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Glad to know that you and your family are fine. Forgive me for being blunt, but I went through the footage and I have to say that your wife is clearly at fault here. The way she overtook the Ace from the left, was nothing short of reckless. She could clearly see the tractor ahead and that the other two lanes were occupied by lorries. Even then she attempted an overtake. She obviously would've expected the tanker to slow down and give way, but that clearly didn't happen. And the traffic was not as slow as she claimed to be. Definitely not enough to cut across from a blind spot. Not that you should do it, even if it's slow. I don't think that the truck driver is at fault here.

I'm attaching the screenshots from dash cam footage as it'll make the life of other BHPians easier.















We all make mistakes. I hope your wife realize the one she made and improve her driving. Be glad that no physical harm happened to your family.

On a side note,IMHO your insurance claim process would get a lot harder if you submit this video as evidence.

No, it didn't hit you, you were already in its lane when it hits.

Suggest you report the post and get this video off from here.

Agreed, this is clearly a miscalculation in a tight overtaking. While this is legally wrong overtaking that too in a tight situation not just any left overtaking, but even if that was acceptable, the car was turned towards the right lane too early.

Agreed again, this one was really bad, driving like this is inviting trouble.

If you think you have never had trouble with driving like this, then it is because every other time others would have braked in trying to save you from hitting them!

Sir with all due respect it was clearly rash and dangerous driving by your wife, going in the left most lane and trying to overtake from an almost inexistent gap. I would advice you to give her driving lessons personally and you were pretty lucky this time that everyone came out unscathed from the incident, I hope you understand that there is a very thin line between a rash driver and a fast driver.

If the overtake would have been successful you would have never known how dangerous she had been driving, so please consider it as a wake up call and there are 95% chances the truck would not have even noticed you and 2% chances that it would have anticipated that you would overtake.

OTOH Now I know why my father never sleeps if someone else is driving the car.

Firstly, I am glad you and your family are safe and the overall scenario is just minor in the context of accidents on the highway.

Please do not be offended as you read through some of the forum members pointing out your better half's mistake / rash driving etc.

If I were the driver and I saw this footage; I would have admitted that it is my fault as I have either failed to use my right side ORVM before I switched lanes or despite using the ORVM I have misjudged the pace/distance of the vehicle on my right.

Experience comes from mistakes; I am sure this will make your wife a better driver going forward. Cheers!

I guess you already understood who's fault it is after viewing the dashcam footage.

The dashcam, because of the fisheye view will make the speeds look slightly higher that what it was. Even then, you just cannot cut in front of a truck, in this case a tanker trailer which if loaded would have been even more dangerous. They cannot brake anywhere as fast to how a car does which is why you need to respect them on the highways where they struggle get some speed at first and then have to avoid all sorts of obstacles. Their blindspots are huge, the driver of a small car needs to know that.
I won't blame the tanker driver for not stopping. If he had braked to avoid your car, he could have risked jack-knifing his trailer and if it was loaded, it would have been a catastrophe. Even if all that did not happen, and he still stopped, he would have got blamed for the whole episode. Perfect example was the Police van guy already saying the tanker cut left when he was keeping to his lane.

I am not blaming your wife, but please do sensitize her on highway driving and on how different it is from city driving. Thank God that no one was injured.

You and your family were extremely lucky with this one to have escaped which otherwise would have ended up as a major accident!!

Having driven umpteen number of times on this highway, no matter how much you try not to but inevitably end up using the left lane to overtake quite a few times in your overall journey mainly because this highway witnesses very dense traffic with the first lane mostly occupied with miscellaneous traffic. The other 2 lanes are hogged by trucks!

If you think you will stick to the fast lane for all our overtakes, you may never be able to comply with that here.

In the Dashcam clip that I see, it was overtaking gone wrong and nothing else. A slower moving tractor on the left lane and a considerably faster moving Tanker. The gap wasn't sufficient right when you even thought to overtake that tractor and while you did that, the tanker simply had no chance to swerve and avoid a collision with your car either because your car was in the blind spot or the Tanker driver who was sure that you would not make that move or vehicles on the fast lane making it difficult for the Tanker to change lanes to make way for you.

In short, the assessment was wrong with this maneuver that caused this.

Overtaking from left - Well, this highway and the density makes it tough to always overtake from right.

Can't actually believe that a member of t-bhp would reply this clip of an accident he/she was in, and think that another truck "guy who actually hit us". Whoever was behind the wheel is clearly at fault here and it shouldn't have been hard for you to realise that from the video. No offense. Safe travels.

I have a feeling you are going to be in a tight spot at home, with the views you guys have at home (of the mistake being of the truck) and the feedback here that clearly points out the mistake in your wife's driving. But I do hope the message is passed on as the justification in your post could imply this is something that can repeat again in the future; and possibly with even grave-er results if not unchecked.

Btw if you look at the 3rd second of the video; your wife has braked because of the slow tractor; reducing the speed of your car; but the trucks in the adjacent lane have no reasons to brake. And that miscalculation is the reason why her immediate movement to the right lane caused the accident as the relative speed difference between your car and the truck would have been almost zero.

Please do take the feedback on this thread as genuine feedback for your wife; and hopefully she takes it in the right spirit and continues to drive in the future but with more alertness and road safety in mind.

Not sure about this mysterious case. Yes it is illegal to refuse treatment to accident victims. But it could just be a play of words. The doctor can at his discretion triage the patient based on the severity of injury and facilities/specialists available in the said hospital and refer the patient to an appropriate facility. Though the discretion should be documented and based on the clinical scenario. Medico legal case has to be registered and the locality police need to be informed at the earliest.

Overtaking (passing) from left is not a good practice and is illegal. One has to consider that one may be in truck drivers blind spot.

Judgement is critical while driving and in this particular case it was totally wrong.

As everyone else has mentioned, on the positive side no one is hurt.

Glad you, family and others on the road escaped from this mishap unhurt. Thanks to your dashcam footage it is very clear that it was a case of very bad judgment before over taking. For a moment just swap sides and imagine if the truck driver did what your wife did and overtook in that manner. Safe,alert and sensible driving cannot be emphasized more. Unless already being practised, highly recommend securing kids in child/booster seats.

As a basic rule:

• Do not overtake and change lane on either side until and unless both headlamps of the vehicle being overtaken are visible in your mirror.
• Do not cut-in in front of other vehicles if your speed is lower than theirs.
• Be in gear, at higher revs, there is no sound but the car visibly seems bogged down when it slows behind the tractor.

There are many more, but these are most applicable here.

For pointers on the claim, it's better to ask the claim supervisor at your dealership. There should not be any problems, they can "manage".

Please just pray your insurance company doesn't get a hold of this video. With your children in the car on a three lane highway you need to be careful and understand driving rules. Overtaking trucks on the left most lane that too on the shoulder of the road is outright ridiculous. Your putting all the other vehicles on the road at risk by driving in this manner. Don't blame the truck driver for your wife's careless driving. Please educate and respect the driving rules on a highway, just thank your stars your family is safe. Seen people lose lives for lesser mistakes than this.

First and foremost, glad to note you and your family are safe and sound. Sorry to say, but the driver is completely at fault. You need to step into the truck drivers' shoes and understand, the blind spot is terrible, they cannot rapidly change lanes or brake abruptly owing to their weight. I for any reason never overtake from the left, especially through the service lane. I always have the habit of "Honk and flash" while overtaking a truck. If you can't judge a turn or a lane change, better slow down and reassure before doing the switch, better late than never.

Given the reality of highway driving in India, and the driving habits of all the other people out on the road, overtaking is done from either left or right - it is a 50-50 thing. What the law/rules state is a different matter altogether.

If I were in the driver's seat, I would not have attempted that gap. I would have hung back and waited for the tanker to pass. In trying to squeeze into the non-existent gap between the tanker truck and tractor, your wife effectively PIT-ted herself on the tanker truck. You were lucky that this accident was at a slow speed, or the damage would have included not just the car and ego, but also bodies and minds.

See this video for how a PIT maneuver is done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFPgNniiOqA