So this has really been haunting me

Yeah. Just a little shunt up the rear.

She was totaled when I left her. BTW she was "rear ended" too.

Oh crap - Chup beat me to the rear end joke. DAMN!

My one accident was because I was checking over my shoulder during a merge when some idiot ahead of me came to a full stop instead of merging. Next thing I knew gravity had shifted 90° and I was hanging in my seatbelt with my hood in someone else's trunk.

Damn! That could have ended up much, much worse.

I remember years ago I was heading back to Tyler, TX where we lived.

As I was leaving Arkansas an old lady stopped short in front of me and my trucked tapped her rear bumper.

I motioned her to pull over. When she got out of my way I took off.

Fortunately, Arkansas has a "move it law" that says if you have an accident and the vehicles are driveable you are to move them to a safe place.

My safe place was Texas.

There are some car manufacturers that have have that ability: BMW, Lexus and a few other brands have sensors on the front and sides of the car that will slow the car down and maintain a safe distance. A cool feature in areas without much traffic, but I've heard from customers that it can be a pain in the ass in SoCal during rush hour to get on the freeway.

Oh, this outta be good.

I've heard that a disquieting thing about self driving cars is they have a tendency to speed into curves. Because the computers in the car already know for certain the cars breaking and turning capabilities, they seen no need to instinctively slow down the way human drivers do.

I like Seattle but the city's road system was designed by a blind monkey. Yes, part of it os geography with lakes and hills to go around but I am convinced they could have done more of a grid system if they really wanted to.

It's insane. The roads are in shit condition, on top of the retarded layout. On Capitol Hill, you come to the intersection of Olive way, Olive street and Olive avenue. It is truly the vortex void of inhumanity.

A dangerous learning experience with a happy ending. Lucky you. Literally.

Here is a picture of what I am talking about. Generally 80 percent of the vehicles are huge trucks/SUV rather than the traditional "car" that we are all familiar with. I'm not getting how the Lexus sensor will detect a vehicle coming through the parking lot that is not in the "line of sight" of my car. Will it detect the vehicle and stop my car from getting far enough out into the parking lot to not get hit? IN my pic I am backing out - but I could be pulling out, regardless I cannot see shit because the vehicles on either side block my vision. Please explain.

Ah, I guess I didn't get what you were explaining.I know the Bimmer's front sensor detects movements as far as 100 yards out (300 feet) and even the new VWs have Auto Pilot options to help you get in and out of spaces. Likely, they would stop the car ahead of a collision.

But as a fellow small car driver, I know exactly what you're talking about Luckily, aside from the military types, big trucks aren't so rampant around here, but even with MINI gaining in size I can still get hidden between two mid sized sedans. Still better than the full sized pickups you're used to seeing.

Now you see what I mean. I don't need a sensor telling me if I'm too close - I can judge distance with no problem, and my reflexes are like Bruce Lee times 100. I need something that can see through large vehicles. Seriously you can watch oncoming traffic while you are waiting to pull out onto the road and count "one,two,three,four etc.etc". giant trucks until you see an actual car coming. Every time I see a huge truck I want to bitch slap the driver and scream "why the fuck do you need to drive a truck so big with a V-8 engine? Are you hauling a boat? Do you run a business and you need to carry special equipment? Will you be driving through rugged country with steep inclines?"

I find that the LED lights on my car help me to get noticed. My first MINI was bright yellow, so it stuck out more than other cars in dark lighting. My green one is much harder to see at night, especially where I live with shitty stream lighting. So the LEDs light up the road quite a bit. It may be worth it to get those if you are planning to buy a MINI or another Beetle.

Hell in South Florida it's not even safe being in your house.....









Oh and we've had hit and runs that the state actually passed a law to serve mandatory jail time if you flee from a crash scene.

The result?

The numbers of hit and run accidents has climbed even higher for Miami-Dade County and Broward County. In particular though Miami-Dade.

That's too bad. You just have to realize most people have major scares on the road at one point or another. Get back on the proverbial horse!

Hey, we (as a nation and a species) brought this on ourselves. We made our bed, now we have to lie in it. We have accepted death and mayhem as "the cost of doing business" in our society.

Around here hit and runs are mostly fucking illegal aliens who don't have a license, or insurance, and who are drunk yet driving anyway. They flee because they know they will be deported yet something like 75% to 90% of hit and run accidents are caused by illegal Mexican filth.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/10/11/report-illegal-drivers-behind-high-hit-and-run-rate-in-la/

Just another reason to deport them all.

You hate illegal Mexicans now? I thought you were more or less okay with them.

I don't hate them, just the criminality. I would be fine with streamlining the immigration process so that people can come legally (provided there is a benefit for this country and the new comers are perminently barred from any and all welfare)... but those who are criminals, who do things like hit and runs, they need to be hanged from lamp posts or just summarially shot. We have an epidemic of hit and runs in Southern California and illegals cause almost all of them.

In short: legal immigration is good, illegal is bad, and criminal illegals are the worst of the worst who should be wood chippered into dog food.

Damn, buddy. Tell us how you really feel.

A guy where my father-in-law used to work got t-boned by an illegal. He hit him so hard his trucked flipped off the road into a big irrigation canal. He was hanging upside down in his seat/shoulder belt while the canal water rushed by underneath him about a foot from his head! Yeah the illegal was driving a truck owned by the company he worked for. No license, no ID card (got paid cash) the truck was insured but invalid if the company owner knowingly lets an unlicensed operator use it for company use. Shit like that happens here in Georgia all the time. Construction contracting companies have built veritable empires hiring illegals. They have folks on the pay role forging passports, ID cards, Social Security cards, etc.

Illegal should be illegal while the legal immigration system should be streamlined.

Unfortunately, driving is a necessary evil, for the most part.

This same sort of incident has happened to me a couple of times. Once I was unable to stop and rear-ended a luxury car. BMW or Mercedes, I forget which. One of my basic assumptions when driving is that the moment I look away from traffic in front of me, to check my blind spot or whatever, will be the same exact moment that the retard in front of me jams on his brakes.

That's why I always make sure I have enough distance in front of me before doing a lane change. I had to deliver a car at someone's house yesterday and the lot porter that drove me back to the dealership would be all on the ass of the car in front as he'd change lane (without indicators, because of course). I'm like, really dude? I get it in places like Louisiana that don't normally see wall to wall traffic, but that will get someone killed here