I had to go to traffic school about 20 years ago while living in the state of
Florida. Basically everyone with a moving violation in the past quarter was
assembled to take a safety class in order to avoid certain license or insurance
penalties.  One young lady said her crime was to swerve to the left in order to
save her life. She said a car was coming right at her, into her lane, and so she
had to swerve left.  She said the police officer who came to the scene gave her
a very severe penalty, specifically  for swerving left.  I guess the rationale
was it was better to get hit in your own lane than to create new hazards for
folks in the other lane.  I always thought it was a dubious law, or a dubious
telling of it.

Anyway, today on my way to work on a snowy day, I suddenly found a car sliding
sideways into my lane.  Instinctively, I swerved and ended up in someone's yard
on the left side of the road, avoiding all injury and damage to the car chassis.
But of course, I "swerved left."   I suppose there could have been two more cars
in the left lane, and it could have led to a pile-up, in theory.

Has anyone ever heard of such a proscription about swerving? Does it make sense
to instill a general habit in the populace?

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:web.4b3cc9ba141aa2f634d207310@news.povray.org...

> a very severe penalty, specifically  for swerving left.  I guess the
rationale
> was it was better to get hit in your own lane than to create new hazards
for
> folks in the other lane.  I always thought it was a dubious law, or a
dubious
> telling of it.

Sounds like a dubious telling. If the driver of the other car recovers
(which you can help by honking), he'll be swerwing to his right, so swerving
left is not a smart idea in general. If there's no hope of recovery for the
other driver (icy surface / locked wheels, in which case he should be the
one honking), I say head wherever it's safer (*).

All the same, it *is* often better to get hit by the faulty party (in a
controlled manner) than to end up being *the* guilty party while trying to
improvise in a hurry.

> Has anyone ever heard of such a proscription about swerving? Does it make
sense
> to instill a general habit in the populace?


(*) If you are conditioned to not swerve left, you are more likely to find a
safer spot on the right or a safer course of action (speed up/slow down)
quicker, since you have eliminated one (often complicated) maneuver to
consider without wasting any time with it. It also means the other drivers
can count on your actions not interfering their attempts at recovery which
tremendously reduces uncertainity. Thus, it makes a lot of sense to me to
instill the habit.

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somebody wrote:
> Sounds like a dubious telling. 

Sounds like she didn't actually get hit, so there's no way for the police 
officer to know whether she swerved to save herself or simply overreacted.

I got side-swiped[1] on my left side once, and the other driver tried to 
claim I hit him. Until I pointed out the scuff marks on my right tires and 
the right curb, the cop was ready to believe him, as I was a very young 
driver at the time.



[1] Side-swiped: Two cars going the same direction clash right-door of left 
car to left-door of right car.  For those here possibly unfamiliar with the 
idiom.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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> Has anyone ever heard of such a proscription about swerving?

Not in the UK - not even a no-swerve right :-), and not in Germany AFAIK.

> Does it make sense
> to instill a general habit in the populace?

I think people are usually pretty good at making a split second decision on 
which direction to swerve.  OK so sometimes people decide to swerve left and 
then actually cause more damage than if they'd swerved right, but do you 
think the situation would be any better if everyone always swerved right?

For me I think my thought process would be something like swerving left if 
there was nothing in that lane, else decide what would cause least damage, 
hitting whatever it is my lane or swerving to the right (usually there will 
be kerbs, signs, trees or people to the right, but hitting those might be 
better than an oncoming car depending on the speeds involved).

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