Pet Peeve: A vehicle suddenly intrudes into your lane and the knee jerk reaction is to avoid a crash so you dodge
There's an argument to be made that at some point you need to stand your ground IF the result of you swerving may end up in your own death. I remember one of my commercial instructors long long ago said to have an internal monologue over the situation in that split second. It takes a lot of endless hours of going over the "What iff's" of those split seconds in your head to be able to do it when the **** hits the fan though.
I've been in that situation several times myself over the years and remember it flashing through my head forcefully overriding my brains automatic desire to swerve because although I might have avoided an accident, I might very well end up dead myself through NO fault of my own. That decision may have saved my own life at least once - I managed to avoid the potential accidents after the fact (despite committing to actually getting involved in one by making that decision to not swerve) by gentler maneuvering vs drastic swerving, or the other car just ending up outside my path of travel after the fact, but it was close a few times. Sorry, if you're going to drive like a tool and lose control of your vehicle I'm NOT going to drive my truck off an overpass and die to avoid broadsiding you however.
I did almost kill a guy who was crossing the road on a lawn tractor once and drove out right in front of me. I swerved as the split second judgement in my head was that even if I hit the ditch I'd likely be fine. The guy on the lawn tractor would be dead had I actually hit him dead broadside as I would have otherwise. I didn't go in the ditch but came close. I did end up clipping him....spun him a full 180 in the middle of the road. He was just fine although he was shaken up.
I was sure for about 15 seconds before I rushed out of the truck that I had killed him though. Shared the living **** out of me.
Took a few days off before returning to work on that one.
The aftermath after the ambulance and all the emergency services had left and we were waiting for the wrecker - he hit my front right tire and actually punctured it with the front bumper of the lawn tractor (it was that close...he brushed my drive and trailer tires as well, I've got photos of grass smears on all of them) so I was dead in the water.
The clump of grass on the road is where he was when I hit him - knocked a wad of grass out of the mower.
He was an elderly guy who used his lawn mower as a mobility scooter and was going across the road to collect his mail.
