you’re driving down the road and you see five construction workers trapped in the road. the only way you can avoid hitting them is to veer off onto a second road, where you see one person trapped in the road. Do you hit the five, or hit the one? How did you come to your conclusion?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
34 responses to “what would you do?”
6
No witnesses
@luftballooneyegouge There is a witness standing on top of a bridge above you.
@Scarlett
I cast a 147,614,864th level Beguile Spell.
@luftballooneyegouge
You throw an income tax form at them??
@griz
It’s a leaked copy of Trump’s tax return. Did you know TV personalities can claim tanning products and procedures as a write-off?
@luftballooneyegouge
Consider the millions this has saved the average taxpayer in not having the news anchor’s pasty image burned into their TV screen!
Did you know as a trucker I can claim the price of showers off my taxes? Stinky truckers are a public menace!
@griz
How much, on average, do they charge truckers to shower at a truckstop?
Isn’t it kinda scary considering what the FBI says about the profession & serial killers?
@luftballooneyegouge
It averages around $14 USD in the states; $12 CAD in Canada. (Maybe because we have more water??).
I tend to be more wary of the killer athlete’s foot fungus in the stalls than professional and serial killers! I MAY some day encounter one of them or not; but the fungus is a guaranteed fixture of life!
I do find myself frequently thinking however, of the heavy doses of fear and even paranoia that I encounter in the states compared to Canada. I’ve noticed that entertainment media (including the news) — plus the various “”rights”” lobbies — tend to feed people a steady diet of it.
Is it “cultural”? Or could it be more akin to “an infection”?
Or maybe I’m just a bumpkin from the north woods who doesn’t know they’re suppose to be afraid??
@griz
There’s an antenna channel on the TV here that just plays crime & murder shows for most of their schedule. I think the USA obsession with danger & death is the fact that the whole country’s kinda removed from reality & mostly insane. So all us nutcases have to keep a suspicious eye on all the other nutcases around us.
One of my beliefs is that aliens have us quarantined, & study us up the butt to try and find a cure in case our contagious insanity should leak out to the galaxy.
The whole foot fungus thing,… I’d just cut off my feet and steal Oscar Pistorius’s’s’s’s shoes.
Well, first I’d steal his shoes, then I’d cut off my feet.
@luftballooneyegouge
Shower Crocs are at truckers best friend!
You are what you consume. A constant diet of crime, violence, dysfunction and mistrust has its. Growing up, Canada had a Regulatory Commission tasked with ensuring a certain percentage of “Canadian content” on cable tv. Many revolved not around crime and conspiracy, but around various (often humorous) social and commie-munity issues.
I think it was a wise move. As a nation, it focused on what we felt was important; and we became what we consumed.
Now apply that thought to America.
BTW, as I travel thru the US I don’t feel the fear, paranoia or mistrust. I am unarmed. The nutjobs seem to leave me alone. Do you think they can tell I’m not a part of this social experiment?
@griz
If you don’t feel it, it’s because you’ve become part of it.
@luftballooneyegouge
They’re more afraid of me??
If I don’t feel the fear, I am of the fear?
Actually that is the idea of utilitarianism in philosophy. But even if you can’t hit but one party… you CAN do all you can to minimize the effect. The idea would be to not hit anyone. Seriously. There’s always options that may not be ideal but are something to consider instead of hitting anyone… Maybe you can overturn your car, missing the person entirely. Perhaps you can put on the emergency brake and skid to a stop before hitting anyone. You could strip the gears of the car by throwing it in reverse and the car would likely come grinding to a stop. Or maybe you willing involve yourself in a multi-car pileup by slamming on the breaks. If it’s on a winding road, you could go headlong off a cliff
@Jear77 good points, all! How would you apply this “utilitarianism” to say, food insecurity?
In reality, if you have time to make a decision, you have time to stop and help them all. Otherwise it’s instincts that take over.
@Fletch
There is also the factor of how much weight is involved in stopping.
You can have plenty of time to see things develop and ponder over choices, yet still be unable to alter outcomes in a big truck.
