Would it kill you to brake?

[evilhomer]

I don't know the answer to the subject line, but failing to do so almost killed all of us.

My partner was driving and missed his turn. (I'll put in a disclaimer now, my partner was a moron, a fucking moron, this other driver was homicidal and suicidal). So, rather than doing the intelligent thing and finding a driveway to do a turn around, he decides to do a u-turn. He pulls to one side and I see an 18-wheeler about five hundred yards away. I expect him to wait for it to pass, but instead he decides to pull out for the turn. This was a stupid move that may have worked in a car, but we're in a cube van. The u-turn turns into a three point turn. He reverses and throws it into drive and is about to hit the gas when the 18-wheeler comes hurtling past us on the right. He's going full speed, didn't even slow down in the slightest. He pulled into the soft shoulder, missing us by inches, and probably missing the gully on his right side by inches as well. If one of his wheels had slipped into there, it would have been a tragic rollover.

As I said, my partner was a moron. It was a stupid move from the very start. But other drivers have a responsibility to compensate for other driver's stupid moves. The guy had more than enough time to brake, but instead chose to make a dangerous pass. I don't even know if he knows how lucky he was to make it through.

[wolfie]

If he'd hit you, he could have lost his job over it even if the police had filed charges against your partner and found him 100% at fault. While most of you are familiar with "at fault" and "not at fault" collisions, a different system is used for commercial drivers - "preventable" and "non-preventable".

This is a stricter standard - "preventable" means that you failed to do everything reasonable to prevent the collision even if the cause was the other guy doing something illegal. In this case, "Stopping while the 4-wheel moron does a 3-point turn in the middle of the road" is considered a reasonable measure to prevent the collision. Too many preventables, or even a single one which exceeds a certain threshold (at the company I work for, any preventable that results in injury falls into this category) is an instant "you're fired".