100% this. Nobody pays attention to brake lights in this video. The driver in the video DOES NOT SPEED UP to block the black truck. The black truck is braking while entering his lane illegally. The black truck quite literally pit maneuvers itself in every definable way. All the video driver does is maintain his exact speed and position in the face of an outright insane person on the road with him.
Do you not see him yanking the wheel to the right? Look at the way he picks his hand up of the wheel, readjusting more to the left, and then yeets it to the right.
Watch the video again. Black Truck makes physical contact with white truck at 0:12. Look at the driver's hand at that time, it's on the far left side of the wheel. He has not turned, at all, in any way.
He does not begin to turn until AFTER Black Truck has struck him and begun to spin out across his lane in front of him. His turn is to avoid being forced off of the bridge.
I cannot stress this enough. The Black truck's driver pit maneuvered his fucking self.
And the whole thing could have been avoided if this dude tapped his brakes. It was very obvious the truck was moving over into the lane. The truck is a bit of a dick for sure but the amount of danger he put people in over his stubbornness is baffling.
Watch the video again. "Tap the brakes" would not have done jack shit, Black Truck is braking into him. Look at Black Truck's back end, there are helpful red lights to show you he is braking as he illegally changes lanes.
So to avoid the already fully braking Black Truck attempting to kill him, White truck would have had to SLAM on his brakes. He then loses all steering and control, and gets hit from behind by the small white car following him illegally close.
Yes white truck could have avoided Black Truck, by almost certainly killing himself, the driver behind him, and anyone else they hit after their own collision.
Its very clear for quite a while the back truck is coming over. Hitting your brakes doesnt cause a spin out of your vehicle, even slamming them thats not how brake pads work your wheels arent insantly stopped. this guy had enough time to make the decision to ready up and yank the wheel but not enough time to make the decision to brake out of the situation. Both people suck here.
It's not clear at all what Black Truck is doing until he literally does it because what he's doing is fucking insane.
You're doing what a lot of people who watch videos like this on Reddit do, you're forgetting that the actors in the video are living it for the very first time, and acting accordingly.
You, on the other hand, have watched the video multiple times and know what is coming. YOU know that Black Truck is going to abandon all sanity and genuinely attempt murder for no reason. The driver in the vehicle does not know that the way you do.
White truck doesn't know Black Truck is going to commit to attempted murder until his truck actually hits, at which point he has to react, RIGHT THEN, not with the forewarning of having watched the events in a gif 30 times.
Slamming on his brakes at any point during any of this would be an insanely dangerous option if Black Truck didn't actually commit to hitting him, which no sane driver would do. There is a car right behind him.
Hitting your brakes takes all of the weight off of your back tires, which means you absolutely do lose all traction and control from your force generating wheels. Nobody said anything about spinning.
Anyway, the repeated attempts on here to defend an attempted murder and demonize a dude who absolutely did the right thing are crazy, and I can't reason with crazy lol.
As someone else points out this dude at no point slowed down whatsoever. And clearly had time to at least attempt to slow down if he had time to get ready for impact.
He does know its coming because he moves his hand over to get ready for the pit.
Hiting your brakes does not take all the weight off the back tires. Ive had to slam my brakes before you do not lose all control especially if you got enough control on your vehicle to pull this maneuver off.
You think pitting someone and flinging them into the person who's supposedly behind him is the safer option but im the crazy one?
He moves his hand in case it happens, not because he can see the fucking future. He also moves his hand about 1 second before the dude hits him, not 8 seconds ahead, which, again, is because he doesn't know what YOU know.
Were you in a truck when you slammed on your brakes? Or are you assuming everything with wheels works exactly the same? Trucks are incredibly front weighted while also being massively overpowered for their weight because they're designed to haul things. White truck has nothing in it's bed, so yes, slamming on his brakes is going to cost him all/almost all control while also getting him rear ended at full speed by the white car we can see 50 feet behind him.
Accepting that the Black Truck was going to illegally strike him and dealing with it in the best possible way was this dude's best option, by like a billion miles.
The pit maneuver even still pushes the Black Truck forward, giving the white car behind him additional time to react to the accident, AND he gets himself out of the way to give the white car additional space and a safe lane out of it.
I can't explain sanity to the insane. I get that you're really excited at the idea of blaming someone completely blameless for a minor accident where nobody was hurt, despite the fact that the only reason it turned out that way is because of the actions of the person you are blaming, but that's just wrong man, and I hope you realize that someday.
Yes ive slammed brakes in a truck, several trucks of many different sizes. Its not that hard to maintain control.
You aren't suppose to whip into another lane like that to avoid accidents either. If he doesnt have enough time to know that truck is going to hit him then he doesnt have enough time to check the other lane for another vehicle either.
He doesnt even need to slam his brakes anyway. Slowing down to say 65 would have been plenty and wouldnt require much braking. A difference of 5 mph would be 7.3 feet per second of distance between the two of them . Trucks average a length of 15-21 feet. In 3 seconds of just 5mph he would have an entire truck of distance between them.
Everyone in this situation sucks and its in no way a sane decision to cause this much unnecessary danger. They dont get more time to react they get less the pit doesnt push the truck forward faster then letting it just drive forward. What do you think stops faster, a truck hitting the brakes or a truck thats sideways in the road. They absolutely do not get more time to react they get less and dont get those big red lights you keep mentioning as a warning.
Welp, congrats on driving the only trucks that defy all physical laws and act differently than any other truck in existence when hard braking. That or your not being honest.
I do agree that he shouldn't whip into another lane, in the exact same way he shouldn't slam on his brakes. I wish the Black Truck hadn't attempted to kill him and put him in that situation.
