[Indian2003]

Originally Posted by adi.mariner

If I am driving a car with whom I am not familiar, I would be extra careful in it. The bonnets for most of the new cars are not visible which makes it more difficult when turning, specially in a restricted space. I think most of these are misjudgements in estimating the length and width of the car and not the steering behaviour. The sensitivity or feel of the brake pedal also matters as to where exactly the brakes bite and slow down the car.

Originally Posted by venkyhere

I guess, most 'misjudgements' about vehicle width are made by people who are new to vehicles with 'bulged out' lower body.

Originally Posted by Nalin1

This is a ridiculous excuse after a crash!.

"First time I am driving this car, hence was caught by surprise by its behavior".

There is only one answer to this. Inexperience. You need about a 100,000 km to be able to drive safely. These 100,000 km experience does not help if you pick up bad habbits along the way.

You always need to know where the front and rear of the car you drive is. If you dont, go out and look. You always need a have a safety margin.

I drive on the right side of the road and place the right side just outside the white line. This is automatic and I dont have to think about it at all but I never take chances.

I drive 5 different cars at work, the Mercedes Sprinter, the Iveco, VW Crafter, The nissan e-NV 200 and the Peugeot e-Traveller on different days. I never had a problem because I always drive safe.

If in doubt I go out of the car and check especially when reversing to look for obstacles and small kids. My driving is mainly to and from schools and I reverse a lot.

When reversing I drive a bit forward for a better view behind to make sure there are not obstacles behind me. When I drive in I make a count of the kids I see and make sure all of them are visible when I reverse. Otherwise I go out of the car and move them out of the way. In new schools there are pick up points and there is no need to reverse. I just drive in and drive out.

It is always better to be safe than sorry.

A few months ago I delivered a kid to a farm and I noticed that there was a cat on the grounds when I drove in. When ready to leave I did not see the cat. I got out and the cat lay underneath the car to keep warm. That was one of its 9 lives.

If something can go wrong, it will.

[Sran]

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

How does one judge this distance between wall and left side of the car ? Any tips would be really helpful. I use my left side rear view mirror to gauge the distance between wheels and the side of the road but I'm worried if the lower body or the mirror will scrap !

In this situation where one has to park parallel to a wall or pavement, park in reverse. It is also helps in situations where one has to park between two cars. In this way you can see the left backside in the left OVRM.

[Duckdoc]

Bangalore Chennai highway 20 km from Kanchipuram

https://youtu.be/RmqfOvlv0_k

While I could see the whole picture unfolding in front of me the two wheeler suddenly appeared in front of the poor driver as it appeared suddenly from his blind spot.

Parked the car to see how the motorcyclist was, fortunately was up and sitting with a small laceration on his leg. The front of the car appeared to be suffer some damage.

[StopUnderrides]

Originally Posted by Rishi Vikram

My first post on Team-BHP, what a way to enter this platform.

Obviously, nobody wants to be a part of this thread by being in one of those poor cars posted here. Unfortunately, my contribution to this thread is our very own car.

At 5:50 AM, while heading from Bangalore to Karaikudi on a road trip, a simple overtake move on two trucks, one taking up each of the two lanes ( ) went slightly wrong. The truck on the right side sped up at the wrong time and just as we were moving to the right lane, the rear door of our car made contact with the truck and the car was essentially pit-manuvered and the right-hand side took quite some damage.

Mechanically though, the car was perfect, no suspension damage, the mirror folded electrically, no airbags deployed, brakes and throttle were great. In fact, even with a huge panel gap, it was still a lot quieter at highway speeds than a lot of other cars I've seen.

The pictures are attached.

Attachment 2222018

Attachment 2222019

Looks like the truck was hogging the right lane and you overtook from the left. Was there any obstacle immediately ahead of you due to which you had to rush to move to the right after overtaking? Assuming this was a multi lane road.

[Raghunath Singh]

Originally Posted by BoneCollector

I'm sharing an old rear ending incident just to highlight the fact that why it's important to take a glance in your rear view mirror when you are coming to an abrupt halt in moving traffic.

This happened in December last year. The video doesn't show the actual speed with which we were hit. The car suffered extensive damage to the boot end as well as the front. The impact may feel like a gentle one but it was good enough to leave me with a pain along the seat belt region for a few days. 4 adults, all belted and my son was in a child seat. So no injuries. Luckily, the rear glass didn't break otherwise we would have some injuries.

Situational Awareness is the key everywhere.

Glad to know you and your family were safe, this could have proved fatal. Also, the front and rear dash cameras come in most handy in such scenarios.

What was the action taken on the lorry driver based on this footage? It is clearly visible that he accelerated for no apparent reason.

[BoneCollector]

Originally Posted by Raghunath Singh

Glad to know you and your family were safe.

Thanks

What was the action taken on the lorry driver based on this footage? It is clearly visible that he accelerated for no apparent reason.

Ha ha. No action was taken. We were tied up with many things that day. I did take his keys with me but the police did not help us. They said that if I have to file a complaint against the truck driver, I'll have to leave my car at police station which I was not keen on. I just filed a report with them for insurance purpose and came back home. Drove the car for another 50 kms to home only to thank my stars later that I did not suffer any breakdown in between after I saw the damage to radiator, fan and intercooler. I had informed my MASS GM and he had a tow truck on standby. I could have done many things to the truck and owner but then, I prefer peace of mind hence did not pursue it.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by BoneCollector

... ... ...I could have done many things to the truck and owner ...

He didn't know you were a bone collector!

[Maverick_4662]

Was involved in a small crash with a biker today. No major injuries and everyone is fine. Minor scratches on my car and the bike.

