[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I'm absolutely not a tyre expert, but I wouldn't quote distance covered, in itself, as a reason for replacement. My car is a six-year-old with very low mileage. There was plenty of tread left on the tyres. However, the rubber was getting hard and the sidewalls were beginning to crack. Of course, with a higher mileage I would probably have used up more tread, but I think that age would have taken the same toll at half or double the distance.

I got the message about how bad they had got as soon as I drove off with a new set: it was like driving a new car!

What you say is true. After I bought the second car, the running of my first car became very less, 5000km a year. However the tires weren't replaced since 2013 and in 2017 I replaced them only because I could notice cracks on the thread pattern and it was hint that the rubber has gone hard. Even with a lot of life left, I just replaced the tires, this time with a softer compound set knowing they won't last as much but still knowing that the running will be low anyway and the next change won't happen in at least 4 years.

[PrasannaDhana]

A near miss experience of mine. I have more than a dozen videos posted on the bad drivers thread, witnessing other drivers' mistakes.

Here though, before anyone judges and screams about my above average pace, I admit I am 50% to blame here I was having fun and flooring my ciaz on the highway.

A Toyota etios driver who wanted to switch lanes, perhaps did not even look at this rear view mirror, or misjudged my speed and thought I would cross him a lot later than I actually did.

Here is the point where I had to overtake him, he had already 20% into my lane.




I had 2 options, 1. To brake hard, but at those speeds, the car will swerve uncontrollably and might prove to be fatal to both the parties

2. Stick to the extreme right of my lane and gun it through.

I did the 2nd and managed to get out of the ordeal. Quite a close call in my experience.

Also a good example of why doing 100-120 kmph on highways is the safest.

https://youtu.be/qymCKfG0aak

[Rit1988]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

An extremely close call | NH75 | Very minor nudge

Wow, that looked like a close save. Also, glad no heavy vehicle was closely tailing you or this could easily have been quite bad.

I had a similar experience when the car in front of me braked suddenly because a biker had suddenly emerged from a dirt track and crossed the road diagonally. Had to swerve to avoid impact and there again being belted and ABS saved us.

[som9729]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

An extremely close call | NH75 | Very minor nudge

=====
I am also assuming that may be newer tires may have fared better than this but nevertheless these managed well too.

Quite a near miss!
Glad that you're ok!

I wonder how there was no impact on your car or the other car?

Aren't the bonnets & boots of cars designed as crumple zones?
I remember my old Indigo's rear bumper got loose after a auto hit me from behind at slow speed.

Kindly get your front bumper checked during next servicing.


BTW, the video quality is excellent. Which dashcam do you use?
Can you also upload a sample of video at night time please?

I've tried a few dashcams, but mostly came up with video where number plate can't be recognised etc.

[Small Bot]

I had an accident on 24 April this year. It was not a near miss for me, but for someone else involved in an accident with me. Posting about this now, because I just received a clean chit to move on.

I was overtaking a load-carrying container from the right, near the Poonamallee Bypass in Chennai, in my 2011 i10. Now I must say that I had the brakes and suspension overhauled before the drive and the Yokohama Earth 1 tyres had only 10k KMs on them.

A lady in a scooter cut to the right from in front of the lorry into my lane. And there was no signal or intersection to the right, so I had no reason to go slow then.

So there you go. I was going at around 60 KMPH, stomp on the brakes, go dangerously close to the median to avoid hitting her. And still, she smashed into my car's left front passenger door.

Now, she was wearing a helmet, but with the straps unfastened and dangling (probably as a style statement). Which defeats the entire point of wearing that thing in the first place. She slammed into the road headfirst. She had sustained several injuries to the nose and cheekbones, but the worst injury was that she suffered hemorrhaging inside the skull. She was basically dripping blood from her nostrils and that scared me to pieces. Being a dutiful citizen, I did take her to the nearest hospital, paid for scans and medicines to stabilize her condition and even sat with her for hours until her family turned up and she could be taken to a bigger hospital for surgery.

