So the rule “every rule has its exception” has exceptions, thereby making it true. 
It’s an interesting discussion, but the thing is, one doesn’t necessarily consciously decide how to react, but act instinctively and swerve with a reaction time you didn’t know you had in you.
I did this a few weeks ago, when I swerved violently to avoid hitting… a not-yet-fully-grown raccoon. It definitely wasn’t a consciously reasoned choice on my part, although the circumstances (sparsely travelled two-lane road at night, with no big trees etc. to hit on my side of the road) were somewhat favorable to swerving as an option. None of this mattered, however. Even before it had fully registered that a raccoon (as opposed to, say, a cat) had just trotted out in the path of my headlights, I had already reacted and swerved.
The kicker to this story is that a couple of days later, along the same stretch of road but off the other shoulder, I saw a roadkill, a young raccoon. :smack:
You are alone standing beside your vehicle on a dirt road deep in the woods. You have a heart attack/accidentally shoot yourself in the head. You don’t have a cell phone and no one knows where you are. Keys are in the ignitions and a town is about three miles away.
If you are dumb enough to accidentally shoot yourself in the head, better advice would be to finish the job. Improve the gene pool.
Then you put on your blindfold and fire it up.
BTW, I have actually driven while sleeping, but I do not recommend it, and recommend against it, in fact.
I, OTOH, have slept while driving and I found it refreshing and exhilirating.
Seriously, my default is brake and hit it. The biggest thing I hit was a cat, which I felt really bad about, but I didn’t wreck my car. My sister swerved once and clipped a squirrel, merely maiming it. It used its working front half to drag its broken crushed back half off the road, probably to bleed to death in the ditch or to be eaten alive by preadators. I had a front-row seat since I was following her. I would have rather she hit it and made a job of it. My dead cat was thoroughly and instantly killed. I ran over with two tires and the van behind me got it with at least one tire. If it were a kid, I’d probably brake and honk and hope the kid moved, but I don’t know, since I haven’t ever faced that situation. I’ve never not been able to stop for larger than cat animals like deer.
I was faced with this decision back in 2001.
I was driving west on a road at near sunset. It was not in my home city (I was traveling on business) This road was posted at 45 MPH. I am traveling at or slightly above the posted limit. There was about one stoplight every 2 miles or so. I am in the right lane of a two lane each way road.
As I approach an intersection I see an old Dodge 600 start to pull into the intersection from my right. There is not time to stop. I see another car pulling into the intersection from my left*. Were I to hit the brakes and drive straight ahead I will hit the driver’s door of the Dodge, and possibly kill the driver.
Instead I hit the horn, brakes and steered left into the oncoming lanes, and then back to the right, looking at all times at where I wanted my car to go. If I had waited maybe .1 of a second longer before I made the cut back to the right there would have been no contact between our cars. As it was his front bumper hit my headlight, front fender, both doors, and rear fender. His car had a damaged bumper, and the grille was busted.
We stopped and exchanged insurance info and we both drove away. Cars somewhat damaged, but both unhurt. If I had not done some fancy driver shit, at best he would have been in a hospital, and more likely dead.
I will always try to avoid an accident, but I am also very sure of my equipment and just what it will do (when was the last time you took your car out and tried some emergency maneuvers, just for practice?)
*To answer the question as to why I was running the light, remember it was near sunset. The sun was directly behind the light pole as I approached, and I could not even see the pole, much less what color light it was. It was so bad that the driver of the other car, when talking to my insurance company, said geez go easy on the guy, I drove that road the next day at the same time and there was no way in hell to see that light. The insurance adjuster called me later and told me that he had never had a 3rd party make such a statement. 
I suspect there’s no answer to this other than do what is instinctive.
There was a lot of talk for a long time about skidding. Steer into the skid, steer out of the skid, whatever… The latest issue of the road rules handbook in my jurisdiction (actually every issue for the last twenty years) says "it is correct and natural to steer out of the skid.
There are too many people saying, “Oh, the average Joe has no idea when it comes to emergency situations. You need to be a racing driver or emergency services driver to know the correct procedure.”
Yeah, well maybe.
But I think, even the average person, when confronted with an emeggency like a child in the road, will go into thay adrenaline-fired heightened state where time slows down, and they are absorbing information at an unusually rapid rate. How is the child moving and at what speed and direction? Is the oncoming lane occupied? Can I stop? Will I skid? Is the road icy?" It might not be perfect, but I’m pretty sure the reaction won’t be, “Now, what did that SDMB thread say again?”
Short answer:
Sometimes you should swerve. Sometimes you shouldn’t. You won’t know until it happens, and after it does, you’ll be in shock and probably won’t be able to account for why you acted the way you did. You might not even remember.
But when they questioned his girlfriend:
No indication if the girlfriend attempted to drive.
Where do you live that children run willy-nilly around in the roads.
That would have so gotten me a spanking…
The idea is to anticipate the presence of animals & chilluns, and the fact that every other motorist on the road is trying to kill you. This will save you 90% of the time.
If you’re on a twisty mountain road–count on sharing the road with nature. This can be aminals and it can be boulders & mudslides blocking the road. If you’re in suburbia, drive like you know there are little kids, kitties & doggies hiding behind every parked car just waiting for you to come along so they can test your reflexes. Don’t drive in such a way that you can’t stop within a reasonable period of time. Yeah, freak incidents will happen: some kids will be playing on the trebuchet in the front yard and someone will come sailing into your windshield, an assassin elk will leap out of the treeline and land laughing at you a mere 10 feet in front of you…but most of the animal hits I see involve bambi staggering home late at night after a stag party and fully in the road when the driver rounds a corner. You can anticipate that kind of thing and drive accordingly. Complacency is the problem.