Outline: I was driving my BMW 3GT on a 4 lane city road in Trivandrum at about 30-40KPH on the right lane, behind an auto. I confirmed the left lane to be clear both ahead and behind me and switched on my left indicators and moved to the left lane after a second. During this time, A college guy on a Dominar stopped on the road shoulder decided it would be wise to cross the road straight to the right lane ( With a very high throttle input from the engine noise ) To make it to the U -turn about 100m ahead. He hit my left ORVM and passenger door and fell down. I immediately parked on the side and ran to his help with my mother. Thankfully he had no major injuries and by god's grace was wearing a helmet. He had scratches on his left palm which was bleeding profusely and a road rash on his foot. He was very apologetic on not having seen me indicate my lane change and accepted his mistake. Not much injury but the chap was quite shaken so i sat him down and dressed the bleeding wound on his palm. I take this oppurtunity to appreciate the extremely comprehensive First Aid kit that BMW provides which is definitely the best FAB I have seen. The guy was to travel abroad for his first job in a day so we both agreed to not involve the police. We're in touch with his family and they have agreed to pay for the damages done to my car.

Although a small incident, this again reinforces the fact that no matter how empty the roads are, However defensively you drive, however much you try to anticipate what the idiot in front of you is going to do, Indian roads will still hold a surprise or two for you. I am thankful that there were no major injuries and the event was handled very maturely by both parties. Looking forward to having my baby back to shipshape again.

Also Kerala being Kerala, passersby did try to create a commotion out of it but with no attention given by either of us, moved on lol.
Attaching some pictures of my car below. The dominar had a minor scratch on its Tank and a bent Rear Brake pedal.

[sswaroop]

Originally Posted by StopUnderrides

Please be careful. Studies have shown that glances off the forward roadway even for 2 seconds increase the likelihood of rear ending a vehicle many fold.

It is actually a very good practice to keep an eye on each of the mirrors. Everybody should be aware of their surroundings. Just not at once. Rotate between them every 5-10 seconds or so. I was denied a DL in the US at the first time of asking because I didn't check my mirrors periodically.

[AttyBhai]

Good stuff mate!
They should teach this sort of thing in driving schools - or even regular schools

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Maverick_4662

He was very apologetic on not having seen me indicate my lane change and accepted his mistake.

An idiot, but at least a decent guy underneath it. It sounds like you treated him very well.

[Maverick_4662]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

An idiot, but at least a decent guy underneath it. It sounds like you treated him very well.

Agreed sir. An absolute idiot, but not a bad person. He was enroute to get an RTPCR done after withdrawing cash from an ATM for his travel to Dubai. Must have been the excitement of the job.

Yes I did! Although I was extremely furious as I had done everything right , the only thing that kept playing in my mind was how much worse it could have been, especially considering I myself am to undertake an international journey this week. More so he was decent enough to accept his mistake as soon as I approached him and was shaking quite bad from the shock so that disarmed me. He was just out of college and maybe a year younger than me. I made full use of the first aid training we seafarers have to undergo as part of post sea training. His friend reached on scooter by that time with his horses running , but on seeing his friend being taken care of and the generally cool temperament, calmed down himself, and took stock of damages to both our vehicles and took him to the hospital.

[Arun yadav]

Originally Posted by motorpsycho

Came across this incident of a Harley Davidson 750 ramming into the hind quarters of a cow on the highway, I felt the rider was doing high speeds.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=fq0JGsFoY2Y

He WAS doing high speed, period.
Checklist:
High speed - YES
Bovine buffet on median - YES
Overtaking lane - YES

What can go wrong?
He should be glad to escape with a rap on the knuckles and hopefully a lesson for life.

[motorpsycho]

Originally Posted by Duckdoc

Bangalore Chennai highway 20 km from Kanchipuram
https://Youtu.be/RmqfOvlv0_k

While I could see the whole picture unfolding in front of me the two wheeler suddenly appeared in front of the poor driver as it appeared suddenly from his blind spot.

On the highways, I am always very wary about medians and will always slow down and switch to the middle lane. There are just too many people who think the road passing through their village, belongs to their village and treat it so.

[AutoNoob]

Originally Posted by sswaroop

It is actually a very good practice to keep an eye on each of the mirrors. Everybody should be aware of their surroundings. Just not at once. Rotate between them every 5-10 seconds or so.

Couple of weeks back, a biker impacted my vehicle's left side at low speed (10~15kmph).

It was dark, I was in left most lane, about to make a left turn and turned on indicator accordingly. I knew a bike rider was tailing me on left sometime back. When the turn came (another 30~40m), checked my left mirror again and biker wasn't there. Took the turn and BAM!! It turns out that guy was trying to overtake me from left and was in my blind spot. He was able to maintain his balance and sped away (I had braked immediately). As the speeds were low, the impact was minor; leading to dents & scratches on lower end of both LH doors.

Rewound the incident in my brain to look for where I made the mistake. This is a new (smaller) vehicle and ORVMs are considerably smaller than my other vehicle. On few instances earlier as well, this blind spot was bothering me. But earlier instances were not close enough and in daytime. I was considering to install blind spot mirrors but somehow it skipped my mind. Right after this incident, ordered the following :

https://www.amazon.in/Happxo-Automotive-Adjustable-Universal-Vehicles/dp/B0992TNY85

The blind spot is now gone. Only regret, that if these were installed earlier, the dents wouldn't be there.

Now going slightly Off-topic. A new inconvenience has propped up and need your guidance. Daily morning I need to adjust blind spot mirrors as these are turned easily when ORVMs are cleaned by cleaning guy. I am looking if full mirror pads with higher curvature can be purchased and fitted in place of OE mirrors. Has anyone tried such swap ?