I was in 3 car accidents over the course of three years, all of which the car I was in was totaled.
The worst of the three was one of those secondary, peak rush-hour accidents. I was on a two lane freeway (two lanes one direction, two lanes the other with a cement divider in the middle) around rush-hour with a pretty heavy amount of traffic but moving fast. I was going between 60 and 70 and in a really good mood. I’d just spent the whole day making music with one of my best friends with crazy vintage equipment and I was on my way to play a show that night. I was daydreaming and looked away from the road for a second, looked back and saw break lights. So I tapped my breaks, but then in a split second I realized those break lights were coming super fast. I did the exact wrong thing and slammed on my breaks.
I don’t know exactly what happened, but I was hit from both the front and the back. I was driving a tiny two seater from the early 90s, not exactly the safest car. I felt around myself and I seems to be all in one piece. No pain anywhere. Iwas able to squeeze my way up out of the car, bewildered. I didn’t seem to have any injuries at all. The car looked like a crushed tin can.
I went to the hospital just in case and it’s a good thing I did because as the shock wore off I discovered I had a bruised rib that was making it very hard to breathe. But that was my only injury. They gave me painkillers and sent me on my way.
I spent the next year in a fog of painkillers and existential despair and confusion. To this day I have trouble driving and I frequently question whether I’m actually alive or living out a dream in the dying seconds of my mind.
Help me out, with impact imminent, why is breaking hard the wrong thing to do? I get that it gives the car behind you just as little reaction time which might cause a chain reaction, but the end result appears to be the same to me?
NP. Yes ABS is designed to avoid exactly that issue, essentially by implementing in a mechanical way what drivers used to do manually - pumping the brakes etc.