It's amazing that all dashcam compilations basically consist of people sending in clips of other people fucking it up and then still end up at at least 30% of being entirely avoidable situations if the driver with the camera just wasn't also hugely carbrained. Most common issue seems to be some sort of my right of way shall not be infringed, my steel steed shall make it so or figuring looking at the road and / or being able to stop your car within the distance you can see is for chumps.

I'll go through it clip by clip for Idiots in Cars Nr. 367, posted a day ago at time of writing. To be clear, I'm not saying it's the dashcam drivers fault primarily in the examples down below but isn't this supposed to showcase other people fucking it up entirely?

At 00:32 you can clearly see the red car, cutting across the lines, no indicator ain't exactly on a vector for the right lane, time to stay the course and not brake

At 01:36 you can quite clearly see, in broad daylight, the bump ahead that the person wrecks on and that's with the shitty dashcam quality

01:59 I don't even think I have to point out how fucking carbrained it is to swerve blindly into the opposing lane of traffic because you couldn't be bothered to just brake a bit and wait all of 3 seconds

At 04:13 you can clearly see the red car from the right moving with literally no possible place to go instead of right infront of the driver, time to acclerate straight at it (HOOOOOOOOONK)

At 08:14 like the person in the white SUV is an asshole but like what did you think would happen here when they overtook you on the blocked lane?

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[–] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As a pedestrian when I was young an eon ago - I assumed drivers would be predictable, see me, and slow down. But starting about 15 years ago - I thought it was wise to assume the opposite. My view was I must assume drivers are entirely unpredictable, they won't see me, and not only will they not slow down - they might even speed up because who knows what the fuck they're doing in their private little world on wheels of their own - aka their car. Playing on the phone. Eating. Drinking something. Not paying any attention. Driving drunk. Driving dangerously high. Etc. Or some horrible combo of those. And then years passed and Tesla's fucking autopilot appeared which is one more reason American drivers suck.

I know trials are far more rare than they should be but I assume if drivers face civil lawsuits and/or criminal trials after accidents they directly caused - they blatantly commit perjury. In fact - I'm surprised this civilian car-brained version of testilying doesn't have a name and its own Wikipedia page.

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Ninja edit I entirely forgot predictability so I added it.

[+] RedSturgeon@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 8 points 2 months ago

What strikes me is how selfish and thoughtless Americans are - drivers in particular. I don't mean to imply that everything was great before. The US has been car-brained since - I dunno - the 1950s? And a thoughtless society doesn't appear out of nothing. But it seems to me that the last 2 or 3 decades things have gotten really bad. I certainly hope parents have taught their children to expect only the worst from drivers. Looking both ways and waiting for the green signal (or the walk signal) is wildly insufficient.

Another thing I forgot to mention is the enormous military-like size of many "normal" vehicles and their atrocious wall-like front ends. It's as if they were designed from the ground up to kill. Children need to be taught to avoid those things as though they were rabid grizzly bears that can attack at any time without warning. I wonder how many of those car owners run over neighborhood kids or even their own kids. I guess freedom isn't free.

[–] causepix@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Depending on your mother's age it was probably less "liberalization of the economy" and more "money from the auto lobby influencing traffic laws and civil design."