So, How fast should you drive with dipped headlights??

Rroff said:
One of them being a closer than was ideal situation with a cyclist in the dark where I had two vehicle coming up fast behind me one in the other lane and one right behind me who hadn't seen the situation and in the spur of the moment I couldn't not take into account, slightly delaying my reaction, that suddenly braking might have him going into the back of me even though it was a better option than splatting a cyclist (and if the cyclist had been wearing high vis I'd have had an extra ~1 second to make a better decision in).
Click to expand...

Had a very similar situation some years ago.

Rural, Unlit DC, Night-time, dreadful weather. (Wipers on fast were only clearing about 2" of screen trialing the wipers. Dipped lights cos of traffic coming other way. and lying water on the road)

Now because of "My Rules" with these conditions I was traveling only between 35-40. No more than that, so when the Cyclist came into view I would normally have had plenty of time to tap on the brakes and follow him untill safe to pass.

Unfortunately, I had no confidance that the HGV 12ft off my back bumper would be able to do the same, and of course, this is the point where another HGV was attempting to pass the both of us...

Now, I don't know how they could see where they were going either but I guess the impact of rain and road spray might be less the higher up you are, also the aerodynamics of a truck cab may be different from that of a smaller vehicle as regards deflecting rain before it even gets on the windscreen.

OTOH, maybe they couldnt see any better than I could but just didn't give a damn **** anyway :mad: (I suspect the latter really)

Anyway, It is amazing what you can think and do in the space of 1-2 seconds.

So, No point in braking at this stage. I could but truck wouldn't. So I would just get pushed into bloody idiot Cyclist and we would both die.

So, Light tap on brakes, just enough to light them up, Right indicator on (Even one flick of Red and amber might give the following truck driver the idea that something amiss was unfolding)

Blast on the horn (Not a toot, one long continuous blast). Again the truck driver might hear it and the bloody idiot Cyclist might get the message that the jaws of death are upon him and that his only hope of salvation would be an immediate, no compromise, diversion into the ditch.

And all at the same time pulling over as far as I dared to the overtaking truck and hoping that, at least, I would be able to pass without hitting him.

Moments later, the following truck was still behind me so I concluded that by this time the bloody idiot Cyclist was either lying in the ditch, even wetter and muddier, but alive. Or a greasy smear in the middle of the road with the truck driver ether not realising he had squashed somebody (easily done in these conditions I would think. I was driving a high top van and he could easily have not seen the cyclist at all with me in his line of sight).

Or knowing that he had done so and not caring!

As it was, over the next couple of days i kept an eye out in the local paper and for those "Fatal Accident" signs that are sometimes put up appealing for witnesses. Nothing transpired so I guess he survived relatively unscathed. (Either that or his rotting corpse is lying wedged in a drain culvert somewhere to this day)

Whether he learned his lesson over when/where is and when is not a good idea to ride a Bike I don't know. But I suspect not.

Anybody who would even have considered riding a bike under these sorts of conditions would already have been too far gone! :/
 
Poor driving as opposed to poor lighting from my perspective. If he had showed some signs of braking at a reasonable distance then ok, but he seemingly didnt pick up the car when I would have expected (as the car he decided to move around picked it up with their lights)

Its easy done when people brake to think of going round them, but the moment someone else starts braking you need to consider why

I nearly got caught out some years ago. Following someone home from work (just a random not someone I know) I followed for about 5 miles, every corner, every potential situation and also with a lot of cars coming the other way, they tapped the brakes

As per every other time I lifted off when they did this, its always my initial reaction to following any driver anyway as I tend to leave really good gaps to anything in front. Problem was this time he was stopping, completely seemingly for no reason.
It turned out that some idiot was walking in the road on a basically unlit section, and night. So I get it that some people overly brake, although I think you can tend to work those ones out fairly quickly, and if someone I have followed does start braking who wasn't before then I take that seriously.
 
Semple said:
:D i've done approx 60k motorway miles over the last 24-30 months, albeit most of that is during rush hour so cars are regularly braking because there are traffic build-ups etc ahead. But even when driving on nice emptier stretches of motorway, i can honestly say i rarely encounter drivers randomly braking for no apparent reason. I see an awful lot of other bad driving habits - i.e. middle lane hoggers etc.
Click to expand...
Maybe the Welsh just don't know how to drive on anything with more than one lane :o
 
Shocking example of how quickly things can go wrong and the importance of driving to the conditions. I'm sure he thought he was driving within his limits and I can see how easily he misjudged things, but he had chances to make better decisions and unfortunately for him he didn't get a second chance once he'd read the situation wrongly.

