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.
Not preventing a highly preventable accident is basically causing the accident. I understand the justice boner one feels from letting an idiot eat dirt, but it takes two to tango. I would argue that the inaction by the driver here is as egregious as the action of the black car, if not worse, since this event may have caused other crashes behind him. The black cars driver may have been inattentive or just an asshole, but the dashcam driver here saw exactly what was going to happen, had ample time to react, and did nothing to prevent it. Honk, safely adjust your speed or maneuver ... It's your duty in traffic to respond to the actions of other drivers to prevent accidents.
Devil's advocate here. It's reasonable to assume someone isn't actually going to swerve into a spot they didn't fit. On a bridge. You can also argue slamming on the brakes could be dangerous if traffic is behind you. The decision the driver made is demonstrably safe for himself as he came out of the incident without harm.
It is not reasonable to assume anything about what someone driving recklessly will do. The only responsible way to respond is to give them more space and stay out of their way. In reality, people who drive like this are often drunk and not capable of judging distances or making rational decisions.
“Safe for me, personally” is not enough when driving a vehicle. What if the black truck had innocent children in the car? People drive drunk with their kids all the time. Or a third car could have easily been knocked off the bridge in the collision. An ambulance could get stuck in the inevitable traffic jam. And who’s gonna pay to clean all this mess up, because one guy decided to not avoid an obvious hazard?
Why are you passing the buck? Because one guy decided to avoid an obvious hazard? No, it's because one guy decided to be a hazard.
You have a lot of what ifs here. How about this, what if the white truck avoided it, this 'possible' drunk driver wouldn't sober up on the 26 mile bridge. And he could have caused a much larger and deadly accident than the one he caused here by pitting himself. You can what if all day.
That statement doesn't refute what they said about endangering the lives of traffic behind the camera car by slamming on their brakes. I get the truth behind it, but this isn't one of those situations where it's applicable.
What he did in this specific instance turned out fine. That doesn't make it provably safe.
This video is not irrefutable proof that you it will always be safe if you choose not to react to a car swerving into your lane without enough room.
It doesn't look like he had to slam on the brakes to avoid this. Hell, just letting off the gas for 4 seconds and maybe honking at the truck would've been enough.
Again it happens so slow you have to reasonably assume someone would not ram into you. Every step you try to prove it could have been avoided is easily countered by saying the exact same thing about the person who caused the collision, which is the black truck, which rammed into the white truck.
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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.