I’ll take you out in my car and brake hard.
Well, yes,
It is certainly possible to create an emergency, and even potentially life threatening, situation by deliberately driving like an utter tool.
But dont you think that making an effort to actually drive safely might be a better way of managing day to day risk on the public highway?
Your last paragraph kind of underlines the safety issue, safety devices such as seatbelts, airbags, crash helmets etc etc are wholly unnecessary until the point where you need them!
Sure, but surely the best way of not needing them is to not put yourself in a position where you might need them in the first place?
In my experience of, oh, 500,000 miles of accident free, white van, urban environment, driving, I have never had to make use in anger of any of these safety systems (Not even the brakes).
Also, don’t tempt fate!
(Erm , Yes, which is why I always feel uncomfortable in these threads
)
While accidents are mostly instigated by somebody doing something daft, It is my observation that it is mostly the other people who willfully refuse to take action to mitigate the situation that actually turn somebody elses mistake into an accident. This should not be considered acceptable.
That's is why I have always said that all accident investigations should start out with a presumption of it being 50/50 and then should go on from there.
And yes, if we have a situation where driver #A attempted to carry out an ill advised over take and driver #B ended up crashing into him because he didn't take appropriate mitigating action just because "Right of way" then yes, it is Driver #B who is mostly responsible for the collision.