@griz
no specific type of vehicle was mentioned. I’m not assuming weight of vehicle, weather, sobriety level, sleepiness, day or night, winter or summer, width of road, what color the construction workers are, if they are documented, where their car/truck was located (better to run into their truck than them), are there trees or barren landscape, was the sun in front of me in my eyes, were you texting, how loud was the music, were you speeding or slowing, were orange cones out and did you adhere to slowing, did you have cruise control activated, straight road or curvy……………………………………………..
@Fletch
I agree that too broad a set of variables can become pedantic and downright ridiculous.
There needs to be a baseline, a standard when it comes to all things and considerations roadwise.
And I propose that that should be the class of vehicle that spends the most time on the roadways annually. Either that, or which moves the greatest weight over our roadways annually!
I would put my amazing driving skills to test. Of course I would veer away from the largest amount of people, but I would maneuver like hell to miss all the people. I can’t say I would or could intentionally let one person die to save a larger amount of people.
There is a similar question in school bus training. You have a bus full of kids and one child runs out on the road in front of you. Do you risk rolling the bus to save one child or drive straight through them?
Truck training has its own variant on this. You are on a busy road and someone cuts you off then slows down suddenly. To make it interesting, let’s presume it’s a mommy van full of children going to soccer practice (this one is from personal experience).
Do you consign everyone in the car to death, or risk and avoidance maneuver that may drop your load on someone innocent, or cause you to lose control of an 80000 lb truck and take out many?
The “correct” answer is to sacrifice the fewest possible: so bear that in mind the next time you cut off a big truck and want to play games when they honk!
But in both cases there is the choice that you hope you will make . . , and the one that survival instincts dictate.
The latter has proven very hard to retrain even after years on the highway in large vehicles.
And even if nobody is harmed, chances are good you will have some post-traumatic stress from having such a difficult choice suddenly Flash in front of you.
@griz
I heard a trucker claim that people in your line o’ work average at least one traffic incident a year, many due to roads not being big enough. He said it adds enormous stress, & I don’t doubt that.
Do you think there’s a possibility for Trucker PTSD, & what do think about Trump ending sleep apnea screening for Truckers?
@luftballooneyegouge
So far I’m only on par with that stat if you include mishaps in ridiculously tight Factory loading and unloading zones. My only consequential on road accident to date was in a Florida acceleration lane where the lady decided to play chicken with my rear trailer dual. Her side mirror touched my rotating tire and shot 30 ft into the air.
Most jobs involve stress. You either deal with it or get out.
Few of the rules and regulations applied to the trucking industry in the past few decades have done a lot to improve Public Safety. Most are purely reactionary, and to isolated incidents. Considering the amount of cargo we move and over how many miles and in what weather conditions, truckers already had an impressive safety record.
Trucker negligence has been responsible for some spectacular accidents. But most are triggered by little car drivers doing ridiculous things around big trucks. Because of this, we already face a huge glut of rules and regulations aimed at placating public feelings (thanks for that MADD!) but doing little for actual safety.
Did you know that the electronic logs can “require” me to stop and spend the night someplace dangerous like a highway shoulder, rather than go 15 minutes longer to a safe haven, or my own bed? And more than once a major storm has overtaken me while I was satisfying the letter of the law, making me drive for hours in unsafe conditions the next day . . . To get somewhere I could have arrived at by going an hour over my log. There’s provisions to violate my log if I’m already in bad weather, but not to avoid it! And this improves safety how??
“Well at least he was wide awake and well rested when driving in those dangerous conditions that any other driver would have easily avoided!”
I’m glad the sleep apnea tests were dropped. Imagine you were already doing a stressful job and then they put you in a cell, in a strange bed, hook you up to wires, and tell you to get a good night’s sleep or you will lose your job! The mandatory drug tests makes sense and I can live with them. But now we’re just getting silly.
If we are going to be this ridiculously reactionary against all perceived eventualities, let’s require all mothers to take psychological tests; because they can do far more harm to future generations with their psychoses than any trucker ever could with his rig!
It’s become way too fashionable to use truckers as society’s Whipping Boy for Perceived Public Safety. Stop picking on us and let us do our job.
@griz
The incidents the trucker was talking about were things that pretty much were out of their control. It was a vid on youtube I watched that convinced me that line of work wasn’t for me. In the video a trucker who seemed from other trucker’s posts to be a reliable source was telling about his incidents, and then asked other truckers to share theirs. There was a shitload of responses of things that would be my last day on that job, but they kept on truckin’.
