I was driving to pick up my date tonight for V-Day (first time I've ever done that, actually), headed eastbound on the US60. I was in the far left lane, and traffic started to slow. About 10 seconds after traffic slowed from 75-80 down to ~50, the car in front of me locked 'em up, and obliterated the van in front of them. Impact was ~40 mph into 0 mph.
Guys.
You dream about this sort of avoidance in video games, never mind
real effing life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, if I had my GoPro hooked up like I usually do, the video would have millions of views on YouTube in a matter of days.
I frankly don't care that I didn't have a camera rolling, because my car is my life right now, and totaling a motorcycle was hard enough on me.
What I did was use about ~30% of my braking power, and the rest to swerve in the open HOV lane to my left. I missed the car in front by less than a foot, and I was following about 15 feet away before impact. It was such a hard hit that
I felt it. Thankfully, an officer was in traffic with us, and was able to help the people almost instantly.
I was nervous enough that I was taking a girl out on Valentine's Day, I certainly didn't need this to make it worse.
I want to thank Toyota/Subaru for making such a responsive car to help me miss that. Not many other cars would have allowed me to get out of the way like I did.
I just hope I wasn't a blithering idiot on my date.
EDIT: Needless to say, I'm not heading out to the 88 tonight. I'm still shaking it off.