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-   -   Video: A mini-truck goes berserk & my evasive maneuver (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/195417-video-mini-truck-goes-berserk-my-evasive-maneuver-7.html)

It is time for some deep armchair analysis, I have taken video and slowed it down by 16 times. The video starts when the mini-truck was still in the correct lane. Each second in the video is actually 1/16th second.

https://youtu.be/t85W5B7a_ZQ

00:04 (4/16) The mini-truck veers in the wrong side.
00:08 (8/16) In the next quarter second OP must have noticed this anomaly.
00:12 (12/16) In the next quarter second, OP has started to veer towards the wrong side.

OP probably assumes that the mini-truck will continue to veer towards the left after pummeling into the 2-wheelers. So he starts veering towards the wrong side within 1/2 seconds since the beginning of the initial action. But it is clear that OP can't really see behind the mini-truck when he started the turn.

00:18 The mini-truck must have become aware of this situation.
00:22 (4/16) Quarter second later, you can see mini-truck start the course correction.
00:24 (2/16) Within in the next 1/8 second he has straightened the mini-truck, and starts moving back to his proper lane.
00:32 (8/16) In the next half second, he is poised to enter his proper lane, and he must have noticed the Punto.
00:36 (4/15) In the next quarter second, he is back in the wrong lane to avoid the OP.

While we can all blame the mini-truck for creating this whole scenario, once he woke at 00:18, he handled the situation brilliantly. He avoided the bikers in less than half second of seeing them. And half a second later he encountered the OP on his path and avoided him by veering back in the wrong lane. Meanwhile, the bikers handled the situation correctly by veering towards the left. They probably honked and brought the mini-truck driver back to his senses just in time.

Whole crux of this discussion is what happened at 00:12 position. OP couldn't see the traffic behind the mini-truck. But he could see a long stretch of shoulder on the left side. Those who practice defensive driving would have automatically taken the left side along with emergency braking and lots of honking, hoping that the mini-truck would correct himself in time. But OP was not handicapped with such training, so he tried to avoid the immediate danger by getting out of the current path of the mini-truck. But when the mini-truck corrected himself just in time, now OP was presenting himself as the menace to the mini-truck, and whoever behind the mini-truck.

OP and the mini-truck driver displayed exemplary skill in avoiding each other. The mini-truck driver had even less time to react, and mini-truck would not be a good handler like Punto.

Actually, it is a brilliant idea.

You are right, this is a big problem in India. Avoiding accidents should not be a matter of skill. Not everybody has great skill and fast reflexes like the OP and Mini-truck driver. I don't think I could have reacted so fast, I have no where near that kind of skill. And I know there are lots of drivers with lot less skill than even me on the same road.

Driving on a highway is a collaborative effort. When everybody on road acts in a predictable way, the accidents can be eliminated to a great extent. This is the reason behind driving on a particular side, speed limits, traffic signals, turn signals, stop signals, etc. When somebody uses a signal incorrectly or drives on the wrong side, it can cause accidents. Therefore, defensive driving takes it to the next level. Its aim is to reduce the risk of collision by anticipating dangerous situations, despite adverse conditions or the mistakes of others. This concept and the related training has been around 1964.

I would suggest members to take a look at some online defensive driving material. This is highly recommended for Indian conditions because we are surrounded by bad drivers all the time.

And for those of you who want to rely on your skills and reflexes alone, I wish you have your guardian angel flying next to you all the time.

Glad you found lots of time to go and actually make a video based on my video. Brilliant effort.

One little thing though, human eyes do not see or process at 1/16th of a second, real-time.

Thanks for your valuable inputs.

@DRIV3R

I am very happy that you were paying a lot of attention.
You took action, which you felt was appropriate and it worked out just fine.

However I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the mini truck driver returned to his correct lane, you would have been held responsible for the resulting crash.

The correct action is braking hard while moving over to the left shoulder. From the video its clear that there is a LOT of space to accommodate a car. Reference is the 24 seconds mark in the video edit by Samurai.

As a biker who frequently does long distance trips on country roads, this is a situation I have encountered multiple times.
You never ever get into the opposing lane unless you are overtaking.

So, it’s ok even if I stuck to the left, panic brake, jolt my passengers, risk rear ending, and still stay in the path of the veering mini van. What if the mini van, at that uncertain moment, continued his way after killing couple of bikers onto my car? He didn’t show any signs of slowing at all till he passed me.

