The driver crawled out of his car about 30 seconds later and appeared unhurt.
Presumed New Hampshirite and Redditor /u/JackSteele33 shared surprising dashcam footage from earlier yesterday (July 18, 2024) to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit showing the moment when a potentially distracted driver in a Nissan Sentra misjudged the slowing cars ahead, swerved, clipped one of them, and ultimately flipped onto their roof.
Check out the dashcam footage for yourself below.
[oc] Nashua, NH. Distracted driver gets world turned upside down.
byu/JackSteele33 inIdiotsInCars
The accident happened on the 500 block of Amherst St. across from the Best Ford dealership and Best Cycle Center Honda Service center (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam footage shows, OP is in the rightmost lane of Amherst St.
Kitty-corner to OP’s car is a driver in a Nissan Sentra who begins to slow along with the vehicles in front of the Sentra.
It’s possible the Sentra driver was not 100 percent paying attention as they appear to misjudge the line of slowing cars in front of them and assumed they’d slow to a gradual stop.
Instead, the cars come to an abrupt stop. It didn’t help their judgement that the box truck next to the Sentra kept moving and the Acura crossover the Sentra inevitably hit nosedived to a stop.
“It seems like he misjudged the cars braking in front of him. The truck next to him was still moving, and the SUV in front nosedived a second before stopping, so the visual cues probably led the sedan to think this was just a slowdown,” /u/TSAOutreachteam commented.
“This is why you need to keep your distance. Following too close erases any room for error.”
The Sentra’s front passenger tire clips the rear tire of the Acura MDX and physics takes over.
“It was tire to tire going in opposite directions. The rubber on rubber doesn’t slip so….,” /u/JackSteele33 commented.
The Sentra’s momentum is redirected upwards, causing the Sentra to shoot up onto two tires before tipping over and landing on its roof.
As mentioned, OP says the driver emerged from the Sentra and appears to be unhurt.
“Honestly impressive. Angled it just right to miss the bulk of the bumper & rode up the rear quarter panel like a mini ramp,” /u/tehLoneDude added.
There’s nothing more to say except, even in mundane, everyday driving, you need to pay attention and not assume traffic in front of you is going to slow the way it looks like it’s slowing.
Keeping a safe distance and going the speed of traffic helps to prevent small errors not snowballing into something uncorrectable.
Drivers get worse and worse with each passing Month these days it seems! Man! Common sense ain’t so common anymore ….