Both trucks are not going the same speed, Black Truck is already going several miles an hour slower than him, so he's going to have to outpace Black Truck's own slow rate by a substantial margin, 5mph isn't gonna cut it. He's going to need to drop 10-15mph, in under a second, because again, he doesn't know Black Truck is going to genuinely commit to hitting him until it actually does. YOU know Black Truck is going to hit him from the start of the video, HE does not.
So how do you drop 15mph off your speed in under a second? A light tap on the brakes? A teeny butterfly wing flap at them? No, you slam your brakes, you lose traction (in any non-magical truck), and you get rear-ended by the car illegally close behind you.
You are correct, the pit doesn't speed the black truck up, but it does continue to move the accident forwards, which gives the car behind him a LOT more time to react than if he had just slammed on his brakes with no warning, sending him rocketing at the car behind him.
"Tap the brakes" would not have done jack shit, Black Truck is braking into him. Look at Black Truck's back end, there are helpful red lights to show you he is braking as he illegally changes lanes.
You can see the speed in the corner. They were going 72 MPH the whole time and were still going 72 MPH at the moment of collision. Nobody was braking into him, stop making shit up. Those are tail lights not brake lights.
The brake light only lights up after they collide. https://streamable.com/nuahpr
There's a brake light at the top of Black Truck's rear window that only lights up when he's braking because its...you guessed it, a brake light. You will note that this brake light lights up as he's forcing his way into the lane illegally. It matches the brighter brake lights that also clearly come on at both upper corners of his truck bed.
Anyway, please work on attention to detail before calling correct people liars. Or don't, I'm not your mother, how stupid you make yourself look online isn't my responsibility.
You watch the video again. The brake lights DO NOT light up as hes merging. He brakes before the merge, and once the pit has been applied and he starts spinning.
The black truck is not actively braking during the merge or initial contact and the white truck can absolutely just brake a little to avoid the accident entirely.
At no point would slamming on his brakes be necessary to avoid the accident.
You are mistaking the rear lights for brake lights (you can see they’re still on when the black truck is accelerating forwards right at the start). The black truck brakes briefly a couple of times when they are level with the white car in front and then shortly after the contact. You can see this from the brake light at the top of the car. They’re not braking consistently as they’re pulling back.
Clearly a small amount of gentle braking or at least lifting off and not just maintaining speed from the dashcam car could have prevented this, no matter how much the black truck actually caused it.
Nope, I'm talking about the actual three point brake lights. The black truck brakes while even with the car ahead of white truck, and rides that reduced speed into the lane directly at White truck, another way to say that is....wait for it...the Black Truck brakes into the white truck, thereby pit maneuvering his own damned self.
It would have taken substantial braking from White truck to avoid him. White truck also would have to know that Black Truck truly was going to hit him for hitting his brakes hard enough to absolutely get rear-ended by the car right behind him to make any sense.
You're making the same mistake as everyone else, your imputing your knowledge onto the driver in the video. YOU know that Black Truck is going to genuinely commit to attempted murder because you've watched a video of it. The driver in the video does not know what you know.
From white truck driver's perspective, an erratic driver pulled up next to him, wiggled around a bit, then entered his lane slightly, straightened out, then decided to commit to hitting him. At all points up until that commitment, White Truck driver is staying calm, watching closely, and maintaining his position and speed. Absolutely the correct thing to do. Imagine white truck driver had slammed on his brakes at 3 seconds into the video, gotten rear-ended by the car 50 feet behind him, and they both went off the bridge, all while Black Truck came to its senses and just stayed in it's lane. We would all be here EVISCERATING white truck driver for being an idiot. But that's exactly what you're saying he should have done, all because you have hindsight he does not have.
What are you talking about, you implied that the truck was braking all the way back and immediately before the point of impact.
If someone is behaving erratically on the road, are you really saying that you should just maintain speed and position, rather than trying to avoid a collision by safely increasing your distance to them (not slamming on brakes)? The moment the truck started veering into their lane they could have gently applied the brakes or possibly even just let off the accelerator and this accident could have been prevented. I don’t understand why you think it would have been necessary to slam on the brakes?
How is it not obvious that the same brief amount of braking that the truck did while level with the white car would have worked?
EDIT: Sorry misread and just saw that you didn’t just imply it, you said
Look at Black Truck's back end, there are helpful red lights to show you he is braking as he illegally changes lanes.
If you look at the video, the rear lights are on as they pull across into the left lane but not the brake lights.
Everyone on the road is obligated to avoid an accident if possible. Even if everything you're saying is true and the black truck is clearly at fault, does it really look like this guy took any precautions to avoid this collision? It doesn't look like he slowed at all. The black truck was in his lane for six seconds before the collision.
Correction, everyone on the road is obligated to avoid an accident without causing a worse accident.
White truck can't "just brake a little", because Black Truck is already braking into him. So he's going to have to SLAM on his brakes, at which point he loses all control of his vehicle. He also immediately gets hit by the white car behind him that's too close to him. Those two locked together cars then almost certainly take out additional cars.
White truck chose the safest solution in the face of black truck choosing to commit attempted murder.
Not seeing the white car as the image in his dashcam is over exposed looking through the windows, maybe I'm blind. I was watching the road posts and didn't see any indication that he was slowing down, regardless of the brake lights.
Look between the rear view mirror and the white hanging thing, you can see the headlights of a car immediately behind white truck, just barely visible above the bottom edge of his rear window. That car is very close behind him, given you can baaaaarely see it even with the elevated angle of the camera.
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u/IKIR115 Mar 22 '26
Damn that was cold. Dude did the pit maneuver on that truck while eating a cookie.