I have seen this happen sometimes, but there are always passengers who forget to signal and then run to the front shouting for the driver to stop. Not worth the hassle.
Not the person you were responding to, but here's an anecdatum:
One time I was driving behind someone under otherwise normal conditions, and they turned right into a parking lot. As they turned right, they obviously began exiting the road. The screen on my car screamed "BRAKE!" and then the braking system activated. They were about 60% of the way into the parking lot, and continuing to exit. I was at a normal following distance, going a normal speed, and they were just making a right into a parking lot. This was a very ordinary situation, and the emergency warning was unexpected.
Now, technically, if that car had completely stopped for some reason instead of continuing to exit, I guess I could have hit the back corner of the bumper. That is, if I hadn't, you know, shifted a couple feet to the left to avoid it.
Ironically, the emergency braking alarm was so distracting that it might have caused me to hit the car in front of me if the brakes hadn't activated, and if I had needed to steer to avoid an accident.
And if the person behind me hadn't seen my brakes suddenly activate, they might have hit me. Or, if the person behind them hadn't seen their brakes activate, they might have hit them. And so on.
I signalled and looked over my shoulder before changing lanes today, only to see an unexpected car right behind me when I looked back into my rear-view mirror. I'm still not sure whether they changed lanes into my lane, or if they were going so fast that they weren't in my field of vision until I turned back around. They braked in time, though.
I have seen this with a lot of other drivers. My very first reaction is to brake. However, in all of my close calls, I have never noticed the other vehicle even attempt to slow down- they just honk their horn and continue on their way.
it's not that rare. a pretty common one (in my area, anyway) is someone starts merging into you from the side while someone is riding your bumper. if you slammed on the brakes, it wouldn't be "your fault", but it would be much better to just speed up and avoid the collision.
A couple of years ago I was in stop-and-go traffic, and while at a stop, I watched in my rear view as the woman in a minivan behind me slowly rolled into my bumper while looking at her lap. We pulled over to see if there was damage, and she had the nerve to claim that someone had rear-ended her, pushing her van into my bumper, then they sped off. Even if I hadn't witnessed what really happened, the freeway was at a stand still, nobody was speeding off anywhere.
Literally almost happened to me on a trip last week. Driving on I95 and two people were headed to change to the same lane, one slow from the left and one flying up on the right (across three lanes). They see each other and react at the same time, the one on the left going back to their lane but the one on the right, with their angle and excess speed, overcorrects and starts to fishtail. Their car is then pointing directly at mine and barely misses t-boning me, instead hitting the barrier head-on to my left. Always practice defensive driving and have a dashcam.
Today I pulled into a turn lane and stopped alongside the car ahead of me to let them know their brake lights were out. Had to honk incessantly to get their attention. Then I waited in the wrong lane (no one behind me) to pull back into my original lane to go straight through the light.
Probably would get a demerit from an AI for that maneuver.
You can't just stop suddenly out of nowhere for no reason without signaling. In traffic it is obvious that people will be starting and stopping so there the fault is the person in the back, but on a country road with no traffic the fault is not so clear.
To your second point, nothing on those vehicles says "warning, no human in control" so I'm not sure how obvious it really is.
I've more than once been signaling a merge and had the car two lanes over attempt the opposite merge right into the space I'm signaling into, often when I'm already partially in it, without signaling. I'm very wary of merging next to someone now for that reason.
You should file a bug on that. Someone coming up behind you might end up getting hurt due to the chain reaction of your car braking unexpectedly (and without a good reason to do so). There's a typical domino effect from one car braking where the reaction times compound and cars further back end up having to brake harder and harder to avoid a collision until one ends up being out of room and out of time.
> People similarly freak out when you back up too quickly into them, because you have a reversing camera on.
Much worse, your car freaks out nowadays. Twice I've had my car apply ABS while I was backing up, while I was fully aware of a car behind me but not in my planned path.
This is how my Subaru behaves, and it feels right. The only false positive stopping I've encountered is someone coming from the opposite direction turning left across my path. And even then, it only happens when they're close enough that i they weren't moving, it would be a problem.
My driving instructor in the UK taught me two things: 1) when you're in the reverse, you are already at the bottom of the food chain so there is no need to indicate, basically do not move until you're 100% certain it safe to do so, 2) when you follow a car, keep your distance, when the car in front of you stops, stop so far that you can see their rear tires so you have enough space to drive around.
Based on those two rules when the situation described here happens, there's only one solution: I will stand there in reverse and wait for you to back up if you park in my bumper while I'm willing to reverse into a spot because, f** you, keep your distance, thank you very much.
I'm not going to think for you. You think for yourself. Maybe the car in front of you wants to reverse park and that's why they drive so slow...
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