Impatient driver switches lanes, nearly causes highway accident

Driving on a multi lane highway can be a hair raising experience. There is always somebody in far too much of a hurry. And there always people who don't pay attention to what is going on around them. Sometimes they even find themselves in the same place at the same time and it's a recipe for an accident.

The driver with the dashboard camera has been traveling in the left lane and has allowed himself a safe distance between his car and the car in front. Going any closer would be an unsafe following distance. But the Honda Civic behind him is being driven by a very impatient person who has been tail gating dangerously closely for the past few minutes. The Civic made an abrupt lane change and passed on the right, then pulled in front of the car with the dash cam. He's only gained a second or two in time and he will now be stuck at the same speed.

The Civic signaled briefly and pulled in with less than an ideal amount of space. As he closed in rapidly on the cars in front, the driver of an SUV in the middle lane decided that he was also in a hurry and wanted the fast lane. He moved to the left with warning or a signal of any kind. This caused the Honda Civic to swerve left and brake hard to avoid hitting his back end. It's a combination of the abrupt and unsafe driving of the Honda Civic, along with the abrupt and unsafe driving of the SUV that almost had these two drivers meeting each other in a collision.

Driving on these highways presents the safe drivers with unfortunate choices. If you allow a safe distance between your car and the car in front, somebody will always try to squeeze in. If you don't, then you will be following too closely and risking your own collision, or a traffic ticket.

The driver of the Honda Civic signaled and might have been OK, but he certainly wasn't allowing any room for error or unanticipated movement of the other cars around him. Had there been a collision, both drivers would have been able to blame the other, at least in part, but that is little consolation if you or somebody else are hurt when it could have been avoided. And one of the most important things to consider is that this type of driving saves very little time.