Somedays it pays to be blessed and/or lucky

Traveling to home from work on 8/10/2014 on 610e about 830 am cst (Houston, Texas, USA), the highway narrowed to 1 lane and was diverted to I-45s. I was in the right lane waiting to exit the highway. A funny thought popped into my head that their was going to be an accident. Immediately my eyes darted to my rearview mirror and a big white dually (pickup truck) was approaching rapidly. I took my foot off the brake, immediately started to move over as far to the left in my lane as possible. The other driver broke right and was slowing down on payment between the grass and my lane. He came to complete stop two cars ahead of me on the side of the road.

I have to credit God for this. One, I was praying and worshiping, and singing to God (praise fest on the radio) while I was stuck in Traffic but I was maintaining situational awareness in Houston traffic. Two, I remained perfectly calm and never lost my temper during the incident. Usually, I would have given someone a piece of mind for recklessly driving. More and likely I would have ended up in a fight with the other driver or gotten shot! Some people will chock this up to luck but I prefer divine providence or intervention as my answer.

I will never truly know what caused me to have that thought about an accident. That one thought saved my life because my toyota Prius would have been totaled by the dually.

If he was able to come to stop within two car lengths ahead of you for a total stopping distance of about 20 meters, then his theoretical maximum velocity was:

1/2 m v v = mgx
1/2 v v = gx

V = ( 2 g x )^1/2 = 20 meters per second or about 45 mph.

More realistically, he was probably doing about 30 mph or about 13 meters per second.

Assuming the pickup weighs about 8,000 pounds relative to your Prius that weighs about 4,000 pounds (that battery is heavy), then the resulting velocity from an inelastic collision would be 8 meters per second with a total Delta Vee of about 5 meters per second for the truck and 8 meters per second for you.

Your little Prius has about a meter of crush depth before there is any intrusion into the passenger cabin and given the new high strength steels, probable crush depth from a 30 mph collision would be about 1/2 meter.

gee = 1/2 DeltaV^2 / x or about 32 meters / second^2 or a bit ovee three gees.

Your car would have been totaled but you would have been fine unless the massive storage
battery shorted out and exploded to rupture and detonate the fuel tank, then you would have been, well, er, how shall I say it, toast?

Seriously; although it is extremely unlikely that the accident would have resulted in serious injury,
you were blessed that you and the other driver were able to avoid it.

Even in a state that has a redneck reputation like Texas, auto accidents seldom provoke arguments that escalate to someone getting shot. You might presume that you would be so hot headed that you would have provoked someone into shooting you (pray for God's help controlling your temper), but I imagine that your Prius would have been damaged enough to make it difficult for you to exit your vehicle and you probably would have been too shaken to be aggressive.

When my mom was alive, I was driving her to a lab appointment when I was sitting at a red light I noticed a big pickup barrelling towards me. I floored it and went through the red light. The cars going the other way also saw the truck coming and it wasn't until I roared my engine and took off that the pickup driver dropped his phone and hit his brakes. He locked his brakes and slid into the intersection.

Situational awareness is a good thing.

That was well expressed namelessfly. In exchange, when do I get promoted? HB of CJ (old coot) Cm.

(Also...going out on a very slim limb here...when do the Bugs blindside the Sollies?) Just me. You can ignore.

HB of CJ wrote:That was well expressed namelessfly. In exchange, when do I get promoted? HB of CJ (old coot) Cm.

(Also...going out on a very slim limb here...when do the Bugs blindside the Sollies?) Just me. You can ignore.

Ask duckk. Keep posting

I had a very similar incident years ago. Coming over a slight rise at 100kph I saw a stopped line of traffic immediately ahead. Looked in the rear mirror to see a large 4WD pickup immediately behind me. As I was in a 570kg open wheeled carbon fibre converted race car with semi slick sticky tyres that could pull 1.3g on braking there was no point in just braking so I flicked to a lucky slip road, braked and saw the 4WD with smoke coming off all knobbly off road tyres slide past & hit the rear of the last car in the stopped line. Without the lane change I'd have been paste. Situational awareness is very important.

If the truck had hit my right side of my car, more and likely the car would have been pushed into the next lane. I probably would have been hit by other cars in the next lane going 60 80 mph. That type of accident would have put me in the hospital or killed me.

namelessfly wrote:If he was able to come to stop within two car lengths ahead of you for a total stopping distance of about 20 meters, then his theoretical maximum velocity was:

1/2 m v v = mgx
1/2 v v = gx

V = ( 2 g x )^1/2 = 20 meters per second or about 45 mph.

More realistically, he was probably doing about 30 mph or about 13 meters per second.

Assuming the pickup weighs about 8,000 pounds relative to your Prius that weighs about 4,000 pounds (that battery is heavy), then the resulting velocity from an inelastic collision would be 8 meters per second with a total Delta Vee of about 5 meters per second for the truck and 8 meters per second for you.

