...is always be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear, and unless you have ESP (the precognitive kind, not the nancy piece of kit that allows your car to keep itself on the road, despite your best efforts) you shouldn't drive quick around blind bends.
I was going to work Tues morning (hours before my 70mph flight down the flooded A1) along the same road I always travel. It is a quite narrow B road and along the last stretch there is a blind bend that can be taken at 50-60mph, no sweat-and traffic is never (!!?) backed up this far back from the junction...I always take any blind bend at such a pace that I can stop should I encounter an obstruction. This morning was mostly like any other. However, I rounded the bend to find traffic backed up much further than normal, all the way to within a few yards of the corner-100 yards maybe. I was following another car and we both slowed and stopped behind the stationary cars. Three more cars joined the queue behind me (I wasn't counting, I got to count later on..). Ironically for me I was actually thinking about the very issue of rounding blind bends and stuff (this is quite a tight bit of road), when I hear the sound of skidding and look in my offside mirror just in time to see the collision..
Looked and sounded pretty nasty so I got out of my car and walked down the road to see the damage. I was already calling the emergency services. Some others had got out too. I was surprised to see the driver of the car the caused the accident pretty much intact. He looked very shocked and dazed, the only visible injury I could see was a bad gash on his right arm which was dripping blood down the side of the car and onto the road, but it wasn't really pouring or spurting so not life threatening. He was fully conscious but wasn't saying much. I reassured him help was coming etc. He said shall I move my the car and went to start it...I told him not to.
He had come round the bend too fast to stop, locked up and either steered or slid such that his nearside front had hit the offside rear of the first stationary car. The force of the impact had rotated the car anti-clockwise, drivers side broadside, across the opposite side of the road. At this point, he got T-boned by an oncoming car. The force of the impact had destroyed the offside corner of the car he hit and shunted it into the car in front, in turn the second car was shunted into a third car. My car was the fourth one along and was not hit luckily.
I would estimate he hit the back of the first car at over 40mph, possibly 50mph. I estimate the oncoming car that Tboned him (mk3 Golf) was doing around 30mph or less as it had just rounded a tight bend.
The driver of the car who crashed was a young lad, late teens or possibly early 20s. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt either. He extracted himself from the car (passenger side) within a few minutes and was able to walk about fine etc-he really did walk away, unless he had internal injuries. Ambulance took him away. Woman driving first car rear ended was taken away on a spinal board, although she had been out of her car and walking around prior to ambulance's arrival. Occupants of the oncoming car were wholly uninjured.
I think that if the guy had hit the queue of traffic full on, rather than a glancing blow, he would have been killed, and my car would have been shunted as well. I will certainly take that road with even more caution than I usually do in future.
Why am I writing this? Not really trying to give a 'lesson' to people-just thought it might interest some people to read. Whenever you see something like that it really reminds you of the sheer violence and damage of a car crash-when you're flying down the road you feel so safe and secure, even more so in big, fast modern cars, but imagine-you leave the road and hit that tree, or a car head on, or roll, you will be dust.
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Nasty situation, and all too common. People are happy to drive blind into bends without thinking of the possible consequenses. Whenever there is a traffic queue after a bend or a crest I leave a large gap if I am last car in line so that I am visible to anyone coming up behind me who can't see that there is a hold up. It also allows room to get out of the way if you notice a kamikazi pilot looming in the rear view.
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" He wasn't wearing his seatbelt either. "
I bet he will from now on. Strange how some people will only learn the hard way.
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" He wasn't wearing his seatbelt either. " I bet he will from now on. Strange how some people will only learn the hard way.
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such a simple bit of kit and yet so essential............when you think that the only person in Princess Diana's crash who survived was the one who put the belt on and there aren't many more safer cars on the market than a Merc S class are there?
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Sounds like all concerned were fortunate, especially the prat with no seatbelt.
I had a similar, but fortunately damage free, situation on the M25 a few years ago. I was 18, and had driven my Dad's Passat down to Gatwick with my Mum to pick up my Gran. On the way back, on a fairly sharp (for a motorway) left hand bend, I joined the back of stationary traffic in the second lane. As I always do, I left a cars length in front of me.
Keeping an eye on the mirrors, I saw a 7.5 tonne truck come round the corner, and thought 'that's not going to stop'. I dumped the clutch and absolutely floored it heading for the hard shoulder. The truck bounced, wheels locked, to a halt in the space I'd just vacated - very scary. My Mum and Gran were fine about my manouver once I pointed the truck out.
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One thing that would help in accident prevention would be if we were occasionally able to see crash tests shown at full speed.
It's all very lovely and graceful when we see a car oh-so-slowly collapsing into a barrier in beautiful slow motion. Unfortunately, this is all we do tend to see. Just once in my life, during a C4 documentary, did I see a crash test shown at full speed. The violence and obvious energy of it was (literally) breathtaking. You only need to hear the noise generated by a 10-15mph shunt to realise the forces involved.
Also, for anyone thinking of not wearing a seatbelt, we should have a series of TV ads showing the height you would need to drop a car nose first into the ground to generate a 30mph, 40mph, 50mph and 60mph impact. The heights are a rather scary 30ft, 54ft, 84ft and 121ft. Would you get in a car that was about to be dropped nose-first from 121ft? Would the bloke in the accident above do that? I think not.
V
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Defensive driving is all about asking youself 'what if?' - which is what I was alluding to in my earlier thread regarding the standard of driving I had seen in the monsoon on the A1.
What if there's a pedestrian/cyclist/stopped vehicle round the bend, or a depth of water that I can't make out? It's all the same, really.
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If I am feeling sensible when going round bends I often think what if??? It makes me go a lot slower!
A road I sometimes use is the A57 from manchester to sheffield and some drivers seem to have no hazard perception on it at all. There is one bad junction where there is a blind bend and imediately after a set of lights. Before the bend there are signs pointing this fact out, so I assume there have been many backenders.
I do often go to fast through blind bends in blind faith that there is nothing stopped around it, but it is easy to go into a phycotic trance on roads where you pretend they are a rally track. You get the same feeling traveling at 80MPH in a downpour on a busy motorway.
If I am following a car going to fast around a left hand bend I try to just keep them in sight, with the back of their car just visible infront of the hedge/wall etc.
Well writern peice CP.
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A bit in this weeks Motor Cycle News from North Yorkshire, where there had been an accident and a police car was parked across the road to divert traffic to a back road. Three police motorcyclists come over the brow of a hill and the first two manage to stop in time, but the third is illustrated in the paper as having ploughed into the side of the police car.
Hmmm, "be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear" hmmmm.
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