The Long Road

This sucks. The morning weather started out alright, lots of light, drifting snow dancing pretty patterns above the roads as cars whizzed by. I guess at some point between my looking at the snow and my accident, it had decided to melt. Far up ahead and the cause of all this was a truck sitting on the shoulder (from what looked like a flat tire), this caused everyone in the left lane to slow down to go around it. So of course, a whole line of braked cars and with two cars distance between me and the mazda 3 ahead, I couldnt brake in time. I slam on the brakes and feel the familiar ABS stutter kick in and am just pretty much shocked because i thought the roads were dry last time I checked. So it becomes pretty obvious that I'm not going to make it in time and try to swerve into the shoulder a bit. AAAAaaaand...the shoulder isnt wide enough so I hit it with the left side of the bumper and then bounce to hit the Mazda with the right corner of my bumper. OUCH.

We get out of our respective cars, I see NO DAMAGE to mine except for a few scratches where I bumped the 3 but a huge hole in the 3's bumper. So right there, it'll probably be 1000$ to fix her bumper. I havent checked mine thoroughly yet so there might be some extra costs to add to that. Man, plus I guess this means I'll HAVE to get winter tires now. I've put that off long enough.

So aside from putting on winter tires 2 weeks ago, what could I have done different in this situation? I remember being told that hitting a car dead on was the best way to go, but the urge to try to avoid hitting at all is very strong. What do you guys think?

Replies: 16 comments

What kind of tires do you currently have? How old? Was there actually snow on the road?

I had a feeling that your car was going to require extensive repairs before I finished reading this entry...but I guess you'd be too upset to make a blog entry if that were the case.

I think avoiding the car was a good move. I'm curious as to who gave you advice to the contrary. Obviously a visual picture of where this happened would have helped, but regardless of the scenario, any reduction in rear-end impact force will go towards preventing excessive car damages and bodily harm.

Posted by dAN @ 11/29/2007 01:03 PM EST

The best accident is the one you don't have, so I've got to guess that trying to avoid an accident is better than trying to hit dead-on. And, like dAN, I can't think of a way that hitting a glancing blow would be worse than hitting dead-on. Maybe crumple zones and bumpers aren't meant to take that kind of damage? I don't really think it makes sense.

Posted by Joe @ 11/29/2007 01:17 PM EST

Trying to avoid the accident is the right approach. Leaving more following distance would have solved the problem since 2 car lengths is very short for anything where you are moving.

Not sure why you thought the roads were dry, since it was snowing when I looked outside.

Posted by sbdep @ 11/29/2007 03:43 PM EST

I think the argument goes that there are benefits to hitting dead on:
1) predictability. the car in front of you moves forward, he's already got the brakes on.

2) energy distribution over a wider area of the bumper. Your front bumper and their rear bumper will collide over a larger area, possibly creating less damage as opposed to two small corners hitting each other with the same momentum.

And I thought the roads were dry because of the dancing snow!

Posted by Long @ 11/29/2007 04:09 PM EST

All in all, its good it wasn't anything worse...;).

Posted by dAN @ 11/29/2007 08:49 PM EST

i think the hitting the car in front of you thing is supposed to be better because the you don't get the collateral from the spinning and the bumping. there's only the straight ahead force. this of course assumes that all the cars in front go straight ahead - but you can't necessarily rely on that. when it gets to be winter it's time to leave more room ...

Posted by melpie @ 11/30/2007 11:23 PM EST

To add to sbdep's comment, Young Drivers recommends 1 car length for every 10km/h you're doing.

I'm happy you're safe, and that it wasn't a worse accident. :)

Posted by Rachelle @ 12/03/2007 11:42 AM EST

One car length per 10 km/h?! That sounds ridiculous, even if it were reserved to winter.

Posted by dAN @ 12/03/2007 09:10 PM EST

Say an average car length is 15 feet.

10km/h is approx 2.8m/s
2.8m is about 9 feet.
so for each 10km/h you will travel 9feet/sec.

And they are saying 1 car length per 10km/h. Which is 15/9=1.6 seconds of following distance. Which is far below the normal recommendations I have seen which calls for 3 seconds following distance.

If you want to increase the "car length" to 18 feet, you are still only talking about 2 seconds following distance.

Posted by sbdep @ 12/04/2007 01:18 PM EST

Yes, it is true that most people use a following distance of "Well I can just see your bumper in front of mine, so I must have lots of space"

Posted by sbdep @ 12/04/2007 01:19 PM EST

most highway traffic is at 1 car's length apart most days, which is insane if you imagine the reaction time required if anything happens.

i usually do leave a lot of space though. speaking of, holy shit, the last 2 days have taken me almost 2 hours to come in to work. it's ridiculous.

Posted by Long @ 12/04/2007 02:43 PM EST

it can be a pain leaving that much space in front of you - heck, on the highway i don't think cars will let that happen, or from my experience at least.

that being said - i want a snow days. i miss those.

Posted by melpie @ 12/04/2007 10:17 PM EST

This has taken an odd turn. I was thinking one car length per 10km/h was excessive...not the opposite. You never follow ten car lengths behind people on the highway because A) there's no room for that, B) that's retarded, and C) the car in front of you is moving at about your pace. Such a rule would only apply if cars stopped instantaneously ahead of you, while you had to spend time decelerating.

Posted by dAN @ 12/05/2007 10:25 PM EST

Sure, but leaving a car length or more per 10km/h speed doesn't give you space to stop immediately. It gives you space to have enough reaction time to get on the brakes and take evasive action if needed.

When a deer jumps onto the highway, or a kid runs onto the road chasing a soccer ball, you need to A) have the room to be able to see them, B) have enough space to react before you hit the car in front of you if they are the one about to hit the deer/kid. Just because they are moving at your speed right now, doesn't mean they will be in half a second while yuo adjust the AC/Heat controls/radio/etc.

If you recall there used to be those large arrows painted on the road surface on Hunt Club, as well as on some highways in Ontario. They were spaced far enough apart so that if you crossed one just as the car ahead of you crossed the next one, you were spaced about 2 seconds apart.

Until I saw that, I never realized how much space that really means.

Posted by sbdep @ 12/06/2007 11:00 AM EST

If you're not paying enough attention to the road because you're fiddling with controls...well, then I guess one can't hypothetically devise a safe car spacing for that. Do you realize how slow 10km/h actually is?! You can stop on a dime.

You should be adequately spaced behind a car to get an idea of what's going on ahead of it. Driving 10 car lengths behind someone going 100km/h is absurd.

Posted by dAN @ 12/06/2007 07:19 PM EST

well, the bumper's going to cost me 400$. Or roughly 100$/car length that i shorted.

Posted by Long @ 12/07/2007 09:35 AM EST