I saw another vid about a company that went under and just plain stranded all their drivers by texting them to pullover and leave their rigs wherever they might be or else be charged with stealing the truck.
I met a trucker in person who was driving a private custom rig for himself and he la la la Loved the job, but that was before, I saw those vids or thought about doin’ that line of work years ago, so I never got to ask him the questions above.
I guess each case is different, but wussie pussies get filtered out, so at least you can claim with all sincerity that you ain’t a pussy, except that time you turned into a pink one.
@luftballooneyegouge
Those truckers may be the flip-side to the “1 Million Accident-free Miles Club”. (One sees it plastered on various trucks out there.
In just 5 years I’ve seen a lot. In some cases, more than I wanted to . . . and got me thinking of meme “things you cannot un-see”.
Or un-hear? I know of one trucker from Texas who had a stroke on the loading dock and his company swooped in to recover their truck but left him stranded in a hospital 2,000 miles from home. We took an impromptu collection at the Iowa-80 truckstop in Walcott IA and sent him home (He was pushing 60 and had hitchhiked from NYC to there).
You’re not going to let me forget that “auto-dictate” puss-y thing, are you?
Here’s a youtube vid they made us watch in Trucker Training. It’s . . . graphic.
The challenge was to identify what instigated the horrific accident.
Thoughts?
@griz
Thoughts?
Is the I-80 Truckstop in Walcott really the largest truckstop in the world?
Are you suggesting that I’d never let go of something to use against you in the court of my mind?
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!?!?!? NAHHHHHHHHH!!!
(I’m afraidy to click that vid,… maybe…)
@luftballooneyegouge
Hmm. That vid isn’t available where I currently am. I’ll try later as the chance arises — but looks like I’m going to be in Canada for a while now. Maybe they haven’t paid Canadian tax on it and it’s been seized at the border!
Don’t click that video unless you want “a sight you cannot un-see”.
I just offered it as an outlook on what trucker training AND reality involve. I’ve seen same and similar “initiator” cause many a near-miss . . . more times that I’d like to recollect, in just the few years I’ve been doing this.
@griz
It’s just a static vid with Devo’s Pink Pussycat song.
@griz i would think the idea would be to jackknife the truck (something that is SUPER easy to do). What’s inside the truck might get ruined, but as compared to a human life… that’s nothing.
@Jear77
Most truckers I know would not hesitate to trash their rigs or endanger their lives to save someone.
But an 80,000 lb rig is very unpredictable when out of control, and like the Energizer Bunny tends to just keep going and going and going and going.
Few people can actually visualize what 80,000 lb is or what it can do (ie. squish)
I know I couldn’t until I became a trucker.
@griz friction *should* stop the truck in a few dozen feet, but maybe I’m thinking only of the weight of a car… the heavier the object the more momentum type of a thing? Physics aren’t my strong suit.
@Jear77
Think of it in terms of vehicle lengths.
A car traveling at highway speeds takes about 350 ft to stop. That’s about 23 car lengths (of 15 ft).
23 truck lengths (75 ft) is 1,725 ft. But that’s presuming the mass of a truck per foot is the same as a car. But it’s not!
A fully loaded car weighs about 133 pounds per foot of length. A fully loaded 18-wheeler weighs about 9 times more per foot of length. (1,066 lbs)
It has more braking surface than the car, but not nine times more. Plus it means little if the truck successfully stops, but the load it carries keeps moving. ( there are practical limits to how securely you can fasten something to a truck).
But all of this is just a very complicated way of saying, please respect how difficult a trucker’s job is; and don’t complicate it with maneuvers that may only save you a fraction of a minute!
@griz i don’t drive. My vision is messes up
I would think one would have to avoid the five and hit the one if you were made to choose. I would try to go through the median or ram whatever is separating the roads in a more realistic scenario. If not that, I would turn and scrape the wall as much as possible to try to avoid everyone.
My car is a small Smart car and undercarriage clearance is only inches, so I turn my car around and head back and away from whatever entrapped the workers. Or, I would try to fit my car in any small space at the side of the road to get past them. If neither of these is an option, I stop and call for help. I help in any way that a 70 year old short fat lady can be of help. Chances are that I will back-track out of there and find another route to get past all this trouble. This is not my circus and these are not my monkeys.