Saw a car accident today (long)

Ack! OP that must have been very scary to witness. I'm glad you were able to be a distraction/comfort to that little girl.

Sometimes it boggles my mind how easy it is to get and keep a drivers license. I know far many more bad drivers than good ones and sadly being a bad driver can easily have deadly consequences...
 
Ya know. It's impossible to think about how you'd react in certain situations, but I'd like to think if I saw a red light my first reaction wouldn't be "Gun it!!"
 
First of all, a huge :thumbsup2 to you for stopping and staying at the scene to help everyone involved, including the person who ran a red light. I can tell you from dealing with these things every single day that it's rare that witnesses stop to be identified, and even more rare that they actually help...especially the person they know/thought was at fault.

It's easy to play armchair quarterback and second guess what someone does or say "I'd react in x or y way". Reality is that when confronted with a situation like that when you have a split second to react, you can't say for sure what your reaction may be. So while the driver who ran the red light is at fault, it's hard to second guess and say they made the wrong decision by trying to gun it and get through.

Driving on snow and controlling a car during a drift, yes, you steer into a skid/drift. However, all modern cars have ABS, and most of them have some form of stability control. With these cars, the best thing you can do in snow/ice if faced with an emergency stop or turn is stomp the brake pedal and steer. Let the cars' computers control the brakes and stop you from spinning...it'll do a 100x better job than you can. That's counterintuitive to what anyone over the age of 30 was brought up to do...we were always taught differently. But technology has changed, a lot. If you have a newer car with these things in them, stomp and steer.
 
Driving on snow and controlling a car during a drift, yes, you steer into a skid/drift. However, all modern cars have ABS, and most of them have some form of stability control. With these cars, the best thing you can do in snow/ice if faced with an emergency stop or turn is stomp the brake pedal and steer. Let the cars' computers control the brakes and stop you from spinning...it'll do a 100x better job than you can. That's counterintuitive to what anyone over the age of 30 was brought up to do...we were always taught differently. But technology has changed, a lot. If you have a newer car with these things in them, stomp and steer.
My wife’s car doesn’t have either. When I slid out it wasn’t from an emergency maneuver but because I was going too fast before starting my turn. I did end up stomping on the brake after I’d started sliding, but once control is lost, ABS did nothing to regain it. I got lucky because this was a unique intersection. I was going maybe 15 MPH into the turn while braking, but I should have slowed down to about 5 MPH and steered at that slower speed without brakes.

I’ve felt ABS working before, and it is a really odd feeling to hear the pump cycling and feel the pedal vibrate.
 


First of all, a huge :thumbsup2 to you for stopping and staying at the scene to help everyone involved, including the person who ran a red light. I can tell you from dealing with these things every single day that it's rare that witnesses stop to be identified, and even more rare that they actually help...especially the person they know/thought was at fault.

It's easy to play armchair quarterback and second guess what someone does or say "I'd react in x or y way". Reality is that when confronted with a situation like that when you have a split second to react, you can't say for sure what your reaction may be. So while the driver who ran the red light is at fault, it's hard to second guess and say they made the wrong decision by trying to gun it and get through.

Driving on snow and controlling a car during a drift, yes, you steer into a skid/drift. However, all modern cars have ABS, and most of them have some form of stability control. With these cars, the best thing you can do in snow/ice if faced with an emergency stop or turn is stomp the brake pedal and steer. Let the cars' computers control the brakes and stop you from spinning...it'll do a 100x better job than you can. That's counterintuitive to what anyone over the age of 30 was brought up to do...we were always taught differently. But technology has changed, a lot. If you have a newer car with these things in them, stomp and steer.

Yeah, it surprised me the number of cars that just drove around the accident and kept going. They obviously had to see what happened, and it was clearly a very serious accident, but they just left anyways. My husband was still trying to figure out where to safely stop our car and I was already talking to the 911 dispatcher. Cellphones have made getting help a whole lot easier. But I didn't realize it was rare - I guess that's why the trooper asked if it was okay for me to be listed as a witness in the report? I was surprised by that - of course it's ok.

On a side note - if I never have to drive on snow/ice again it will be too soon. But having said that, I've seen or heard of more/worse accidents here in FL then I ever did up north.
 

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