Article: Defensive Driving Rule #31: Avoid Head-On Collisions

[Megan Edwards]

You can view the page at http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum...-On-Collisions

[kk794d]

For me, driving is a full time task. It is your opportunity to improve driving skill every time you are behind the wheel. You always ask yourself the WHAT IF questions. The lady died because she had not thought about what if some animal suddenly in front of her car, what would she do. If she had, she would have instinctively did the correct maneuver without thinking - no time to think. How many people died because of this? After the what if question, you still have to develop the necessary skills to take care of this imaginary problem. Driving can not be taken for granted.

[mjohn911]

30 minutes ago, I just narrowly avoided a head on crash. Situation: Dark driving conditions, one lane country road, (one lane for each direction). Regular intersection with traffic signals all ways. The light was green as we approached the intersection. The car in front of me signaled for a right turn, slowed slightly, and turned right. As he turned, the light turned yellow. I proceeded through the intersection on yellow. Coming the opposite direction, a motorist had also approached the intersection when the light turned yellow, and was turning left. He waited momentarily for the motorist in front of me to turn right, and proceeded to turn left on yellow. The problem was, as he turned left, I was coming through the intersection, and the oncoming motorist didn't see me behind the car in front of me that had just turned right. As I drove through the intersection, I saw the headlights of the oncoming car turning left about 1 second before the near collision. What prevented the collision was both of us slamming on the brakes and me veering hard to the right. Consequently, we both stopped in the middle of the intersection, about 18 -24 inches from each other. Neither of us honked because it happened so fast. I drove around him and proceeded through the intersection. If I hadn't veered to the right, I would have hit him. If we both hadn't braked as hard as we did, we would have hit, both going about 20-25 mph. I'm not sure who's fault it would have been, because I went through on yellow, and he was turning left on yellow right before the signal changed. But what saved us was the hard veer to the right while he slowed and stopped. We were both able to safely exit the intersection. I pulled into the gas station at the intersection to recover, but the other motorist continued on his way.