Avoiding Collisions (Even if it’s not your mistake)

On the way to the office yesterday, I passed by an intersection collision that had just occurred. A compact car (driven by a young man) had been struck on the left side by an SUV coming up the road. It was pretty obvious that the car had cut across the path of the SUV, leading one to believe that the teen had started up from the stop sign without seeing the SUV coming up the road.

Was this just another case of an inexperienced teen causing a collision? Of course, the teen should have been more careful.

But what about the “experienced” driver of the SUV? The vehicle locations at rest after impact, lack of skid marks, together with the crash severity, told me that had the driver of the SUV simply performed the correct action, the collision could have been avoided entirely.

While there was considerable sheet metal damage done to the car, the vehicle positions told me that the SUV driver had hit his brakes and swerved to the left in an attempt to avoid the collision. The teen’s car had almost cleared the road when struck, and was not hit with enough impact to significantly move it sideways. Had the SUV driver simply braked hard and steered a little to the right, he most likely would have missed the car.

We teach our Level 2 students a police academy tactic to “Steer to the Rear” if a vehicle is unexpectedly moving across their path. There are 2 reasons for this move: First, if the intruding vehicle has momentum, that will be the spot that gets vacated; in other words, don’t go where they are heading, go where they’ve been. Second, if a collision is unavoidable, a glancing blow to the rear of most vehicles will result in far less damage to either vehicle. The majority of vehicle weight is in the front, where the engine and transmission reside, so that if you strike another vehicle with your front end (heaviest) you will encounter less resistance at its rear, where it’s lightest. Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule – for example, this doesn’t apply to a loaded tanker or concrete hauler, and it definitely does not mean that you should cross the center line into oncoming traffic lanes!