I don't need no stinkin' EE sway bar

[Jeff Geist]

So, I'm on my way to work today doing about 40-45mph. I'm about 20-25 yards from an intesection that traffic on the road we are on, does not have to stop. A Honda (LX?) is coming in the opposite direction from me and wants to make a left turn across our lane and stops in the road (as she was supposed to be doing) only to get plowed from behind by a 20-30 foot straight truck. Her car gets smashed in the rear passenger side spinning her car into my lane. A chevy pickup in front of me gets hit by the front end of the Honda, just behind his cab portion of the truck on the drivers side. Now, I have three vehicles to be concerned about and about half a second to react. Fortunately, the straight truck went wide left of me. The Honda stopped it's spin in the middle of the road allowing me swerve to the right and run along the shoulder to avoid them. There was a car at the intersection looking to join our flow of traffic so now I'm having to swerve left. I was face to face with the pickup truck in front of me now as he did his 180 and slams into a small retaining wall. And finally, the straight truck goes across our lane and tests the guard rail to it's fullest ability and was basically hanging over the edge of a 10 foot drop off. The driver of the Honda was taken to the hospital and hurt her neck but was otherwise okay. There were no other injuries. I stuck around to be a witness as I was far enough back to see the whole thing happen.



So, what did I learn about all of this. <UL><LI>At 40-50mph, things happen really, really fast.<LI>My driving skills (to toot my own horn) were perfect for this situation as I was able to avoid damage to the ST<LI>My stock swaybar did enough to prevent a rollover (it doesn't mean I don't want the EE swaybar)<LI>The amount of debris that goes flying around as you drive through an accident is a lot (in fact, it caused a minivan to be rendered useless as the debris got under her car and punctured something essential to her transmission (orange fluid)<LI>and finally, a wakeup call at some level as to the importance of paying attention to the road.</UL>[Broken External Image]:



What a way to start the day.



Edited to try to reduce the size of the picture.

 

[Dallas Starr]

wow.... well done...



the orange fluid might have just been the coolant hose.

 

[Jeff Geist]

Got a call from the Honda's insurance company and had to give my side of the story. I like how they end the call by asking who I thought was to blame for the accident. I hesitated for a second and then quickly told him it was clearly the big straight truck. I don't care if she slammed on her brakes...there's no way that big truck wasn't to blame. They asked if I heard a horn or squealing tires. I told them nope...and I think that further shows the big truck driver for hitting a stopped or nearly stopped vehicle and didn't even lock em up.

 

[marc vav]

i love your diagram i like the pic of the straight truck/rv

 

[John Walker]

The big truck looks like a Lego block!

 

[Jeff Geist]

I was using Visio and only had a few options in the 3D format. I didn't want to spend a ton of time searching for the proper vehicles on-line. That straight truck is actually a train.