What is it with the little cars? Do they really want to get squashed?

[expressbus]

John,

The good Lord watches out for fools and idiots. I thought you knew that.

A big ditto on what everyone has said. On Wednesday coming home from work I broke a valve spring in my wife's minivan (my bad!). I had to get wrecker service and am I ever thankful I got the one that showed up. On the way back down a four lane divided highway with at grade crossings and driveways, some fool or idiot did not see the wrecker, yes he had a full compliment of emergency lights flashing, and pulled into the number 2 lane from a driveway at a median crossover. The wrecker driver saw the car moving toward the road so he made a courtesy chnage of lanes to the number 1 lane. Well the car just kept coming and the wrecker driver then went to the inside shoulder before the fool or idiot realized, Gee there is a wrecker I'd best stop NOW!. If they had not stopped I could easily see a wrecker on its side with maybe the wife's minivan being slung across the other lanes and of course creating one mell of a hess.

Thank you Maurice for being such a great driver!

[RJ]

Back to the sad truth.  That has been the case all along that the one hitting from the rear is at fault.  But I wonder if that might be getting a closer look by law enforcement lately. It seems like a lot of signs going up on the interstates cautioning against lane changing into the buffer space in front of trucks.  If the laws are changing, it sure would be nice to see some people getting pulled over and ticketed when officers see them do that.

Even tho I'm retired from the industry, I still receive most of the trade magazines. 

As some of you are aware, nearly all transit systems, and many skoolie operators, now have video recorders on their equipment - mostly for passenger monitoring, but some are also equipped with an additional camera focused on the road ahead.

I seem to remember reading recently that a charter bus outfit based, I think, in WA, had such a system onboard one of their MCIs that was involved in a rear-end collision similar to what John almost experienced.  Altho the WHP initially cited the bus driver, subsequent review of the video, both by the HP and the bus company's insurance carrier, showed that the vehicle the bus struck was, in fact, the cause of the accident.

So, one might consider installing a similar system to, literally, CYA!

FWIW & HTH. . .

[Just Dallas]

Removed

[Iceni John]

Our Defensive Driving class instructor at work mentioned that he had such a system in his personal car, and his car insurance extorter provider gave him a useful discount on his premium.   Has anyone here heard of such a system, which presumably could be used in our buses as well as our cars?   It sounds like a good idea to me  -  I've got nothing to hide when I drive, and I always try to think of what the police would say of my driving if I were ever in an accident.   In the meantime, maybe a REALLY LOUD horn is a good idea to wake up those denizens of the shallow end of the gene pool.

John, constantly gobsmacked by the stupidity around me

[PCC]

I have decided to install four cameras on my coach. The cops use cameras to record everything as evidence, but because it seems to be advertised that "big rigs cause too many accidents", sometimes I feel like I need the same evidential protection as the cops do.

[Chopper Scott]

In all honesty just be glad you are in something BIG. I've ridden motorcycles for eons and it never fails that someone does something stupid in front or behind you constantly. I once had a car turn left in front of me that caused me to lock em up and I just missed her as she turned into a gas station. She was on her cell phone!!! Broad daylight! I was on my noisy  bad bike and all leathered up, the typical biker look, and went about a block and decided to turn around and scared the crap out of her. I pulled up to the pump beside her and saw the terror in her eyes but she still had the phone. She's saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't see you!! I told her the names of my 3 grandaughters and how lucky she was that she didn't have to tell them that! Then I called her a stupid ffing batch! Probably wasn't the correct thing to do but my pulse was still sky high. At least with a bus they can't say "I never saw him"!!

[PCC]

Let me tell you about the one who didn't see me (in my bus). It is about not paying attention / thinking !!

[expressbus]

Chopper Scott,

Cycles to Buses, some chicks just don't get it. We had our rub rail on the entry door swiped by some bingbat from East Stroudsburg PA while in a construction zone in NJ. Fortunately we had a camera at the ready since I took photos of the rock shot and had passed it to the wife. The wife took photos of the car as it drove away. The bingbat finally stopped after seeing she was being photographed.

I too had the same experience as you on a motorcycle. Only difference was the woman pulled out from a side street. I locked the rear wheel solid and squeezed the front as hard as I could. The front did not lock but the back did, which made back of the bike try to pass the front. I turned loose of the rear brake and got the bike stopped - right in front of her radiator. If she had not realized what she was doing (this was BCP - Before Cell Phones) the outcome would have been ugly. Since I was stopped I threw down the kick stand, went over to her window, took off the helmet and slammed it down on her hood. I then proceeded to give her an education about being on the look out for motorcycles. She went white as a ghost.