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How can colliding cars both get damaged…on the left-hand side?
Question; I recently passed an accident scene which seemed to defy explanation. The two vehicles involved (a matatu minibus and a car) were both quite heavily damaged at or near the front of their left-hand sides. Each had come to a halt on the verge of the opposite side of the road to their direction of travel. Can you figure out how that might have happened?
Assuming neither of the vehicles had spun round after the collision, and no one had moved them at all before you saw them, I can think of only one explanation. Under some unknown circumstances, the two vehicles were on the brink of a head-on collision, and both swerved to the right (!?) at the last moment…but not quite far enough to avoid a glancing contact…on their left and sides. Both that and the direction of their evasive action made them finish up on the verge of their “opposite” side of the road.
The situation which caused them to be head-to-head was almost certainly an overtaking manoeuvre by one or the other – probably just as one vehicle started to pull out to overtake (otherwise, by swerving right, the oncoming vehicle would have hit the vehicle that was being overtaken). I would guess the final collision was not absolutely front corner to front corner, or a quite violent spin was probable.
More likely, the front corner of one vehicle glanced at the swerving side of the other (possibly very near but not at the front). I would expect a detailed inspection of the damage would confirm that, and suggest that the vehicle with a smashed headlight was most likely the victim and the vehicle with a damaged front door was the culprit.