To Brake or Not To Brake?


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I Hit a full grown German shepherd dog while i was on my safari. This unfortunate incident happened today morning.

Was on my Safari on GST road. The location is out of limits and it's just a few hundred meters away from the toll collection both. I was around 80km while the dog appeared in the lane crossing the opposite lane and passing the through the plantations. I had enough braking distance but a bus following me and a lot of vehicles were closing following each other. The moment i saw the dog in the lane i looked at the ORVM and see the bus very close behind me. I relaized that if i break the bus will not be able to stop and that too lot of vechile were behind the bus. I sterred to the left but no avail. The dog was hit on the bumper and thrown away.

I pulled the car by side of the road and checked the dog but it was dead. A girl and three guys rushed from the opposite lane and started scolding me. It was their dog. seems they stopped the car on the opposite lane and the dog ran away from them.

I even said sorry but they were abusing me. I did not talk back as i felt fault was on me. I immediately call the police. The police arrived on the scence with a Sub inspector and a driver on patrol vechile. The police tried to pacify them. But the guy said that his dad is x and so and so. The cop got angry and said nothing can't be done. He asked me to leave the place. So I left. When I recall the incident I felt i should have breaked or not. If it's a human, I would have breaked definately. A dog life is less than a human? Am i at mistake? the day was spent thinking about this. I checked my safari but no damage on the bumper.
 
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Re: To brake or not to Brake

You could have hit the brakes gradually resulting in full bite but not suddenly. It really works and the damage won't be as high as in case of sudden hard braking. Secondly the bus and truck drivers do keep an eye on the road ahead of you and in all probabilities, the bus would have stopped maybe even before you. I have seen the pile ups breaking with buses ans the driver applied brakes even before the cars he was following.

In other words, use brake + steering combo as much as possible and then leave on the Physics to play its role.
 

allhyundaicars

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Re: To brake or not to Brake

First of all there can be several scenarios on this.
It was your judgement at that point so please don't think of it now. What if there were more damage to more parties ?t. It felt bad to read that the dog died and i can understand what you are going through.

Anyways about your last line if it were a human. Do you think that the cop would easily let you go if you hit another person ? No. You'd have to spend hours at the police station to settle with the other party. So yeah , human life is more important than anyone.

I wouldn't say it was your fault. You made a judgement call and the results are in front of you. Maybe it could have been worse or maybe the dog lived. No point thinking about it now.

Ps : i read a case where a woman stopped her car to save some ducks which caused 2 deaths. In the end she was jailed and was banned from driving for some years.

Anyways i recalled something my dad told me when i first drove on the highway , if someone comes in front of you , try your level best to save him but never put your life in danger( like steering to the opposite lane) even for him. It's selfish but you know that your life is important than anybody.
 
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Best option:
Have a dash cam installed in the car and hit the idiot (if its a person) if anything else can't be done. The dash cam footage will do its work after that.
 
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As Mr.Allhyundai told,it your judgement call.
I appreciate the planning you did before applying brakes.
My additional point will be to pump and brake it will give you certain time,for the following drivers to respond and also can be a safe affair.
 
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I Hit a full grown German shepherd dog while i was on my safari. This unfortunate incident happened today morning.

Was on my Safari on GST road. The location is out of limits and it's just a few hundred meters away from the toll collection both. I was around 80km while the dog appeared in the lane crossing the opposite lane and passing the through the plantations. I had enough braking distance but a bus following me and a lot of vehicles were closing following each other. The moment i saw the dog in the lane i looked at the ORVM and see the bus very close behind me. I relaized that if i break the bus will not be able to stop and that too lot of vechile were behind the bus. I sterred to the left but no avail. The dog was hit on the bumper and thrown away.

I pulled the car by side of the road and checked the dog but it was dead. A girl and three guys rushed from the opposite lane and started scolding me. It was their dog. seems they stopped the car on the opposite lane and the dog ran away from them.

