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Hypothetically Speaking, Of Course
Oct. 18th, 2007 01:21 pmFolks, I would like you to imagine what your work commute could be.
Let's say you live East of Seattle and take Interstate 90 to work. Let's say the traffic, as is its wont, crawls, sometimes stopping. Let's say the car directly ahead of you stops suddenly. Too suddenly.
At this point, you have choices to make very quickly.
You might hit the car. This happens, but it would be unfortunate. To avoid an immediate collision, however minor, you might slam on your brakes and hope to stop in time. Since it is (let's just say) raining and the road wet on this hypothetical Thursday morning, you might not stop your sedan in time, and might tap bumpers with your leader. That would be a minor, work-delaying problem.
Or . . . you could swerve into the "empty" lane to your left, stop, and wait until you could merge once again to your original position.
That might work.
Let's say, though, that the lane to your left was reserved for High Occupancy Vehicles -- vehicles like, say, busses; and that, no, you had not been keeping an eye on your left mirror and, again no, had not checked the lane for true emptiness before you implemented the "accident-avoiding" maneuver.
You might learn very, very quickly -- after about 1.5 to 2 seconds after your lane change was completed,in fact again, purely hypothetically -- that the driver of the 60-foot articulated motorcoach laden with every seat filled might not have had sufficient time to anticipate your sudden change and complete stop, and might have had neither sufficient braking traction nor time (due not to driver inattention, but to the laws of physics) to safely avoid your red Taurus.
You might then suddenly accelerate as the inertia of tens of tons transfers directly through your bumper, through your trunk and into your chassis. Only a bit of that energy would be absorbed by the deforming metal. The rest might go straight into launching your car once again into motion. Since the coach was decelerating at the time of inertia transfer, you might come to rest again after lunging, say, twenty feet from the front of the coach. At 7:45 am. Pacific Daylight Savings Time.
Let's say you were wearing your seat belt and had a decent driver's seat, so after coming to rest, you found yourself shaken but otherwise unharmed. Let's further stipulate that none of the 60 passengers in the coach was standing (as often happens), and therefore no one in the coach was hurt by the much less sudden deceleration and stop. Which, again, would be good. Finally, we should of course imagine that the driver (ahem) had been wearing his seat belt and was at least able to brace himself before contact; so no one involved was hurt.
All of which, of course, is very, very good. . . or would be, were we not speaking completely hypothetically.
Let's say you live East of Seattle and take Interstate 90 to work. Let's say the traffic, as is its wont, crawls, sometimes stopping. Let's say the car directly ahead of you stops suddenly. Too suddenly.
At this point, you have choices to make very quickly.
You might hit the car. This happens, but it would be unfortunate. To avoid an immediate collision, however minor, you might slam on your brakes and hope to stop in time. Since it is (let's just say) raining and the road wet on this hypothetical Thursday morning, you might not stop your sedan in time, and might tap bumpers with your leader. That would be a minor, work-delaying problem.
Or . . . you could swerve into the "empty" lane to your left, stop, and wait until you could merge once again to your original position.
That might work.
Let's say, though, that the lane to your left was reserved for High Occupancy Vehicles -- vehicles like, say, busses; and that, no, you had not been keeping an eye on your left mirror and, again no, had not checked the lane for true emptiness before you implemented the "accident-avoiding" maneuver.
You might learn very, very quickly -- after about 1.5 to 2 seconds after your lane change was completed,
You might then suddenly accelerate as the inertia of tens of tons transfers directly through your bumper, through your trunk and into your chassis. Only a bit of that energy would be absorbed by the deforming metal. The rest might go straight into launching your car once again into motion. Since the coach was decelerating at the time of inertia transfer, you might come to rest again after lunging, say, twenty feet from the front of the coach. At 7:45 am. Pacific Daylight Savings Time.
Let's say you were wearing your seat belt and had a decent driver's seat, so after coming to rest, you found yourself shaken but otherwise unharmed. Let's further stipulate that none of the 60 passengers in the coach was standing (as often happens), and therefore no one in the coach was hurt by the much less sudden deceleration and stop. Which, again, would be good. Finally, we should of course imagine that the driver (ahem) had been wearing his seat belt and was at least able to brace himself before contact; so no one involved was hurt.
All of which, of course, is very, very good. . . or would be, were we not speaking completely hypothetically.