Stumped
There is something that has been confusing me for a while.
They have been running a road safety advertisement on UTV [and that’s Ulster television for all you foreigners] and the logic behind it has me baffled.
It starts off with a montage of people who have apparently been involved in accidents, with voiceovers saying things like “he said he was blinded by the sun” or “she said the text was important”. We even have Heather Mills waving her stump at us which is a tad surreal.
Now I can understand this montage. It shows victims and gives the cause, and in most case the accidents could have been avoided.
But then comes the strange bit.
We have a chappy driving along a country road with the obligatory cute little girl beside him. We have to rack up the sympathy bit so throw in a cute little girl and you’ll have all the mammies of Norn Iron weeping their eyes out. It’s funny how they never show a spotty snotty boy, sitting playing with his Nintendo and whining about how he would rather be somewhere else? It always has to be a cute smiley adorable little female?
Anyhows, I digress.
This chappy is driving along his country road with his cute little girl [or maybe he has just enticed her into his car with the promise of sweeties and a good time?] when he comes to a junction. And here is the surreal bit – a lorry that is obviously out of control comes barrelling out of a side road and makes mincemeat of our cute couple [or our pervert and his victim, if you prefer?].
They then tell us in sombre tones that over 95% of crashes are due to human error. That I would well believe, but where is the human error in the yoke they have shown? Drivers of lorries tend not to drive into junctions at top speed as they must be aware that it’s not very sensible. As it was, the driver in the video was damn lucky that there was a car there to prevent him from flying into the ditch on the far side of the junction. So I can only assume that his vehicle suffered either a brake failure or a jammed throttle, neither of which is human error?
So what is the point they are trying to put across?
Don’t drive lorries towards junctions as your brakes may let you down?
Don’t drive a car past a junction in case an out of control lorry comes flying at you?
Don’t kidnap little girls for your nefarious purposes as Karma will get you?
I have skipped the first bit of the video but you may still get a flash of Heather Mills [and the way she might look at you]
Can someone please tell me how that could possibly have been caused by human error or how it could be avoided.
Like Heather Mills, I’m stumped.
When the lorry drives over the car the roof is already ripped off and there are no bodies in the car. So according to what I saw no one got hurt in that accident.
Maybe it's a message to lorry drivers that they need not stop at a junction as there will always be a driverless car there to stop them?
that's just fucked up
Not half as fucked up as the car?
Horribly mistimed shot. The car was suppose to arrive just after the truck enter the intersection, go under it ripping the roof off in the process converting it to a convertible. Fortunately the people in the car were not wearing seatbelts so they were able to duck and avoid injury.
I doubt anyone would have survived that? You have to admire the actors who gave their lives for the sake of reality?
As an ex LGV driver for 16 years most of them on articulated trucks this advert just makes no sense at all. Unless the lorry driver had his girl in the cab giving him some, er stimulation and he was at that explosive moment, I just cannot see him charging the junction like that. Even if he was munching a sarnie or even on his phone you don't fly down country roads with no though of the weight of the load or vehicle, the risk of losing control is too great. A more biased load of shite is hard to imagine.
I have seen this quite a few times over the past weeks and have come to the conclusion that there is only one scenario possible – there is a steep hill up that side road and the lorry's brakes failed on the way down. If that's the case then there is damn little anyone could have done about it, and the whole point of the film is a nonsense.
Or maybe the lorry was being chased by zombies?
Same as that, johnny. I drove artics for years, and one of the first things you learn is to judge weight v braking ability. As GD says, the only possibility for a scenario like that to occur is if the truck had just descended a very steep hill and suffered a catastrophic brake failure. Which, as he also points out, negates the whole point of the video. No driver of any vehicle is going to approach a junction at that speed unless he has suicide in mind.
Utter codswallop from beginning to end.
At 43 seconds, the driver of the car does commit human error in that the vehicle is part way over the centre line but that would not have prevented the accident – just made it happen sooner
I noticed that. Maybe the point is that if he stuck to his side of the road his death would have been sooner and quicker?
No stop signs at all on that junction. My father drove me for an interview to Intel back in the 90's when I finished college. We crashed into a foreign guy who pulled out of a junction just beyond Urlingford.
Luckily our car was a tank (Opel Ascona). If it was one of todays cars I doubt we would have survived. This video brought back memories of it:)
I once wrote off a car by smacking into its arse on the Stillorgan road. The investigators couldn't understand how my little Fiesta could have done so much damage to the other car [the Fiesta had a buckled bumper and bonnet]. I pointed out that it was a diesel model and was built like a tank. The only thing that stopped me from driving away was some damage to the battery.
And before anyone says anything – two court cases found the driver I smacked 100% liable for the accident..