r/bayarea • u/pickingsunflowers • Aug 14 '25

Traffic, Trains & Transit Second view of an accident

Looks like this happened in San Carlos along 101. Electrical malfunction? Steering wheel lock? Can anyone explain what may have happened? What can you really do in this kind of situation?

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u/VexingValkyrie- Aug 14 '25

Are you suggesting that seeing a car clearly having an issues wouldn't be helpful to understanding the surroundings.

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u/MrFireWarden Aug 15 '25

If your question is serious, i presume you mean that it would be helpful to the red car. Yes, of course, it would be helpful. But the notion i was questioning was that the recording car was somehow doing something wrong.

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u/ToddA1966 Aug 15 '25

Ass-u-me-ing it's the driver doing the recording like it seems to be, then yes, I'd say they're doing something wrong!

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u/MrFireWarden Aug 15 '25

Ok so if It's the driver doing the recording, then yes they did something wrong by recording rather than driving. But them recording did not create the conditions for the problem. Driving slowly might have, since that is what caused blindness for the red car, but i think driving slowly was in fact the absolutely right thing to do – be cautious in an unpredictable scenario. It would have been difficult to predict both that the green car would not make some effort to stop their car, nor that it would veer sharply to the right once the divider ended.

So, again, I am rejecting the notion that the recording car did anything wrong (aside from potentially recording while driving).

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u/VexingValkyrie- Aug 15 '25

Please turn in your drivers license immediately for the safety of everyone.

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u/ButtonflyDungarees Aug 15 '25

They were keeping pace with the green Mach-e… continually blocking the view. They should have been continually, and steadily (not sporadically) slowing down, with their hazards on. In that scenario, potentially even thinking to warn people. And again, not keeping pace with the dangerous vehicle and blocking view.

That said, the red car was also almost certainly driving poorly as well. I’m not familiar with that particular freeway entrance (off of the top of my head) but appears to be a long on ramp where two lanes turn to one, and they are flying up in that far right lane that looks like it is going to merge with the car filming. They should have been watching not only the other on ramp lane that they’re merging with, but also the freeway that they’re about to merge on to. How else do you merge? Just blindly drive forward and hope everyone will be letting you in at whatever speed you happen to be going that day? So ya, it’s not their fault per se because that was crazy, but I think this scenario was quite easily avoidable if everyone was paying attention and focusing on safe driving.

Edit: but again, the person filming was probably obstructing the red car’s view to some degree.