I think there are two ways to handle that situation:
Accept the crash and brake to minimize the damage/injuries. I would note that the most likely point of impact is the driver’s door and increased probability of severe injury to the driver.
Take the action shown and hope other drivers recognize the situation and respond accordingly. The thing I would note here is that the most likely point of impact would be the front of each car and injuries to people in each car would likely be less than the most likely injury sustained by the driver of the first car.
I don’t think that there’s going to be “universal” agreement between these two options when the decision needs to be made.
I find it absolutely wild. I’ve avoided accidents in different ways before, but never by jerking the wheel hard left into traffic. I understand the decision, but it seems impossible to make rationally in 0 seconds, unless you are a self driving car.
I would love to be a google engineer right now and know what went through the little robot brain in that split second.
I don’t think anyone makes “rational” decisions in situations like that; it’s going to more of a “muscle-memory reflexes” that will dominate. It’s the main reason you see groups like Navy SEALs and SWAT teams doing repeated training in assaulting a hostage-rescue situations (and related scenarios).
And something that I think that today’s police force doesn’t do enough training around wrt use of firearms vs. tasers, etc.
Looked like it took mostly the left turn lane but went a bit into the oncoming traffic lane (where there was no oncoming traffic)? That seems like the gut reaction move? The real question is what would it have done if there was an oncoming car approaching?
I did that once to avoid tboning a driver that pulled out in front of me. 2 lane road, i was going 60, and he was pulling out of a parking lot from a bar on the right (making a left). He stopped squarely in my lane, but short of the blocking the road. I swerved, no one was coming.
I was not going to stop in time, i was probably still going 30-40 when i swerved, so chances are the other driver was going to have his life changed.
I have no idea what i would have done if there was a car coming. It was dark, the road was straight and flat… so did i process all that in time or did i get lucky?
I’ve recently been a passenger in two “self-driving” vehicles. One was a Tesla whose driver was using “full self driving” mode and intervening as little as possible. (He’s a Telsa fan-boy, and thinks this will help the car “learn” how to drive better.) and the other was a Waymo cab.
The Tesla still really needs a driver. Over the course of a weekend, there were at least 4 incidents where my friend really needed to intervene. (and that’s not counting that there’s no way for him to tell the car where his driveway actually is, and he needs to steer it to the alley and into the driveway himself.) We drove a lot, so the car did a lot of driving on its own. I don’t know how hard it will be to get from where it is to where you can actually trust the thing. But it’s certainly an impressive circus trick today.
The waymo was really good. It drove carefully and confidently. It’s geofenced, so it knows the roads it is allowed to use extremely well. For instance, going to the airport, it obviously knew what lane it preferred and when to change lanes.
The waymo generally drove more slowly and more cautiously than most human drivers. So my guess is it would have been stuck behind the truck longer than you were. But yes, it moved around slow vehicles. It also slowed to allow a car to cut in front of it. It semed to play pretty well with other traffic. (Unlike the Tesla, which played “you go, no, you go” with another driver for WAY too long, because every time the other driver glanced at it to make sure it was safe to go, it responded to her “looking away from the road” by inching forward. It was super annoying for me, and must have been a lot worse for her.)
I have some serious concerns about both the video shown and the resulting damage claimed.
Having grown up in deer country, I’m pretty familiar with how deer interact with roadways . . . and how other drivers generally respond to wildlife on the road.
In the video, there is clearly a car “out front” that shows no indication of an obstacle in the roadway. And deer “coming onto the roadway” from the side wouldn’t have been facing the direction shown in the video in that time frame.
And assuming that the camera is centered on the vehicle, it appears that the deer was hit by the middle of the vehicle. Yet all of the damage shown is well off-center. Further, it appears to be the result of striking a very hard object that is very thin (think metal pole) than a soft-tissue object that isn’t all that thin. (That is, I’d expect the damage to the bumper to be much wider in scope than what is shown.)
On top of that, I’d expect to see some blood as a result of the hit.
Comment from article:
“The car did alert after hitting the deer, it just alerted RFK, Jr. to come pick up the carcass and dispose of it in Central Park. That’s the new protocol.”
I mean, I have no idea if the whole thing is fake or not, but it seems like a deer can jump pretty fast. If the deer was facing 7:00 and jumped onto the road it could turn and be facing 5:00 in the timeframe. Or if it was facing 5:00 originally and jumped from the other lane into that one… seems plausible.
The damage is pretty close to center and the deer’s head is centered, but the rest of the deer’s body seems to be a bit off center.
Yeah, that’s less damage than I’d expect for sure. I wonder what speed the car was [allegedly] going. The deer does seem a bit on the small side though. This is the most suspect issue to me but maybe a small deer?
I dunno, when a friend hit a deer there wasn’t much blood on the car. A bit of fur. When I Google pictures of cars after they hit a deer there’s no obvious signs of blood in the photos. Maybe in person you can see a bit but it’s not in the photos I’m pulling up with Google.
You’re correct that deer can generally jump pretty fast, but that is often in the context of getting away from a perceived threat. The deer in the video had no signs that it had perceived any sort of threat.
In addition, deer don’t “jump” into the path of a vehicle that has just passed. Deer will generally freeze when they detect motion of something they’re unfamiliar with; especially between evening twilight to morning twilight. That expression of “deer in the headlight” is not the deer being mesmerized by the headlights; it’s their stance of trying to determine if something is actually moving toward them (which they cannot tell from head lights moving toward them, more or less). Their posture is one of “don’t be seen due to movement yourself” while they assess their environment.
And in an uncertain environment, they are not likely to be making a lot of quick movements (except possibly for some very young fawns; but they’re generally well “trained” by around 3 months of life).
And the fact that the GIF restarts exactly when the front of the car would be hitting the deer. The deer doesn’t seem to have any reactions of being hit. Because the GIF ends at the point of seeming contact you don’t see the vehicle jump as it rolls over such a large obstacle if it went under the vehicle and you would expect more damage to the car if it went over the vehicle.
And the blood and fur/hide that would have been stuck in the cracks of the bumper.
Until I see more of the video starting before the car in front passes where the deer appears to after the vehicle has passed well beyond where contact occurred. I’m calling fake video.
Only deer strike in my relatives’ experience was my Dad. He was driving to work thru the country, sun had risen but wasn’t high. Probably going between 45-50 mph. Deer bounded from the left, and hit the driver side door. Land to the left was a field, and lower than roadside.
I’d caveat that auto accidents can vary incredibly. One person without a seatbelt might be thrown 60 feet from their car and land with bruises and cuts while another becomes pulp. Can be the same with deer.
That said, I would have expected pieces of Bambi embedded in what remained of the front of the car.
It is hard to gauge the speed on a camera though, and it looks like it braked at the last moment. I see a slowdown at the end. Could have hit going 20 mph for all I know.
Also, we live in the era where this would be very easy to fake.