No problem, end of the day, even if my car gets some minuscule damage doesn’t matter, but I can proudly say I followed the rules and wear the ‘I am always right’ hat. Great insight. :thumbs up

You don't mention UK. You'd be surprised at how much of what the Brits still classify as "A" road is not divided.

I think you know more than:

• https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-saf...n-crashes.html
• https://www.mayfairrentacar.com/how-...-on-collision/
• https://www.rd.com/health/6-tips-for...ng-conditions/
• https://www.driverknowledgetests.com...e-centre-line/
• https://driversprep.com/prevent-head-on-collisions/
• http://www.insideedition.com/investi...way-to-avoid-a
• https://www.firsteagle.com/tod.htm
• http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum/content.php?39
• https://www.lohud.com/story/news/tra...vers/13946369/
• http://blog.tapconet.com/-temporary-...1-96b1d63bbb8a
  

You are very lucky the mini-truck driver overcame his first instinct to get back to his correct lane.

:deadhorse

Couldn't help at every situation, especially with this case.
The one who has hands on experience with the Dost will never ever take a risk of doing the above procedure
1) It has a above average (over) loading capacity and engine performance (morons do 3 digit speeds with over 2T load)
2) Soft suspension
3) Pathetic brakes (when over loaded)

We are unsure if the mini truck driver was dozed or DUI or intentionally did this act. With this scenario & defensive driving this thread could have landed elsewhere.

With the increasing morons on road guardian angels are mostly helping than anything else.

PS: Thread with hottest debates is (recently) removed from "Hot Threads", any clue?

Damn, you mean the mini-truck driver did two back-to-back evasive action in less than 1/2 second with all those handicaps. Now I am really impressed.

I suspect he was merely distracted, may be he dropped something and looking for it. If he had dozed off or DUI, there was no freaking way he would have recovered so fast and executed two back-to-back evasive action in a severely outclassed mini-truck.

Yes.
The point is not to indulge in hypothetical analyses but to determine what the correct course of action is in any given instance. You have to own up to the real possibility that you, travelling in the wrong lane, could have got into a head-on collision because of how you reacted. I fail to see how you don’t get this, especially after seeing the slowed-down video.
Passive aggression and sarcasm will only take you so far. I urge you to take the feedback of Samurai and others here and be honest with yourself. These are not hollow principles that we are talking about- defensive driving saves lives.

Disclaimer: This video was shared just to know what happens on Indian roads, NOT to showcase driving skills or reflexes or perform deep armchair analysis.

Fair enough. Have you even considered the first threat which could have been a head-on as well? You guys know more than this, I thought.

When there are so many ifs and buts against me, why should I not consider a hypothetical usecase?

Am sorry, but I didn’t have the dashcam video to slow it down play and deduce safe and best practices. You are saying that the slowed down video helps you gain more insight as to my wrong doing, do you think you would have time for all these thoughts when you are facing the scene?

Signing off!

No. I mean to say defensive driving could only help provided every circumstances is as expected or within the standards.
Here we are unsure if the mini truck driver will apply brake, even if he applies will the vehicle stop (with pathetic brakes)
Unsure will he will steer back, even if he steers, truck may topple (with soft suspension)

I suspect the act you classify as the smartness of an moron to be just an incident rather than his intension.

Not a wise decision always, Especially with this case.

When the right most lane is clear with no oncoming vehicles why risk the life in left lane and have trust over the truck driver that either he will stop or get back to his lane (with least possibilities) This has higher risk of getting rear ended (if OPs car could stop on time) or hitting the poor souls in 2 wheeler or the tree ahead (if OPs car failed to stop on time)

Feedbacks can be taken, if honesty remains from both ends. When I questioned about the "hot threads" and I got no answer here but the missing topic reappeared all of a sudden.

Does it mean one mod found the topic to be hot and added to the list later someone found worthless to be there and removed it and then someone added it back?
Or the thread went from hot to hotter when someone is against the mods and later it came back to hot when someone got support from the rest?

No intention to question about the mods action, just to get clarified on how things happen at the backend.

You could ask that question without making any accusations about our intent. We voluntary moderators don't have any control on the main TeamBHP website. We just moderate the forum portion. I don't even visit the main website for months together. I had no idea this thread was added, removed and added back again from the Hot Threads. I don't care if you don't believe me.

