I know many of those collision, though not up close and personal. I have inspected countless sites of collisions for the way in which the occured, speeds and ranges and mainly - the manner in which they could be prevented.
Even the hard and bizzare collisions in the video - could have been prevented. Even in the most rare situations, which could not have been fully prevented, they could have been minimized to a state where they do not threaten the life of the people involved or cause serious injury.
Many of the collisions, for instance, occured at junctions where on driver ran into another's way. This can easily be prevented by the driver scanning the junction from afar. If the directions from which traffic might come (even at a red light) are blind to us, we need to slow down. If we see the intersecting traffic, we need to slow down gently and keep a look out to see that they are indeed slowing down and stopping. If there are cars stopped at the line, you still need to look out and let go of the throttle at the moment where you enter the junction, being ready to brake.
Usually, nothing bad will happen. Even if sometimes does happen, we will usually be able to seeing the driver about to run red in advance, slow down and allow them to run through. Even if they do surprise us, we can perform an emergency stop (which none of the drivers in the entire video did properly, FYI ! ) and even if this does not help, we can brake and than veer away. Even if nothing works, at least you could slow down significantly and take a glancing blow and with a modern car - nothing serious will occur.
Another situation is where a driver got rear-ended while moving by a sliding car and in another footage where a semi veers suddenly towards traffic on it's left. It's important to drive at the speed of traffic, scan the mirrors periodically (we are talking 8 to 10 times per minute in normal traffic), keep a free space in front and an escape route to the sides. This will allow us to notice this and move into some kind of space and away from the hazard.
The third situation is where standing traffic gets hit by the collision caused inside the area of a junction. I've seen many cases like this, lately even where the collision caused a traffic light to fall over a car. To avoid this, we need to keep a reasonable level of concentration on the road even when stopped, and keep a free space to manuever ourselves within, so we can always see two-three feet of road before the car in front.
There are also a few head-on collision. In almost all them except one, the car that got hit had a few seconds to notice the situation develop and could have hit the brakes, pull right and eventually, if nothing helps, veer further right, even crashing the car off of the road, rather than into an oncoming vehicle.
In one collision, the impact happened across a bend, but even here, a wider line and slower speed when approaching a blind bend, being off of the throttle just prior to entering the corner, so you are ready to either brake or accelerate at will, listening to oncoming traffic (via a partially open window) and signaling your presence across the corner by a quick honk or flash of the high beams - could all have helped.
Another situation (a very famous video by itself) is where a car managed to break through the barrier in between the carriageways. Yet another reason to keep right!
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