The good news, she recovered fully after the surgery to stop internal bleeding and is doing well now. The bad news is, I was booked in a hit-and-run case. This brought me to a new understanding of the entire police-and-law scene. I do not want to comment on what I had to do to smoothen the process, but let's just say: Few things move in India without spending money to grease palms.

After all the police inquiry and me having to travel to Chennai several times, I was fined a penalty of INR 2000 by the magistrate court. Mainly because the damage to the vehicles told the true story. And there were several eyewitnesses who could attest to it.

After the entire affair, these are the lessons I learnt:
- To not trust the 11-year-old i10 any more for highway driving (I have driven this car for long and I cannot shake this feeling that the car failed me in a panic braking situation)
- To get a dashboard cam as that would have saved me a lot of time and money, and would have made the police inquiry faster.
- To maintain a healthy and safe distance from people on two-wheelers, as most either do not know how to properly wear a helmet or don't care to.
- To just travel by train or flight, in place of cars, if the distance is above 100 KMs.

Below is the penalty that I had to pay after all that mess. This was after an entire day of waiting at the court to be called to the stand.

[Samba]

This kid was so engrossed in impressing the girls with his scootering skills, that he forgot to wear a helmet & check the mirror before taking a sudden turn to ride on the wrong side of the highway!

I was at 75- 80 km/hr. I slammed on the brakes with me eyes on the IRVM. Thankfully the Tata Ace which I overtook few seconds back, was trailing at a safe distance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfYplgZFUc8

[Dr.Carguy]

I would like to write about 2 incidents that come to mind right now off the top of my head:-

1) This incident occured on Maa Flyover in kolkata while i was returning home from hospital. I was driving my previous car (my 1st car,a 2009 Santro Xing GLS) which i had bought preowned...the car at that time was mechanically sound but obviously didn't have abs or ebd...but thankfully had undergone all four tyre change(which was probably one of the factors that gave way to "almost")...Now coming to the incident,traffic was free flowing on the flyover enabling me to maintain speeds of 60-70kmph when suddenly the traffic in both the lanes came to a standstill in a time period of approximately 5seconds or less ...not sure of the braking distance available but couldn't have been more than 5-10metres( closer to 5metres IIRC)...the wheels locked up with the characteristic screeching sound and I was sure i was going to rear end the grand i10 in front of me but possibly by divine intervention or whatever reason,the car managed to come to a halt with probably a finger or two of distance remaining!

2)The second incident is relatively recent and occurred on Kona Expressway while I was returning to my on-campus hostel in SSKM Hospital. I was driving my present car,a 2017 Baleno RS which i had procured preowned in 2020. Now at the time of the incident,the car was pretty new to me and i was riding the adrenaline rush of gunning it every now and then. Coming to the incident,having shot off from the previous crossing,i was slowing down for the stop sign ahead of me when the light turned green...so i decide to drop it into the second gear and zoom off through the empty right lane at the crossing...as i am about to cross the lights(mind you the signal has been green now for 10seconds if not more and the turbo boost has just set in) suddenly a cyclist crosses the road in front of me and I slam on the breaks praying i stop before i hit him and send him flying(owing to the momentum i was already carrying at that moment)...i do stop having not hit the cyclist with loud screeching from the tyres! Though this time i think i owe this to the abs+ebd and disc brakes all around...dont know what would have happened in any other car!

[Small Bot]

Originally Posted by Samba

I was at 75- 80 km/hr. I slammed on the brakes with me eyes on the IRVM. Thankfully the Tata Ace which I overtook few seconds back, was trailing at a safe distance.

Which car were you driving? Seems like some decent braking power and response.

[Samba]

Originally Posted by Small Bot

Which car were you driving? Seems like some decent braking power and response.

