A Volvo driver’s no-look lane change resulted in them damaging their door and an innocent driver’s commercial lawn care truck.
Memphis commuter and Redditor /u/HQ_Tornado shared headshaking dashcam footage from earlier last year (Feb 26, 2024) from I-240 showing an impatient Volvo driver making an unsafe lane change without looking properly, resulting in them crashing into a lawn care truck, damaging both of their vehicles.
Check out OP’s dashcam footage embedded below with their original Reddit thread linked here.
The incident happened on I-240 before the 13A exit onto Walnut Grove Road (Exact location on Google Maps linked here.)
As the dashcam footage shows, OP is driving in lane #3 of I-240.
An impatient driver in a teal Volvo can be seen erratically changing lanes in front of him.
As traffic slows, the Volvo driver takes the opportunity to change lanes, yet again, but fails to see a driver in a lawn care truck in his blind spot.
The Volvo sideswipes the lawn care truck, sending the truck careening into the next lane.
Thankfully, no other vehicle was in the other lane at the time he swerved over.
Both the lawn care truck and the Volvo can be seen pulling over into the breakdown lane, presumably to trade information.
“I think the driving lessons focused on “looking over your shoulder” before merging are over-emphasized and “use your mirrors” isn’t emphasized enough. A quick look to his left wouldn’t have let the driver know that a truck was coming up from behind, but a quick look in the mirror definitely would have,” /u/TSAOutreachTeam commented.
“This happens all the time, with people merging to the left at much lower speeds than the people who are coming up from behind in that lane already.”
“Why is it so incredibly difficult to look over your left shoulder?” /u/Educational-Title761 wondered.
“This looks like your average east Memphis commute…. When traffic is less congested at night, you still have nut jobs that blow by doing 100 while your Mississippi commuters will be a lane over and doing 5-10 under the speed limit,” /u/HonkeyDonkey3000 added.
As this was a year ago, OP admits to not sending his footage to the local lawn care company despite their information visible in the video.
Regardless, at least one Redditor in the comments says they’ve submitted the footage to the lawn care business owner, however late, to let them know of this dashcam video’s existence.
