Park in the road? Get Hit! Duh...
O.K., y'all, I'm ready to get jumped on here if I'm wrong, but...is it possible this guy stopped right in the lane on a two lane highway to "check his hitch", never thinking for a moment he might get ...
Forum Discussion
Francesca Knowles wrote:jdog wrote:rhagfo wrote:jdog wrote:
Does anybody know what it is like to come up on someone stopped in the roadway with no brake lights on? You don't realize that the idiot is stopped until you are on top of them or in this case underneath them because they are sitting there with out the brakes on, NO STOP LIGHTS lite up!
Not true, if you are truly a defensive driver you are looking well down the road and can realize that these is traffic not moving in time to stop.
Most drivers now days only watch about two car lengths in front of themselves,real easy to not see a car until it is too late that way.
Not true at all! I have had it happen! You think they are moving. Have someone come at you and see what happens. Your speed + their speed, things happen faster.
Again repeating that I do NOT dispute the ticket issued so far:
I understand and agree with what jdog is saying. As I see it, the problem here was that the human brain sees what it EXPECTS to see, especially in a much-repeated situation. A cow in the road is unexpected, so one reacts immediately. A car in the road is the norm...and WHO would expect that the car would be at a dead stop? NO ONE.
The time it takes to register that the very usual object is engaged in a very unusual behavior is the difference between hitting it and missing it.
Too bad that one of the two folks with the trailer didn't have the presence of mind to show themselves behind it while the other one "worked on the hitch", whatever that means. The appearance of a person there would certainly qualify as an attention-getter, and that one thing MIGHT have prevented this accident.
No one expects a stopped car in the road? Well I can't speak for everybody, but don't count me in the no one. I come across stopped cars in the road almost all the time. If you drive on a freeway in California you're going to come up on stopped traffic. Just yesterday on the way home from work on the two lane back road I take, I came across a pickup truck stopped in the lane of traffic just like the vehicle in this accident. I didn't run into the back of him. I saw he was stopped and I slowed and went around. I would hope that EVERY ONE that drives anticipates stopped vehicles in the road and does their best not to run into them.
