A close encounter

[davidn]

I think I just nearly died. That is, we made sure to buy a car with an incredible safety emphasis and that virtually transforms into a bouncy castle as soon as the bumper is hit, but I'm glad that... by about an inch, we didn't find out how effective the airbags were.

I can't really type just now - here's a diagram of a junction on our normal route home from the supermarket. There's no traffic light - the lane in our direction widens, to let cars who are turning left get out of the way of oncoming traffic, and I was sitting there...


On this particular occasion, someone coming in the opposite direction sped forwards to overtake the car ahead just before the junction - I couldn't believe it when he came out, and thought that he would surely brake and reconsider right up until the moment when he swerved back into his own lane, surely missing me and the car he had illegally passed by no more than an inch.

I have never seen a car coming head-on towards me at 40 miles per hour before, and I hope never to again. This is the stupidest thing that I've ever seen anyone do on the road - there's no excuse for overtaking on a corner at that speed, unless he was delivering an emergency case to hospital or had just robbed the bank. Once I'd got through what's usually a very unremarkable junction, I had to pull to the side of the road and breathe for a while before continuing - my heart still sounds like a Michael Jackson song.

Never mind - he'll be dead soon.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I mean, if you've already got a camera, and the battery and storage can last longer than your average road trip, just clear and charge it every night... Or, hell, I wonder if anybody makes a smartphone app that automatically keeps a buffer of two minutes or so until you hit "shit, keep that last two minutes!" (or until the accelerometer detects a sudden jolt??)....

And, yeah, up in Quebec for instance, you only need a license plate in the back, for some reason.... which means the "novelty fake license plate to fit into the unused front slot on your car" industry does almost as well as bumper stickers...

[davidn]

Funny you should say that - my investigation just took me here! And it even uses the accelerometer like you suggested. I can imagine it potentially being annoying up there on the windscreen, but it's something.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Hah! Knew it was too good an idea for someone not to have done... man, I didn't even think of the GPS thing! Brilliant..

And, you could always set it on the passenger side corner, it doesn't necessarily have to be front-and-center as long as you can reasonably reach it in the moments after a fender bender.