Howdy Drivers! Travel b/t Virginia & Pennsylvania Weekly

We are on the road this evening, en route to Virginia from Pennsylvania.

Got some pictures of the beauty below. If you see ‘TCL-4150’ out there tonight, give a honk, a wave and, say “hey”.

 

The COOLEST thing happened the other day.

Me, girlfriend, and stepson were making the trek from Emerald Isle, NC (had a nice short week at the beach) back to Virginia, rolling up I-95N. We came to a rather abrupt stop, EMS and Fire (first on scene) rolled up behind us shortly thereafter. Unfortunately there was a motorcycle accident; it was not immediately apparent to me if the rider was seriously injured (fingers-crossed).

I called out the incident via the CB and gave an approximation of our location. Once we came upon the scene of the accident, I gave a precise location, with an explanation of the various crews on scene, and mentioned that southbound was also impacted because there were two LEOs parked on the left shoulder of the southbound lanes, causing traffic to slow.

After I provided that rundown, some kind woman keyed up and thanked me, remarking how refreshing it was to hear someone who knows how to communicate and provide information via the CB. I was cheesin' from ear-to-ear; turned to my girlfriend, and while she is usually not a big fan of me having the CB on, even she thought it was pretty darn neat.

I will pull the dashcam footage later this evening or tomorrow and share it here, showing the initial slowdown, accident, and the radio chat.

As a postscript to my post, I want to mention that part of the reason I am curious to watch the dashcam footage myself is because I came awful close to rear-ending the car in front of me during the initial slowdown. I hear my girlfriend yelling and pointing, I glance up and in that second or two, through a combination of gauging my speed, the rate of slowing of the cars in front, and the distance of the car behind me, I did not immediately get hard on the brake, and by the time I realized I might need to, it was too late.

I ended up feathering the brake, and kind of finessed my way into the other lane. Fortunately there was room; I think the pickup to my right saw the potential pileup in the left lane and gave some space. While in hindsight it worked out, and actually looked rather calm and collected, the reality is that if there was not space to my right-hand side I may have ended up having to pick between sideswiping the vehicle to my right or going into the back of the car in front of me.

Suffice to say, pay attention and give plenty of following distance. I try to be good about those but have my lapses. I was glancing down adjusting the A/C (or perhaps the stereo) at the time of the slowdown. The fisheye/wide-angle of the dashcam makes it look like I left an appropriate distance, and while I certainly was not tailgating in the worst possible way, I was probably a bit too close for interstate speeds.

Video coming soon ...

 

Here are the video clips as discussed above. After re-watching the initial slowdown several times, a few things are true:

a.) My attention was divided and I did not begin slowing when I should have,
b.) Both cars in front of me stopped short; the Bronco, in particular, was riding their brake gradually, and then rather abruptly slowed down, leaving multiple car lengths in front,
c.) I am surprised my emergency autonomous braking did not kick-in; it is usually overly sensitive and engages even when I know I can stop myself with manual braking. Fortunately I had the alternative emergency braking system: a yelling significant other, lol,
d.) While I do not have a rear-facing camera, I remember the vehicle behind me was following relatively closely, which played a part in my calculus to not step on the brake, but scoot into the right lane,
e.) Ultimately this near-miss was my responsibility, and I take accountability for that. I should have began slowing down sooner, when I was roughly adjacent to the trailer hitch of the Dodge Ram to my right

Apologies for the unsettling audio coming through my speakers. Was listening to the Wall Street Journal podcast (excellent, btw, highly recommend it) and they were doing a story on an attempted abduction of a woman in what was believed to be a Crypto ransom; the audio of the abduction attempt happened to be playing at the time this happened.

The first video shows the initial slowdown and Fire/EMS passing by shortly thereafter.
The second video shows the scene of the accident and a brief exchange on the CB.





EDIT: I pulled up the footage in Dashcam Viewer, which is software that comes with my StreetGuardian. According to this, I was actually reducing my speed well before getting on top of the Bronco in front, with it showing me at 58 mph as I came alongside the RV trailer the Dodge Ram was hauling (the onboard GPS speed still reads at 69 mph, however).

Clearly there is a disparity between the Dashcam Viewer reported speed and the stamp on the video from the GPS. Which is more accurate, I am not entirely sure, but my sense is that the GPS stamp lags, so I am inclined to believe the speed being reported by Dashcam Viewer, which is likely updating at a faster rate.