Well yesterday I had a really close call. I was driving home on a freeway. Mid afternoon so traffic was light and I was cruising about 65 in my MC, my exit coming up. I'm changing stations on my XM roady which is angled toward me in the passenger cupholder. I look down as the buttons are small. When I look up there is a damn leather office arm chair in my lane about 50 ft in front of me. I brake and swerve hard left then right around it. I can honestly say if I were driving my 99 CR-V that day I would have plowed right over it, but the the maneuvering capability of the MC saved my butt (and its front end). Not sure if DSC kicked in or not, I'd have to suspect it did, but was too panicked to look at the instrument panel or pay attention to anything except the chair in front of me.

Two lessons, one put the roady remote back in the mini so I'm not fumbling with the roady itself. Two I really wish blitzsafe would come out with an aftermarket xm solution that integrates with the R56 head unit like they have for the R50/R53.

 

Glad everything turned out OK.

 

Good to hear you avoided that. These cars do maneuver very well. I had a LARGE dog standing in the road a few weeks ago and didn't see it until I was very close. A jacked up pick up truck was close behind, blinding me with his lights and just after I turned the rear view mirror dimmer and looked forward, there was the dog. Knowing the truck was close behind, I stayed off the breaks and swerved around the dog with ease. Well, easy for the car...my heart felt like it was jumping out of my chest! A quick check of the mirror showed the truck almost on the verge of rolling. I believe the dog made it, thank goodness.

 

I had a semi-similar close call the other day. I was going about 70, and about to pass a semi that was going maybe 30 after a set of lights. Well, a woman that was behind the truck decided that it would be a good time to change lanes right in front of me without accelerating (or using the turn signals, but in Texas those are really vestigial).
I hit the brakes, my tires were squealing, but i managed to slow down and avoided hitting her. Had i been in an SUV or pickup, i'm sure it wouldn't have ended well.
I guess the moral of the story is that driving a tank is overrated, and the manoeuvrability and lightness of the mini easily trumps the alleged passive safety of SUV's and trucks.

 

glangford - glad you and your MINI are okay!!! It's amazing the kind of crap that ends up on the highways. We've had a few close calls ourselves - doors, ladders, all stuff that seems comes off the back end of pick up trucks that aren't secured...

Donna

 

You'd be amazed at how many auto claims I work every week where our insured driver says, "I just took my eyes off the road for a split-second and...".

That's all it takes. One portion of one second for disaster to occur. The worst one yet was when out insured who was obviously 5 beers short of a six-pack says to me, "I just bent down to pick up an M&M....". The payout on that claim was a quarter of a million dollars. Yep, $250,000. He's lucky nobody in the other two vehicles he hit were killed.

Glad your story didn't have a worse ending, glangford.

BTW, for you claim rep wannabe's (like there is such a thing)... you hit something in the road that fell of a vehicle right in front of you and the object is still moving, the other driver is at fault. But if you hit something stationary in the road, it's YOUR fault. If you're paying full attention, you should be able to stop and/or avoid it.

 

I'm a pretty conservative driver....seriously.....and it never ceases to amaze me the things that end up IN the roadway.....a car door (I drove over one in my SUV), more than one ladder, boxes of clothing, a futon cushion, and....someone's dresser. But nothing tops the day I was following a van - about 4 car lengths behind, and the mattress that was roped to their roof caught wind, flew off, skimmed OVER the top of my car, and hit the car behind me.

Mike and Jarek tease me because I won't snuggle up close to traffic in front of me - but with such a low line of sight in the MINI, I want aaaallllll the response time I can get.

 

I was headed on the freeway through the Columbia River Gorge east of Portland and there's a van in front of me with one of those 1960s-style zippered luggage carriers on top.

Sure enough, the carrier comes undone and the whole unit slides off the roof and lands in my lane. It stays upright and skids toward me.

Luckily, I had time to get over into the fast lane and wave as it skidded behind me. No one else was right behind me. I didn't envy the driver backing up to try and retrieve it before someone ran over it and the luggage inside.

 

A buddy of mine was heading home to Oklahoma once on 40W. In the middle of the road looming out of the darkness was a complete wooden utility shed.

Probably fell off a truck carrying it somewhere and came to rest in the roadway looking like it was build there.

Fortunately JD swerved and avoided. He exited at the next available exit thinking he would call the Highway Patrol. After he paid for gas and went to go back to his car he encountered the not so lucky Acura owner that punched through the shed and made it into a kindling.

He said the Acura held together surprisingly well and the driver was in good shape in spite of what happened.

Crazy stuff out on the roads indeed!

 

So CR&PW&JB, does this still fall under the guidelines that you mentioned above? If it had come to a complete stop is it still the fault of the driver who hits it?

 

Absolutely. In fact, if I were the adjuster handling that claim, I would count it as TWO at-fault accidents because the damn thing is so big !!

But yeah, the general rule is that if you hit a stationary object, it's a Collision claim and you are at fault. And darkness does not change that. You should not be out-driving your headlights.

 

I'll bet the chair's brake lights were out, too, and was out of inspection!!!

Glad you're okay...whoever thinks MINIs are merely automotive fashion statements is sadly mistaken!!!

 

Thanks all. I am a conservative driver, and very careful and defensive. A lesson well learned. The XM roady remote is now in the car, I sent blitzsafe an e-mail off, questioning again when if ever they where coming out with an aftermarket xm solution to integrate with the head unit.

One thing my wife likes about my mini, she says I'm a better driver in it than say when I'm driving my 99 CR-V with automatic tranny. Having the manual transmission also helps as you really have to pay attention to the road and how the car is responding.

 

Several years ago, it was a very foggy misty morning and I was headed home from a friends house in Cape Girardeau MO on 55 N. I was just chugging along, and I thought I saw a slow moving car ahead with no lights on. I changed lanes, and as I passed the car, I realize it was stopped, and on its roof! I called 911 and kept going about 10 miles ahead I stopped to get some coffee at a truckstop, and there was a car carrier that looked to be missing a car, I asked the driver about it and he said he just realized that car had fallen off! Scary to say the least.

 

Last Friday I as coming home from a business meeting (near the entrance to the 805N on the 8W in San Diego), and an entire load of furniture fell off the back of a pickup in front of me. The hard part was picking the lane as the couch kept bouncing from one lane to the next.

Fortunately, I was far enough back that I didn't hit anything. When I lived in NY, I never saw anything like this (except for the occasional truck tire). In Southern Cal, this happens almost every week.

 

How would you score the near miss I had a week or so ago? :impatient

I'm driving on Interstate 10 in San Antonio and up ahead, I see people swerving left and right around some object. I'm traveling around 65, start to slow down and when I get to the object, it was a young lady driving in reverse, backing up because she missed her exit! She was definitely still moving!

I kid you not. It was like something out of a Peter Faulk movie.

 

glangford, and all the others--glad you're ok!

My daughter came across a mattress in her lane at night--dodged it, fortunately. She'd taken a car control school run by a couple of policemen on police academy grounds, to which she attributed her miss.

I might add that she drives with hand controls, which makes it all the more difficult since your two hands have to do ALL the work!

 

Vehicles are not considered "objects in the road".

I think your answer is clear from there, right ?