He sees the break lights of the vehicle in front come on hard and even has time to flash them before moving over, but with the speed he's doing it's too late to do anything by the time he sees the abandoned vehicle.

Don't get me wrong, the scariest bit is how easy it would be to end up in a similar situation.
 
jpaul said:
Would automatic/radar braking have helped ? can't see what bmw model it was.

as commented, dashcam footage misleading, poor nightvision (one of the reasons I haven't invested) , but,
other cars had seen it, reacted and l2 steered around .. absence of any self recrimination in his comments
Click to expand...

I don’t think so. It’s better to let nature take its own course and eject from the gene pool/teach lessons as needed.
 
Scania said:
Given he had plenty of clues something was amiss he didn’t seem to slow nor was he driving to the conditions arguably.

Basically the other traffic was noticeably slowing for no apparent reason - but a flow of vehicles generally won’t all slow at once for no good reason - he wasn’t thinking about what could lie ahead, he just wanted to get ahead......
Click to expand...

Pretty much my feelings.
 
div0 said:
Shocking example of how quickly things can go wrong and the importance of driving to the conditions. I'm sure he thought he was driving within his limits and I can see how easily he misjudged things, but he had chances to make better decisions and unfortunately for him he didn't get a second chance once he'd read the situation wrongly.

He sees the break lights of the vehicle in front come on hard and even has time to flash them before moving over, but with the speed he's doing it's too late to do anything by the time he sees the abandoned vehicle.

Don't get me wrong, the scariest bit is how easy it would be to end up in a similar situation.
Click to expand...

TBH he didn’t seem to get on the brake at any point. The footage could be evidence for a due care and attention charge.
 
Could see the stranded car a good 2 seconds before the impact and didn't seem to brake at all. I feel like their eyesight must be an unacceptable standard to be driving.
 
Clarkey said:
Could see the stranded car a good 2 seconds before the impact and didn't seem to brake at all. I feel like their eyesight must be an unacceptable standard to be driving.
Click to expand...
That’s how it looked to me as well, you could fairly clearly see the alloy wheels from at least 100y back when the video starts so I would imagine they would have been visible before that and the driver just wasn’t paying enough attention.

Edit: Oh, just watched the on the PC rather than phone, what a moron, guy in front breaks because of the crash, he decides to overtake and accelerate. Whoops :o
 
Last edited:
Wonder how well one of them self drive cars would have handled this
Guessing it would be no different to a self drive car coming up to a traffic jam
 
beachBOYken said:
Wow, whats weird is the video says cop car abandons stranded vehicle, but the car that pulls up behind has similar colours to a cop car but I can't see any police logos, so perhaps it wasn't.
Click to expand...
I was looking at that as it looks like it has the lightbar on the roof

EDIT, I just looked at it again: It got be a cop car with it being in them black & white colours and you can see what looks like a written logo on the door and the roof light bar
 
Last edited:
chaparral said:
Wonder how well one of them self drive cars would have handled this
Guessing it would be no different to a self drive car coming up to a traffic jam
Click to expand...

Well the fact it is raining and dark makes no difference to self driving cars as they use radar/lidar.

chaparral said:
Here a video of a stranded car with it lights on :eek:

Click to expand...

Lol. Why are the police doing nothing. Does show very poor attention on the part of drivers though.
 
Last edited:
chaparral said:
I was looking at that as it looks like it has the lightbar on the roof

EDIT, I just looked at it again: It got be a cop car with it being in them black & white colours and you can see what looks like a written logo on the door and the roof light bar
Click to expand...
It's not a traffic cop car for sure, and the lack of florescent identification on the back for me indicates it's not a police car full stop. I think it's just somebodies works car as there's definitely branding on the door.

Edit: In fact looking at it, that's definitely a LAPD standard police car.

The shocking thing about that video is that despite it being good conditions, a lit highway and the car having lights on, people were still not seeing it. Shocking driving standards over in the US and the condition of the cars themselves when it comes to the likes of the suspension and braking won't be up to much either in a lot of cases.
 
Jokester said:
It's not a traffic cop car for sure, and the lack of florescent identification on the back for me indicates it's not a police car full stop. I think it's just somebodies works car as there's definitely branding on the door.
Click to expand...

You get a lot of private security in the US as well, who often have vehicles and uniforms that look like police, such as those that patrol residential areas that are kind of cops but not - and they aren't insured, trained or in many cases even allowed to deal with a highway traffic incident like this - though personally I wouldn't have just left.
 
muon said:
Well the fact it is raining and dark makes no difference to self driving cars as they use radar/lidar.
Click to expand...
What am more interested in was if a self driving car would have just driven up to it and stopped due to thinking it was in a traffic jam or would it of slowed down changed lane and driven around it like the other cars did ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom