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Comment by pipio21 | Hacker News Reader

One of the main causes of accidents are vehicles left on the road and other vehicles impacting them or the people as they take for granted that traffic will be fluid and are distracted or whatever.

You should never leave your children and family on a car on the left lane while you leave, never.

I have a neighbor that is paraplegic because of that. His entire family went to the hospital after a vehicle crashed from behind after a minor accident.

Your first priority is putting your car and family on a safe place. Proper triage priority number one is avoid another accident, by removing obstacles and signaling other cars.

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In fairness the guy is saying that in the video. Stop, wait to see what the cars do behind, etc. Presumably he gets out when traffic has stopped behind him.

Thanks you both. I didn't hear what the driver said, and I didn't really realize the potential danger of the left lane. Somehow I was only worried about people on the right side because that's where the flow of car could still move.

Exactly, he waits until the situation behind him is safe enough to get out. He also mentions a truck, so I think by the time he gets out, there's a reasonable 'impact' buffer between his family and any moving vehicles (far) behind.

This is just incorrect. The NHTSA recommends to stay in normal riding position in the vehicle if you need to stop your car on the highway. Yes, you can still get hurt in some circumstances but your neighbor could be dead instead.

I think he meant you shouldn't stop in the fast lanes to begin with. Clearly if you have stopped and cannot go then stay in the car with all of its safety gear and crumple zones, but don't stop if you don't have to.

at some point there is going to be cars stopped in the road right? or is every car on the freeway behind the car accident suppose to pull off the road?

they clearly said in dutch to wait and see what the traffic behind is doing.

I still think they should have tried to safely move to the shoulder like the other vehicles, although in their position they can keep their hazards on -- and traffic has already jammed behind them so they'll be visible. The best option would be to move and then go back with road flares, but very few people just carry those in their cars.

In the Netherlands road flares are not allowed. Only police or rescue-workers are allowed to use these in only certain situations.

Here, when accidents like these occur, our automated road information system directly displays how fast you may drive there (it has sensors to monitor traffic speed). And, within minutes, a traffic monitoring group will close down the affected roads fully and signal to which lanes people have to switch to by using arrows pointing towards the lane next to it.

The system looks like the following, and is placed on almost every highway here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Amsterda...

Yes! This cannot be stressed enough.

Not just for car accidents, but this is true for emergencies in general. Always check your surroundings!

For example, if you find a guy laying on the sidewalk, he could have stepped on a down power line, slipped on ice, or recently gotten attacked by some punk who might still be nearby. If you don't know why he is unconscious, proceed with caution.

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