I even said sorry but they were abusing me. I did not talk back as i felt fault was on me. I immediately call the police. The police arrived on the scence with a Sub inspector and a driver on patrol vechile. The police tried to pacify them. But the guy said that his dad is x and so and so. The cop got angry and said nothing can't be done. He asked me to leave the place. So I left. When I recall the incident I felt i should have breaked or not. If it's a human, I would have breaked definately. A dog life is less than a human? Am i at mistake? the day was spent thinking about this. I checked my safari but no damage on the bumper.
Sorry to say but its also your fault, I am surprised that you could look into the rear view mirror and decide means you had time to brake before hitting the dog, also means you could have easily stopped probably with a slight damage to your safari provided you had that much time to look into the mirror and decide on whether to brake or not, though no one would like their vehicle to be banged it was a situation where you could have at-least slightly braked to reduce the impact of the hit on the dog

It would have been very hard even for an expert to instantaneously think about the bus behind and the vehicles behind it

A life is a life even if its a dog or a human, please don't say a human life is more worthier every life is worthier my friend

Yes though you could have hit your brakes the very short time to decide might have made you to do this :frown:

Forget it and move on but it might take some bit of time for you to get over it

Best option:
Have a dash cam installed in the car and hit the idiot (if its a person) if anything else can't be done. The dash cam footage will do its work after that.
Even if its a idiot i wouldn't prefer to hit he might have just turned out to be idiot for that day or just during that time alone

I am sure we all would have been that kind of a idiot at-least once in a lifetime and i don't want to get hit by a person who has a dash-cam to justify that it was not his mistake
If anything else can't be done
would still cant imagine though to wantedly hit the idiot
 
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^^"If anything else can't be done" is the key phrase sirji. I would like to know what you suggest and how can you prevent from hitting the idiot if he/she emerges suddenly out of nowhere and neither you have time to stop nor you can steer
 
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I wish all of the drivers kept a safe stopping distance from the vehicle in front of them.

What I have to tell you is that you have to learn one thing from this accident. If the bus had kept enough distance from your vehicle, You would have hit the break instead of hitting the dog. This is the bus driver's fault. Almost 90% of the drivers in India is doing this mistake(Even I did once). So always keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you to save them and yourself from these type of incidents.
 
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^^"If anything else can't be done" is the key phrase sirji. I would like to know what you suggest and how can you prevent from hitting the idiot if he/she emerges suddenly out of nowhere and neither you have time to stop nor you can steer
Yeah your true no one would want to do it but its a combination of all we might end up with, a hit or a steer to left or right, or the idiot decided to back out seeing us all of a sudden with his very good reflex

More depends on your luck, reflexes(of both) and presence of mind, what i am saying is it all depends on the situation because almost all are unique and so are people

If i had answer to you i would have made a good money with that idea [;)], by the way i didn't in anyway mean what you said was wrong but said i even fear of thinking about hitting that idiot [surprise] even unintentionally just like how u said
 
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First of all clear your consciousness. A dog is not suppose to come in a highway like that. Why,even a human is not supposed to be jaywalking on a busy road.Have you seen people being asked to pay fine for jaywalking? I had seen many places where by going to save a dog or cow many people have to suffer.Any stoppage of buses from 80 to 0,in a small time, will be an accident.I appreciate your presence of mind and the way you had taken up all the accident scenario.


PS : I am an animal lover,who doesn't eat animals.
 

Akash1886

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Pravin, I would say, desperate times call for desperate measures. You did your best to avoid the dog but it couldn't happen. Accidents never happen by intention they happen suddenly. It was a mistake on the part of dog owners who did not hold the leash properly. You are not guilty in the first place. Secondly, if you travel on highways, you may have noticed number of dead animals by road side and most of the deaths occur mainly due to sudden appearance and crossing the roads. Lastly, no animal is as sensible as human who can be taught the traffic rules. So, it just happened and let it go. You did not intentionally kill the poor thing. If you are still feeling the guilt, go and support a Pet NGO or spend time with the dogs in any Pet Care Centre.

In case of human being, if such a thing happens on a highway where it is prohibited for cycles and pedestrians then too the car driver is not guilty because they are breaking the rule. I do know it is an ideal thing to say but its not practiced still I would say, one's own safety is in one's own hands.

Regards

Akash
 
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Same kind of incident happened to me during last trip.

It was Morning 6am around, I started the trip with full of energy and excitement. Between Kelambakkam-Vandalur a dog suddenly crossed the road from a gap in center median. first I applied sudden brakes and saw a IRVM a dizre cab was very close to me, after seeing my sudden brake he too applied sudden brake. But the distance between the dog and my car was very less.

My car hit the dog but found the dog alive in RVM and felt happy that I didn't killed that dog.

At the same time, I know something happened to my car bumper but didn't stopped the car and don't want to spoil my mood after seeing the bumper. So stopped after crossing Ford plant in Maraimalainagar and found a crack in Bumper[cry] and felt very very bad.

Still I have that crack in my car need to replace the whole bumper. Actually this the second time for my car. Already I had a crack because of Dog some 2years back at Pondy ECR, but I repaired it. Now no chance of repairing it :(

BTW, During my trip, I saw more than 30 dogs died on the road [cry]
 
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Pravin, I would say, desperate times call for desperate measures. You did your best to avoid the dog but it couldn't happen. Accidents never happen by intention they happen suddenly. It was a mistake on the part of dog owners who did not hold the leash properly. You are not guilty in the first place. Secondly, if you travel on highways, you may have noticed number of dead animals by road side and most of the deaths occur mainly due to sudden appearance and crossing the roads. Lastly, no animal is as sensible as human who can be taught the traffic rules. So, it just happened and let it go. You did not intentionally kill the poor thing. If you are still feeling the guilt, go and support a Pet NGO or spend time with the dogs in any Pet Care Centre.

In case of human being, if such a thing happens on a highway where it is prohibited for cycles and pedestrians then too the car driver is not guilty because they are breaking the rule. I do know it is an ideal thing to say but its not practiced still I would say, one's own safety is in one's own hands.

Regards

Akash
I completely agree with you Akash. However if it was a human in place of the dog, the police would have arrested the car driver even if the guy is jaywalking on the road. Strange laws.

There was a big accident on NH4 in Pune which happened due to truck driver trying to avoid a girl who was speaking on the mobile while crossing the highway.[frustration]

Few lifes were lost, many were injured. Not to mention the damages to the vehicles. A luxury bus banged a tree, 4 people in a swift dzire fell from the bridge and died on the spot, 6-7 cars were damaged along with a few 2 wheelers. The highway was jammed for the whole day because of the accident.
 

Akash1886

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However if it was a human in place of the dog, the police would have arrested the car driver even if the guy is jaywalking on the road. Strange laws.

There was a big accident on NH4 in Pune which happened due to truck driver trying to avoid a girl who was speaking on the mobile while crossing the highway.
The highway was jammed for the whole day because of the accident.
Rahul Ji, I mentioned that what I had written is too idealistic to follow. Finally, as I said, as much as the people walking as pedestrians on roads have the right to be safe, the motorists using the roads also have the right to safety. But what actually happens is that a innocent motorists falls prey to the crowd most of the time simply because he/she is driving a bigger vehicle. Pedestrians feel whatever they do on roads is right but whatever a sensible driver does on road is always questioned.

Coming to rogue drivers, sad part is that innocent drivers are clubbed with rogues at large. That is the reason when a vehicle is unintentionally involved in a crash with a animal or hits a jaywalker it is seen as the culprit no matter what. NH-24 is notorious for this as the villagers there leave their cattle or sheeps in between the bushes/dividers and often they try to harass the motorists on pretext of their cattle being hit by the vehicle.

Regards

Akash
 
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Seems like the banging saga continues This time for a change it's from the rear. Went to tirupati yesterday. A KA registered ertiga banged my safari from rear opposite to Tirumala bus stand.Ertiga was driven by a elderly gentleman in his 50's. He came out of the car and apologized. No damages to the car. The ertiga had a small scratch on it's bumper. We shook hands and left the place. This thing happened after a six hours tiring darshan was lord venkat. [frustration]. The heat was scrotching felt like chennai. payed visit to papavinsam, akash ganga and perumal pandham.
 

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