About two years ago, I decided to put a dashcam in the KICKS 105 pick-up truck.  I did this for some primary reasons.

If someone driving the station truck was in some sort of accident, we would hopefully have a video account of exactly what happened.  I've seen too many instances when a person at fault in a wreck is less than truthful at recounting the 'facts' to the police officer and to insurance agents.

I also wanted to use the dashcam to capture extreme weather events.  Last year, that came in handy during the big snow and ice storms as well as during some severe thunderstorms. I haven't been able to capture an awesome lightning strike as of yet.

On Friday afternoon, March 4, I was at the intersection of Loop 287 West and Pershing Avenue in Lufkin.  I was stopped in the left-hand turn lane waiting to turn east onto Pershing.  I was pretty focused on the traffic light when I heard a loud crash.

Somehow, a car had smashed head-on into a vehicle that was in the Pershing left-hand turn lane. There was damage to both vehicles.  It looked like the driver-side airbag on the car at fault had deployed, but everyone seemed to be okay.

At first, I thought the car in motion had come from Old Union Road and then somehow smashed into the other vehicle, But, after looking back at the video, I believe it went down like this:

The left turn traffic lights were both green for Old Union and Pershing and traffic was flowing both ways.  After a few seconds, a car traveling northward on Loop 287 for some reason did not observe the red light for northbound traffic.  It looks like the driver of that car finally realized that cross-traffic had the green light and she swerved right to miss a pick-up truck only to hit head-on the next vehicle ready to turn left off of Pershing.

You're not able to see the actual impact with the two vehicles, but you can definitely see the swerving car come to a sudden stop once it collides.  Although I can't be 100% sure of this, it looks like the person driving the vehicle on Pershing which took the hit was observant and saw the other car running a red light, and therefore did not pull out into the intersection.  His vehicle still got hit, but if not for his being observant, he could very easily have been T-boned, leading to greater damage and possible severe injuries.

Take a look and see if you come up with the same conclusions. (The video has no sound, and the incident happens to the left side of the screen)

 

 

 

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