It's a Duster AWD. Considering it took 3 white lines to come to dead stop in 2 seconds, the distance should be 18-20m. My speed was somewhere between 75-80 km/hr. The ABS did well.

Last year, I had another scary incident in Jharkhand. I shared that earlier in this thread. You can have a look. The stopping distance was not enough in this case, so I braked and swerved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmQcjV9eIlM

[RavSam]

Originally Posted by Samba

It's a Duster AWD. Considering it took 3 white lines to come to dead stop in 2 seconds, the distance should be 18-20m. My speed was somewhere between 75-80 km/hr. The ABS did well.

Good save mate! But looking at the overall surroundings here (the parked scooters on the edge of the road, general public almost at the edge and even the size of the road compared to the crowd, I personally wouldn't have crossed 50 kmph!

Yes, I know that experienced and expert drivers can drive much faster but the jaywalkers don't read their expertise before trying to almost touch their death or disability.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by RavSam

Yes, I know that experienced and expert drivers can drive much faster ...

Several possible answers, including:

-- Who is the judge of their expertise? Themselves? Not good.

-- The really experienced and expert drivers will probably be driving much slower.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by som9729

I wonder how there was no impact on your car or the other car?

The speeds are low since both cars slammed on their brakes when the nudge happened. You could see the Rapid moving forward even after the impact happened. I've bad a much faster Zest (probably about 30 kph) rear end my S-Cross that was stationary at traffic then. My rear bumper had no more than a scratch, with rear sensors and camera in working condition. There was no visible damage in the Zest either.

[anb]

Another near miss experience. I didn't expect the scooter to come into the road. Thankfully the Grand i10 slowed down and I was able to move left. May be I shouldn't have tried overtaking the grand i10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IfopIM-_fE

[StrikerK]

Originally Posted by Samba

Last year, I had another scary incident in Jharkhand. I shared that earlier in this thread. You can have a look. The stopping distance was not enough in this case, so I braked and swerved.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=ZmQcjV9eIlM

Wow, this brought me back memories from when I was a new driver about 10 years ago. I was moving to next town in Tata Nano (the car in which I learnt driving and scratched numerous times while backing up and parking), and was passing through multiple villages on a similar road. I must have been doing 60kmph with full occupancy of the Nano, so had a considerable momentum and not enough distance to stop in time for any sudden obstruction. Lucky for me though, the village offered a big enough shoulder to fit the car completely in it. And all of a sudden, this kid started running from the right side of the road just like in your video, but I couldn't swerve to the right or go straight as the kid would have just entered my lane as I reached her (Nano just isn't built to do that). So my younger instincts helped me notice the shoulder and immediately put the car in it after swerving to the left. It all happened so fast and by the time the car came to complete halt on the shoulder, the kid was just behind car after completing the road crossing.

I was in such an adrenaline rush that I couldn't think of anything else for the next minute and just sat there. My aunt in the back seat immediately got out of the car and without thinking twice, gave a couple of tight slaps to the kid, shouted for a bit and let her go. (Thinking back, lucky that no villagers objected my aunt for doing it, maybe they were also in shock to see what happened). After a minute or so we slowly continued to our destination.

This incident has a profound impact on my driving style even today, especially while passing through villages. I slow down to half the speed as soon as I enter a village section or whenever I see a kid standing on any side of such roads.

[JithinR]

Originally Posted by anb

Another near miss experience. I didn't expect the scooter to come into the road. Thankfully the Grand i10 slowed down and I was able to move left. May be I shouldn't have tried overtaking the grand i10.

Won't say that it was wrong to overtake (don't know how long you were behind that i10 afterall).

However, I don't attempt overtakes near to petrol pumps. You have to be attentive of vehicles exiting the wrong way, someone in front of you slowing down and trying to make that turn into the petrol pump, you even lose one of the shoulders that some drivers tend to put their cars into in panic.

Edit: Amazing driving and response times by the way. I would never have made that gap with such confidence.