Your little Prius has about a meter of crush depth before there is any intrusion into the passenger cabin and given the new high strength steels, probable crush depth from a 30 mph collision would be about 1/2 meter.

gee = 1/2 DeltaV^2 / x or about 32 meters / second^2 or a bit ovee three gees.

Your car would have been totaled but you would have been fine unless the massive storage
battery shorted out and exploded to rupture and detonate the fuel tank, then you would have been, well, er, how shall I say it, toast?

Seriously; although it is extremely unlikely that the accident would have resulted in serious injury,
you were blessed that you and the other driver were able to avoid it.

Even in a state that has a redneck reputation like Texas, auto accidents seldom provoke arguments that escalate to someone getting shot. You might presume that you would be so hot headed that you would have provoked someone into shooting you (pray for God's help controlling your temper), but I imagine that your Prius would have been damaged enough to make it difficult for you to exit your vehicle and you probably would have been too shaken to be aggressive.

I was joking plus I didn't have a good understanding of the geometry.

smr wrote:If the truck had hit my right side of my car, more and likely the car would have been pushed into the next lane. I probably would have been hit by other cars in the next lane going 60 80 mph. That type of accident would have put me in the hospital or killed me.

namelessfly wrote:If he was able to come to stop within two car lengths ahead of you for a total stopping distance of about 20 meters, then his theoretical maximum velocity was:

1/2 m v v = mgx
1/2 v v = gx

V = ( 2 g x )^1/2 = 20 meters per second or about 45 mph.

More realistically, he was probably doing about 30 mph or about 13 meters per second.

Assuming the pickup weighs about 8,000 pounds relative to your Prius that weighs about 4,000 pounds (that battery is heavy), then the resulting velocity from an inelastic collision would be 8 meters per second with a total Delta Vee of about 5 meters per second for the truck and 8 meters per second for you.

Your little Prius has about a meter of crush depth before there is any intrusion into the passenger cabin and given the new high strength steels, probable crush depth from a 30 mph collision would be about 1/2 meter.

gee = 1/2 DeltaV^2 / x or about 32 meters / second^2 or a bit ovee three gees.

Your car would have been totaled but you would have been fine unless the massive storage
battery shorted out and exploded to rupture and detonate the fuel tank, then you would have been, well, er, how shall I say it, toast?

Seriously; although it is extremely unlikely that the accident would have resulted in serious injury,
you were blessed that you and the other driver were able to avoid it.

Even in a state that has a redneck reputation like Texas, auto accidents seldom provoke arguments that escalate to someone getting shot. You might presume that you would be so hot headed that you would have provoked someone into shooting you (pray for God's help controlling your temper), but I imagine that your Prius would have been damaged enough to make it difficult for you to exit your vehicle and you probably would have been too shaken to be aggressive.

It's all cool for all I know you could be right!

smr wrote:If the truck had hit my right side of my car, more and likely the car would have been pushed into the next lane. I probably would have been hit by other cars in the next lane going 60 80 mph. That type of accident would have put me in the hospital or killed me.

namelessfly wrote:If he was able to come to stop within two car lengths ahead of you for a total stopping distance of about 20 meters, then his theoretical maximum velocity was:

1/2 m v v = mgx
1/2 v v = gx

V = ( 2 g x )^1/2 = 20 meters per second or about 45 mph.

More realistically, he was probably doing about 30 mph or about 13 meters per second.

Assuming the pickup weighs about 8,000 pounds relative to your Prius that weighs about 4,000 pounds (that battery is heavy), then the resulting velocity from an inelastic collision would be 8 meters per second with a total Delta Vee of about 5 meters per second for the truck and 8 meters per second for you.

Your little Prius has about a meter of crush depth before there is any intrusion into the passenger cabin and given the new high strength steels, probable crush depth from a 30 mph collision would be about 1/2 meter.

gee = 1/2 DeltaV^2 / x or about 32 meters / second^2 or a bit ovee three gees.

Your car would have been totaled but you would have been fine unless the massive storage
battery shorted out and exploded to rupture and detonate the fuel tank, then you would have been, well, er, how shall I say it, toast?

Seriously; although it is extremely unlikely that the accident would have resulted in serious injury,
you were blessed that you and the other driver were able to avoid it.

Even in a state that has a redneck reputation like Texas, auto accidents seldom provoke arguments that escalate to someone getting shot. You might presume that you would be so hot headed that you would have provoked someone into shooting you (pray for God's help controlling your temper), but I imagine that your Prius would have been damaged enough to make it difficult for you to exit your vehicle and you probably would have been too shaken to be aggressive.

And people wonder why I drive an old ('76) F-150 with steel bumpers. Why I don't smoke, drink my coffee/pop or answer my telephone even at 5 AM on my way to work.