As for swerving, well, that’s part of driving, isn’t it? Basic driver’s ed preaches, “Always leave yourself an out.” If conditions don’t allow for driving like an old lady, always be looking for at least one other guaranteed safe alternative path. Hint: this should not include the open road on the opposite side of the yellow line!!!
A scenario remarkably similar to the OP happened to my mother about five years. She was driving home from work late one night and the road was fairly heavy with traffic. A couple had hit a deer and gone to a nearby house to phone the police. The couple who hit the deer and the elderly couple who lived at the house all went out to look at the deer, like you do, which was on the opposite side of the road.
All but an elderly lady made it across. She was in the middle of a fairly heavily traveled road, waiting for a break, when she panicked or something and ran forward, directly into the path of my mom’s van. My mom’s van was traveling at about 15 mph on a road with a 45 mph posted limit. I’m not sure exactly how much room was between the lady and the van when the lady jumped into the lane, although the newspaper said about 10 feet (my mom wasn’t sure). My mom braked but couldn’t swerve left or she’d hit an oncoming car. She couldn’t swerve right or she’d hit the 3 people looking at a dead deer. So she hit the lady, who did not make it.
She wasn’t charged with anything as she wasn’t at fault and insurance paid for the damage to the van, so no one there held her at fault. It really seemed like a situation where there was no good outcome, so you can’t really be held to blame. Braking wasn’t enough and swerving would have made the situation worse.
So you have a sample of one, I guess.
This occurred in Indiana, I might add; it might be different depending on whatever state the accident occurs in.
As part of a local public safety campaign here at home:
So the locals suggest to not swerve as well.
If conditions are such that you can’t see the color of the light, then the “fancy driving shit” would be to slow down enough that you could stop before the intersection. “I couldn’t tell if it was red so I just kept going a little above the speed limit until it was too late” is not a good explanation, much less an excuse. As Inigo Montoya points out, you always have an obligation to drive safely for the current conditions.
And a lot of folks in this thread seem to be assuming that “slam on the brakes” and “swerve” are mutually exclusive options. Now, my reflexes aren’t the best in the world, but I would hope that if I were ever in a situation where evasive driving were necessary, I’d do both.
I’m an insurance agent. One of our clients swerved to avoid hitting a dog and hit a kid instead. No joke.
Back in 1995 I had just gotten my brand new Altima and I was driving to Hick’s Orchard for apple picking. The drive there is all winding, hilly country roads. As I crested the top of a hill, there was a black lab right in front of me. I swerved and drove my brand new car into the guard rail. I missed the dog and dented my new car. I was sad about the car, but I would have been heartbroken if I had I hit that dog.
On the issue of whether swerving helps you or hurts you from a legal perspective, you should consider the “last clear chance” doctrine. If your state has adopted it, you should be aware, because it can change the outcome of a negligence analysis.
Under the last clear chance doctrine, the person with the last clear chance to avoid an accident must do so. Failure to take the last clear chance to avoid an accident renders you solely responsible for the accident, even if the other person was negligent. One example would be if a person drifts over the center line of the road. Clearly, they’re negligent. But if you’re driving the on-coming car, and you see that the other driver has drifted over the line, and you could swerve and avoid any accident at all, you have to do so.
I know: what happens if I swerve and then the accident becomes worse? Good question, grasshopper.
I took a winter/defensive driving course a few years back when I was working for a small city nearby. Most people were either compelled to be there or were new drivers; I got a discount and went because I was told it was a lot of fun. The course was set up on an unused runway at the airport.
Anyway, we practiced swerving. The instructor explained that generally when people swerve, they only do half the job: they swerve to avoid something, but don’t swerve back to driving down the roadway. That is, they swerve and continue in that new direction right off the road. Thus, they taught us that swerving involves two movements of the wheel; first to change direction and avoid the obstacle and second to get back on the correct direction of travel.
So, it’s hard for me to say that one should never swerve, because I’ve been taught to do it by the local police driving instructors.
Whereas I think that it would be an incalculable tragedy to kill a child, I think that too many people here are a bit casual about rolling a car to save one. If you roll a car to save a child, you may die, and/or cripple self or passengers. Cars aren’t made to be rolled.
As a personal anecdote, I was driving down the interstate when I saw a car in front of me all of a sudden turn 90 degrees; I swerved and went waaaaay off of the road, into the median and almost down a 20-30 ft embankment. After all of this fine stunt driving, the car took out my back quarter panel. In perspective, I probably would have missed them had I not swerved. With a kid-what if the kid plans to jump and dives right into your new path?
I can’t judge for the legal ramifications, but I believe that any sort of preconceived plan is basically irrelevant; so, as harsh as the brother sounds, looking out for #1 is the sanest thing for him to do.
I see there are some conflicts by various “official” sources. But I get the feeling that the “Don’t Swerve” policy is encouraged so that people who don’t have the sense to compensate for potential hazards will have a little trigger in their minds that shout “never swerve” when they are caught off guard while barreling down a hilly road between a wildlife sanctuary and a playground. So if your audience is a bunch of brainless leadfoots, then it’s a great safety rule. Otherwise, exceptions should be noted.
Personally, I think everyone who wants to get a driver’s license should take the kind of safety course that js_africanus described, and maybe a refresher course every decade or so.
What it takes to roll a car depends a great deal on the type of vehicle. A short vehicle with a wide wheel base would be great for some swerve practice. A tall, heavy SUV will live up to its reputation and tip easily. (My cousin’s car in the OP was a small, but tall-ish Mazda). All of this should be in your head while your driving, but some people seem to lack the ability to sense how much it will take to put a vehicle into a skid or a roll. I think practice would teach them to learn a better feel for it.
So the correct answer should be “Swerve if you should, don’t swerve if you shouldn’t.” I still win.