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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

This is my pet peeve with people being so sure online about their abilities of avoiding things on the road. Yeah, maybe you could avoid it with your super human reflexes, but there physically no way you could check that side of your car, register what's there, decide whether you can move that way and then did it. The kneejerk avoidance reaction may be extremely dangerous on its own.

(Also in Oz, rolling your car when you try to swerve to avoid a kangaroo is so common that you're normally taught to just break instead)

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Do people really not mentally track the vehicles around them? I remember in driver’s ed even before we were behind the wheel to have “exit strategies” for situations exactly like this. Cars don’t just appear magically next to you.

> Cars don’t just appear magically next to you.

They don't, but: 1. Your perception is not perfect. 2. A truck passing you means there was a blind spot and you have no idea what was there. 3. There are areas with many lanes merging / splitting, where it takes most of your attention to know where you're going; little left to track everything around.

Tracking your surrounding is great. Accepting that you're going to make mistakes, adjusting for that and also allowing assistive tech is even better.

People try to, but are imperfect at doing so. For example, most people do not closely track what is happening 2 lanes away. But someone can move from your blind spot 2 lanes away into your blind spot right next to you.

Also, if something potentially dangerous/important is happening to your left, you will focus your attention there and not be aware of things happening to your right, even if you normally would have seen those things had you been looking straight ahead.

I try to know what is going on around me, for the reason you describe (exit strategies), but I'm aware that sometimes I simply do not know what is to my left — and would not want to swerve there.

Having seen friends driving Teslas, I can see how the surround-view could be useful for situations like this. However, I have also seen that cars appear/vanish for no reason, and it is clearly not reliable at this point.

I swerved into another lane to avoid another car cutting me off during rush hour once. It all happened so fast, and I will always remember how incredibly lucky I was that no one was in the lane I moved into.

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