Given the choice, would you do what OP did or backed up a few feet, so the other driver didn’t hit you?
Presumed South Salt Lake, UT resident and Redditor /u/redruM69 posted up an interesting bit of dashcam footage yesterday (Dec. 23, 2023) to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit showing a driver in a manual car gently backing up into him and then blaming him for the (albeit slow speed) collision.
Check out /u/redruM69’s dashcam video below.
[OC] Apparently I was “following to close”…
byu/redruM69 inIdiotsInCars
The incident happened on Exit 17 of the 201 Freeway off ramp onto 900 West (exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As OP’s dashcam footage shows, he’s exited off the 201 and he and another car in front of him are waiting for their light to turn green so they can proceed onto 900 West.
All of a sudden, he notices the car in front of him begin to slowly back up, a tell-tale sign that they’re driving a car with a manual transmission.
“You’re going to back into me? You’re going to back into me?”
OP honks his horn as his passenger yells at him to back up.
“I’m just going to let her hit me.”
“There it is. There it is.” OP says as the car in front of him gently rolls back into his front bumper.
The driver probably assumed OP drove into the back of him, as we see the driver exit, throw on his flashers, and walk back to talk to OP about what happened.
It’s hard to make out, but I assume the other driver tried to argue his case with OP that he wasn’t at fault.
“I’ve got a camera if you want to try to argue. You backed into me, your foot was not on the break. If you want to argue about this, we can call the cops, and we can review the video, how about that? ” OP arguably aggressively replies.
“I was just stopped right there and you just hit me. You were just too close to me, man,” the other driver says.
They go back and forth for a little more until OP finally suggests they get out of the intersection.
On his way back to his car, the other driver inspects the “damage” which, keeping in mind the speed of the collision, was probably virtually nothing.
If you scroll through the literally hundreds of comments, there’s a lively discourse going on whether OP did the right thing or not, letting the other guy hit him.
Based on the circumstances, OP defends himself that he did the right thing, staying put instead of backing up to avoid getting hit.
OP points out that the other driver’s reverse lights weren’t on, indicating he wasn’t actively trying to ram him.
He made an audible at that moment that letting the driver gently back into him was safer than reversing back into, potentially, incoming traffic off the 201.
“Look, all being said, I had a choice, reverse, break the law, and risk endangering my family’s lives at my fault, or stay put and get bumped. I CHOSE, to let him hit me.”
OP also later points out that it’s technically illegal to reverse up an off-ramp.
Thankfully, he had his dashcam running too as if this was a more serious accident, it would be that much more difficult to plead his case as this is essentially a case of he said she said.
As to what happened after this clip, according to OP, “He just left with no further escalation.”
I truly think this was a case of the driver not paying attention and not understanding what happened after the fact.
Do you think OP did the right thing in this situation?
Let me know your .02 in the comments below.
