Hit a car stopped in hammer lane

Not saying that she is a bad driver, but this is one of those situations that would get most drivers in trouble.

Picture it in your mind you running down the road...
-Rain.
- Making a pass on a problematic 4.
-Curve in the road.
Rank them in the order of their importance. We do it every day of the week. Get one wrong and a disaster can happen. Where is your attention...in front of you, to your right side, or scanning far down the road? See, you can't do all 3. If you can see the problem 4 in any of your peripheral vision, you cant see far down the road. In a CURVE.

 

Dangit, now ya got me keying up the ole' Netflix vids..... Just Call Saul.. omg.

 

this thread is an excellent illustration of a common human phenomenon: we mistakenly judge our actions based on the outcome

when I'm driving in heavy snow and low visibility at 25 mph and a truck blows by me at 60 mph, he is driving until he crashes. if he doesn't crash, that doesn't mean his driving was good. it means nothing out of the ordinary happened up ahead where he couldn't see. but because of the lack of crashing, we mistakenly think we are driving correctly

if you can't see into it, how can you drive into it?

lots of drivers are driving until they crash, it just hasn't happened yet. given enough trials, it will. you can push your luck all the way up until you can't...

 

I ask, what if that stopped car was an emergency vehicle attending to a crash, or as someone else said in this thread her own truck? There is on average, one tow truck driver struck-by and killed along the highway every six days in the US, one firefighter and two medics struck and killed every two weeks and one law enforcement officer struck and killed monthly.

Now, let's say the stopped vehicle was stopped because of mechanical failure? Would they still have been at fault for coming to a halt in the OP's eyes? Car drivers are not professional and act irrationally from time to time, they may not recognize a hazard or mechanical problem until it is too late -causing them to do stupid and put us, as well as themselves and all other motorists, in harms way.

Obviously 7&15 was not being practiced. Poor eye lead time and/or out-driving the conditions. I din't care how good of a driver you think you are, physics are physics. You may have a slight advantage on your perception or reaction time but you can't change how your truck will react to your inputs. It takes the average professional driver 3/4 of a second to perceive a hazard and another 3/4 of a second to begin to react. Add to that the 3/4 of a second lag time before your brakes begin to apply stopping force and you have traveled more than 150 foot at 60 MPH before even beginning to stop.

Now, if you have perfectly maintained brakes, excellent tires and clear/dry pavement you will still travel another 300 to 390 foot (depending on disc or drum brakes) at 55 MPH. So, total time between perception of the stopped vehicle and stopping is almost 500 foot, or 7-8 truck lengths, yet we see trucks less than 100' off the bumper of other vehicles daily.

Think about that before you blame your lack of professionalism on the stopped vehicle. And, yes, the Trooper was correct in citing you. It is always your fault when you rear end a stopped vehicle or strike a stationary object, even when it is not supposed to be in the travel lane. Be glad no one was seriously injured.

 

Almost a decade ago I was on I-35 in Texas on that empty stretch somewhere south of the 35E and W split going southbound.

There was a car to my left and a car with no lights abandoned on the shoulder to my right. Just as I was about 100ft behind the car on the shoulder, it pulled out in front of me. I rear ended it going 70.

1 hour later and with like 25 cops there, both occupants of the car were arrested for dui since both said they were passengers and refused to say who was the driver.

Moral of the story is you can read end someone and not be at fault, and never trust stopped vehicles on the shoulder.

 

You know what else is magical? Unicorns!

 

Nah, hammer down in the trouble lane in the rain while everyone else is braking? Kind of like the snow pileups, hammer down, what's the worst that could happen? Well, here you go, and they are lucky to get a chance to never have this happen again.

 

If your video shows what you are reporting then your companies insurance company will be your biggest defender. I was sideswiped last year and I forwarded the video to my insurance company. They viewed the evidence and told me they would be going after the other vehicles insurance company for all costs related to the sideswipe. My state is a no fault state and without the video a sideswipe is considered 50/50 responsibility, with each persons insurance paying for their clients damages. I also contacted several attorneys and they viewed the footage. The attorneys told me that with the evidence it would not be necessary to hire an attorney.
One of my friends is an attorney and works for the biggest ambulance chasing law firm in this part of the country. I am sure you have seen his billboards in Ky and In. She viewed the video and said there was absolutely no way she could defend the car that sideswiped my rig. Hopefully your case will be as clear cut as mine was.

 

It is clear cut. She plowed into the back of a car because she was going too fast for conditions. There is a huge difference in being a victim (getting sideswiped while maintaining your lane) and causing a wreck by going too fast and plowing into the back of a vehicle because it was raining too hard to see more than 70' ahead.