We drove from Austin to College Station yesterday to see our boys and the game - A&M vs. Florida. Midway there at 9am in the morning while driving on a straight two lane 70 MPH country HWY(1 lane each way)... we noticed a car jump into our lane for no apparent reason and stay there... coming head on towards us. At that time I was doing 70 mph and I assume the other driver was as well. The other driver had no reason to jump into our lane as he was not overtaking anyone on his side but did have over drivers behind him. My 1st thought was that he was drunk and that he was zeroing in on my DRL. He did not drift over and continue to drift as I would expect someone asleep at the wheel... instead his approach was purposeful. I considered as well that perhaps he was a hatter of p-cars and this was some sick game of chicken. Regardless I weighed my options:
1. Jump into his lane but if he's drunk/asleep then he might wake at the last moment and react by jumping back into his lane.
2. Jump off the road and into the ditch but then I loose control of my car and leave my faith with the other driver to avoid hitting me.
3. Stay where I am, slow down as much as possible, but keep enough momentum to change direction at the last moment. Brought back memories of penalty kicks when I coached rec soccer for my boys. To a certain extent the goalie just had to make a choice to move one way or the other at the last moment.

I went with option #3 and at the last moment the other driver jumped back into his lane as I pulled towards the ditch to narrowly miss him. I was so focused on that last directional move that I did not notice the look on his face, nor honk at him until he had passed us... just the last moment direction off his vehicle vs. my car. In fact, I don't even recall down shifting into 2nd gear from 6th... only that I had slowed to about 25mph and veered towards the right of him. It happened in a flash but it felt like an excruciatingly slow motion clip from a sci-fi flix like the Matrix as it occurred.

Afterwards we called 911 and reported the incident plus description of the vehicle - male driving a Chrysler La Baron. I'm, off course, now considered the post-motem analysis the day after to determine what if anything I should do should this ever happens again. Lightning has a propensity to strike twice if you've been hit once. Now with the luxury of time to contemplate this in depth I am also considering the legal implications... if I had veered at that final moment into his lane only for the other driver to hit me in his lane would I be at fault and legally liable if I survived... if no other driver such as those driving behind him came to our defense especially if they piled in behind him into me. I know... who gives a #$&! when you're life is at risk but what kind of life would I have afterwards if this had gone wrong. I'm also wondering if there are statistics out there re head on collisions... some type of after action report from LEO.

Not sure if others have had similar incidents and your thoughts afterwards. One thing I'm looking into is how to turn off my DRL. I still intend to drive with my lights on during the day time but would have liked the ability to turn off my lights manually the next time. TIA and safe travels to all.

 

Glad that you and your passenger are okay. Could be a driver that was stoned/high or having medical issues but still inexcusable to put you in that predicament.

 

Glad you're ok. Sounds like this idiot knew what he was doing and was trying to see what you would do. There are some sick people in this world, and the vast majority of them have drivers licenses.

 

There will always be some sickos out there. You've made a good decision by slowing down and preparing for his next move. Glad you are all right. That's pretty scary...

 

good to hear your ok, ironically when i bought my 997, my biggest fear was reliability and maintenance costs, never did i realize that driving a 911 would bring out such animosity from all the jerks on the road which has made it so frustrating in owning a car like this.

 

Never ever in that case go into the other lane. If the driver realizes what's going on his natural reaction will be to switch back to his lane. You not only then have the head on you sought to avoid, your survivors have the difficult task of convincing the jurors in a courtroom you were not at fault.

You did the right thing. Slow down and move over and prepare to leave the road if you can do so safely. If you can't get over safely a glancing blow with your car stopped or nearly stopped is better than running into something substantial that you encounter when you leave the road.

IOWs, it doesn't do much good to avoid a head on with a car to instead slam into for instance a concrete bridge abutment that often appear on the sides of roads.

Some years before driving across Illinois I came up a big rig that had done that. I guess the driver fell asleep. The tractor portion was crumpled to a fraction of its original size, and fully engulfed in flames. I learned later over the CB radio both the driver and the co-driver (found in the sleeper once the fire was out) were of course killed. Horrible.

