move the vehicles after an accident - Driver’s Ed, 1971 in suburban Baltimore. But more and more, I see signs on roadway telling you to get your vehicles out of traffic if at all possible.
Altho, good luck finding a big enough hole in traffic to move out of the way on some roads…
This would be a sensible complaint is everyone doing this was young. But that’s not what I’m seeing out there.
NOTE: I looked up what you’re supposed to do here in Ontario, and it’s very clear;** if it is safe to do so, you must move your car out of traffic.**
What is somewhat weird about the rules is that you are supposed to call 911 if any of the following is true:
Anyone is injured. Okay, makes sense.
There is reason to believe someone has committed a criminal offense (drunk driving.) Sure, that makes sense, too.
The damage is above $1000. What?
Like, am I supposed to know the difference between a $900 accident and an $1100 accident? That’s not my job. I have no idea. Also, isn’t that line a little low? The last time I got in an accident, some idiot went through a stop sign and screwed up the front of my Buick Regal pretty bad. It cost $2K to fix all the body damage, but I drove it to the shop. I’m going to call 911 for that? Is the ambulance attendant going to do an assessment?
Prejudices more powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap to tall conclusions in a single bound! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Get Off My Lawn Man!
This generational thing is soooo much bs! Do you think baby boomers aren’t selfish as hell? I haven’t seen them be any more giving as an aggregate . Beside, whenever one generation complains about the next I want to shout WHO RAISED THEM???
