The driver of the car was an idiot.  He wasn't paying attention, the car in front of him stopped, and he locked it up and turned the wheel.  Of course, when you lock up the wheel, the steering doesn't do crap.  However, when he let off the brakes, he swerved in front of her.  Idiotic, but not criminal until they make stupidity a crime.

Quote from: CndnMax on June 29, 2007, 01:20:40 PM
you never want to brake and swerve at the same time. she tried to swerve and try to squeeze by the silver car and the idiots bumper.   

Yeah, I know that. What I'm trying to get at here is that this is the sort of video that's a great thing to look at and learn from. Clearly what she chose to do didn't work, not trying to criticize at all since you react with instinct in such a situation, but it's a good thing to look and figure out what would work.

One of the things Hughes covers in Proficient Motorcycling is that in almost all situations where someone is invading your right of way, your best bet is to brake rather than swerve. This video illustrates that. Any time some car is going to come into your lane, swerving has a great chance of not working. You could try to swerve behind them, only to have them see you and stop causing you to swerve right into them. Or you could try to swerve and get ahead of them, only to have them speed up to try and get out of your way. The point is that other cars are unpredictable and you can't make a calculated decision about where you should swerve. You basically end up relying on luck and hoping you pick the right option.

This applies to the situation in this video. She chose to swerve. She picked a direction. She swerved right into the car. Now if you look at what would have worked, I see braking as the better option. What I tell myself is if I were to find myself in this situation, what would I do? The first thing is, when I see the car lock up the brakes, I'm going to hit the brakes. At a minimum I'm going to scrub off 10 mph quickly. At this point you don't know if the car is going to invade your lane or not, but the prudent thing to do is assume it will and get on the brakes. She mentions on her website that when the car locked up it's wheels, she just watched it to see what it would do before choosing her action, and that by the time she saw it moving into her lane it was too late to do anything. That I see as a big mistake. Rather than wait to see what the car is going to do, I would immediately slow down and assume it was going to come straight at me. Once it started coming into my lane, I'm then going to be on the brakes 100%.

I'm almost positive that this course of action would have avoided the accident. Now it does run the risk of getting rear ended, that's something to consider. However, hitting the other car is going to make you immediately stop and run the risk of getting run over by traffic, so I don't think maximum braking puts you in any more danger. I would much rather risk getting rear ended than risk hitting another car and then getting run over.

That's just my analysis of it. Again, I'm not trying to say she's not a good rider, I'm just looking at this as a learning opportunity and a chance to train my brain as to what would be an appropriate way to react in such a situation.

yeah your instincts kick in instantly- you can only hope u picked the right thing to do. i've heard a lot on the braking vs swerving argument, you can swerve faster then you can brake but braking reduces ur speed by a lot. although i would of probably hit the brakes to.

Traction is a commodity if you are using a portion of your traction to swerve then you have less available to brake. I wasn't there so I can't say what I would have done. She has the TLC segment and an in depth explanation of her thinking on her website. I think she may be a little full of herself though.