My only near head on was after I headed south on I-27 from Amarillo heading towards (ultimately) Fredricksberg. I was in my 02 Boxster and I was not speeding either. I had just passed a Pontiac dealer which got me to thinking about what to do about my 06 GTO.

The car ahead of my mine was going pretty slow so like a million times before when coming upon a slower moving car in a multi-lane road I pulled over into the fast lane to go around.

I instantly spotted up ahead why the car in front of mine had been going slow.

There was a car coming towards us in the fast lane, the lane I was now in.

I had no time to really think. I swerved over back into the slow lane just in time to avoid a crash with the oncoming car. Thankfully the car that I had passed in the slow lane continued to go slow and was not along side or I would have I think taken that car off the road to avoid a head on.

Believe it or not, as I went past the other oncoming car I had a chance to glance over at the driver of the other car.

He was an older man, with what looked to be a blank look on his face. There was no reaction, no glance over, no look of fear from a near miss on his face, so sign a near miss had even occurred.

His equally elderly wife next to him had the same no reaction expression.

Afterwards, I was as scared in a car as I have ever been and was shaking like a leaf thinking how close I came.

In hindsight, I do not think had I even had the time to consider a swerve into the median of the freeway that I would have made it. The cars were that close.

Further on down the road as I was calling to report the wrong way driver to the state police I spotted several cars on the shoulder and at least one in the median which I can only believe is where their drivers put them to avoid a head on with the wrong way driver.

Sincerely,

Macster.

 

It's always amazing how quickly the brain can handle such scenarios--the ability to consider and evaluate a number of options as the nano-seconds count down. I'm very happy to hear that you didn't wind up as a statistic! Dr. Porsche used to always say that he was more into designing cars that were capable of avoiding accidents than building something that was like a tank, designed to take the abuse and survive. With today's safety mandates we have both--inherent safety of the vehicle and maneuverability!

 

I have to agree that veering into oncoming traffic is not an option. In fact, it would only endanger other oncoming drivers.

I reviewed the video off the vehicle blackbox (D-TEG Smarty Drive Recorder) in my car. It shows that I was doing 72mph at the time, the GPS location with road map view of my car, vid of the oncoming car although it looks like a small white rectangle in the distance until he jumps back into his lane and passes me, my initial slowing and hesitation(evident by by slight left to right move), then my move towards the right and partially off the road including my deceleration down to 29mph just as he passed me... then I'm at 24mph immediately thereafter. BTW the video requires a proprietary viewer but attached are some pics of a few converted JPEG frames.






These pics don't do justice to the situation at the time as the they are wide angle and hard to tell that he's in my lane at distance unless you zoom into the 1st photo. By the time the La Baron passed me there was plenty of distance between us as he was in his lane and I was half way off the road, however, at the time and at that closing speed it felt much closer and a bit surreal that this was happening to us. My wife was speechless for a minute afterwards. Wish I could pull more detail off the photo/frame so that we could read his license plate.

 

Maybe he'd just watched A Clockwork Orange?

 

Doubtful he was stoned - that usually results in very slow driving. Doubtful he was drunk, that's weaving, more likely just a jerk screwing around....

 

Indeed probably just a jerk screwing around like you say But if he's stoned on meth, he's not going slow and he's looking for trouble!

 

You did the right thing. I would also recommend to honk hard and flash the lights with conviction ( I see no point in turning off the DRLs). And yes, I suspect the action of the other driver was on purpose.

 

Scary stuff! Could have been a really bad day. Not that it matters, but that's a Sebring, not a Le Baron.

 

Wow, that's about as scary as it gets.

Looks like you had plenty of shoulder there on the side of the road. If I'd been driving first thing I'd have done is emergency braking to near 0 mph and then place the car to the right of the fog line and come to a complete stop until idiot passed. Whenever there is an impending impact, always lose as much velocity as possible. I learned this riding motorcycles and avoiding deer in the road.

 

I would have done the same thing as you, stayed in my lane, slowed right down and moved over as far as possible. I would have also been frantically flashing my lights and hard on the horn to try and attract their attention.

John