Coming back to the topic. I'd like stick to the facts of the matter. I think everybody agrees that the OP was extremely lucky to survive, despite his brilliant reflexes. That means there was a huge possibility of this ending in an accident. That accident could happened for two reasons:

1) The mini-truck driver returned back to his correct lane and rammed into OP who was on the wrong side. Averted only because the mini-truck driver had reflexes too.
2) There were cars behind the mini-truck, which OP couldn't have seen before moving to the wrong side.

In both cases, OP would have been found at fault by the police, and the court. Believe it or not, Police and court will also do armchair analysis of the accident.

If on the other, if the OP had braked and moved to the left shoulder that was available, again we have two possibilities:
1) The mini-truck would have continue to veer, overrun the bikers and then ram into OP. Then the mini-truck would have been found at fault.
2) The mini-truck driver avoids the bikers as he did, gets back to the correct side and would have continued.

In conclusion, if the highly likely accident had happened despite OP's brilliant evasive action, he would have been held responsible for the deaths and damages. Had he taken the other route, he would not have been held responsible for anything that followed.

No, I don't agree that OP was lucky to survive despite his brilliant reflex. On the contrary I think OP survived because of his brilliant reflex.

Besides that, this summary of your position shows its fallacy. Your whole argument is about fixing responsibility for an imagined accident which did not happen. You must remember that responsibility, courts, cases etc. come into play regarding a real accident and not an imagined one.

It doesn't matter whether OP would have been found guilty in case of our imagined accident, or the other driver. It would be hardly a consolation to OP and his co-passengers if the other driver is found guilty in case an accident happened. I would rather avoid an accident than worry about who will be proven the guilty one eventually.

It is useful to go back and analyse an incident like this (in armchair or otherwise) to enrich our imagination with all kinds of possible situations on our roads and to reflect on what would be safe thing to do. And there can be differences in how we imagine the possibilities. But we are not doing this analysis to fix guilt on an accident that never happened.

Let me add a comment on another fallacy doing the rounds with references to whole load of books and manuals. Do I know more than what is in the books and manuals and their great authors? NO. I don't.

But I know this: All the books in the world cannot tell you how to act in a given unique situation, whether on the roads or in life. Life would have been so simple then. You have to use your own head, take a decision, and act. For day to day repetitive actions we let our training do the job. But when we encounter a difficult and threatening situation, books may be of no help.

I have a feeling the mini truck veered on the wrong side of the road to take the right turn (which can be seen at the start of the video).

It is not a hypothetical case. In your own incident, the video shows that the truck did try to move back to its correct lane. In fact, you almost caused an accident by being on the wrong lane when the truck tried to move back to its correct side. In addition, any traffic coming from behind the truck could have collided with you. These are the facts shown in your own video and are not a hypothetical case at all. I am not trying to blame you here- perhaps I might have panicked and done the same or even worse myself. The point is to review the incident and consider if you could have done something different keeping in mind the established safe practices. I am bewildered at this reluctance to at least consider other safer courses of action. These suggestions are not meant to question your ability as a driver. Surely you are a great driver. However, we can all learn something new throughout our lives despite our vast experience. I recall a time when I had to take a road safety class when applying for a commercial driving licence in California. I already had so many years of driving experience and so did my fellow students. We all thought there was nothing we would learn and that it would be a waste of time. However, I ended up learning quite a few important safety lessons from that class.

No one knows with certainty what any other driver will do on the road. However, one expects certain rules to be followed. For instance, when you stop at a red light, you can't be certain that the driver behind you will also stop and not rear end you. Similarly you drive on one side of the road and expect the oncoming traffic to drive on their side. Sometimes you see another vehicle intruding on your side during say an overtaking manouveur and you slow down, honk, pull off to the side and hope that the oncoming vehicle goes back to its correct side. You don't go across to the wrong side yourself. This case is different as it was obviously not an attempt to overtake but the same principle applies. I don't know why people are concerned about the motorcycles up front. If OP had braked hard, the motorcycles would have pulled much further ahead. It is an established fact that after people make an inadvertent error, their first reaction is to correct it and go back to their lane. This very video proves that fact as well. Hence if you have to assume something, it is safer to assume that the other driver will correct their error. In addition, this saves you from any other traffic coming from behind the errant vehicle.