I was on a two lane road when the car two cars in front of me stopped abruptly to make a left hand turn. The car in front of me slowed down rapidly and hence I did to. I had more than enough room to stop. I had not slammed on the brakes or even engaged the ABS.

Normally when I have to stop abruptly my instinct is to also plan to swerve around the car in front of me just in case I didn't react quickly enough or was following to close, or in this case the person behind me was guilty of one of those behaviors. In this case to my right was a ditch and to my left was a clear lane of traffic and grass. The left turner was just making his turn when I was stopping.

As soon as I looked in my rear view the truck behind me was obviously not going to be able to stop in time. I crossed the one lane of traffic and into the grass. By this time I wasn’t moving very fast so I came to a slow stop in the grass and didn't tear it up. The truck came to a screeching halt right behind the car in front of me.

I do keep replaying it in my mind weather I should have crossed the lane. I did look well enough to see the left turner crossing the lane in front of me and no oncoming traffic of any sort. But if I had not looked well enough and been wrong I could have caused a worse accident than I prevented.

Had I not moved. I probably would have been ok. But my car would have been severely damaged and quite possibly totaled.

 

Nice moves, and good thing you are ok.

Making those choices in the short space of time and under pressure is really hard. If you didn't see anything coming, all in all, I think it was an ok choice.

 

sounds like you did the right thing
don't you just hate stupid drivers....

 

Close call man...being alert pays off.

 

Being a professional driver, one of the things they taught us in truck-driving school is the smith system...a safe driving system that includes doing what you did as one of the steps: Leave Yourself an Out. You were obviously aware enough to leave yourself some room to maneuver which kept you out of a potentially deadly situation. I only wish more drivers would do the same.

 

That's great feedback control... you anticipated the trunk behind you not coming to a halt prompting you to move out of his way. At the same time, you kept tabs on the car to your left.