Near head-on with careless church bus

[erkme73]

This is a short clip of my near-head-on from earlier today. The van, for whatever reason, was using the yellow strip as an airplane uses a centerline for landing. I was slow to react, thinking they'd correct - but they just kept coming. I'm sure the combined speed was 100mph or more. Not super dramatic, but it was much closer than it appears on the video (due to the wide angle lens).

It all happened so fast, I had no clue it was a church van until I reviewed the capture at home. After identifying the church, I uploaded the video, and reached out to them on their website's contact us form.

My 9yo son was in the back seat. He's been so diligent with buckling his seatbelt, that at the start of this trip, I didn't even ask to verify he was belted. As I swerved, he flew from the driver's side to the passenger side and hollered, "What'd you do that for!"... He was NOT buckled in. He said, "we were almost home..." Needless to say, after watching this video and grasping the potential of what could have been, there is no doubt he'll be buckled (and I'll verify EVERY TIME) until we get to our driveway or the destination.

What a wakeup call...

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Update: Yesterday, as I was passing the same van, the guy veered into my lane. Wasn't nearly as close, but you can see his wheel was on the centerline and coming my way. I honked and he immediately swerved back into his lane. Not sure if it's the same driver as in my previous near head-on, but I think they have sleepy or distracted drivers.

FWIW, I'm really NOT stalking this van! I know it seems like it, but these were both totally random encounters.

 

[StrayCam]

Holy crap that was too close!!! I bet if you are able to slow down the video enough, you'll catch the driver texting!

As for kids and seatbelts, they should be programmed into their minds by the time they're 3 or 4 years old that seatbelts are the very first thing they do when getting into a car.

I remember when my son was about 7 and noticed his friend (same age) had his seatbelt undone in the backseat. - - I immediately pulled over to the shoulder and told him to never do that again... too dangerous!

When you call the Church you can tell them to thank God no one was hurt on the highway!

 

[thomas-dash]

Not much room on the shoulder to dodge the van either.

 

[erkme73]

I sent the video to the church via their website page, their gmail address (found on their website), Facebook messenger, and received zero responses after more than a week. So, on Friday, I posted the video to their website. Within minutes, my post was deleted, and I received a reply via messenger. They apologized, said the issue has been "addressed" and said they hadn't responded since they were out of the state. Whatever. At least they acknowledged it.

 

[kamkar]

That is not the normal bus, it is the express to the lord.

 

[thomas-dash]

I posted the video to their website

Hopefully, you didn't catch a virus from their website. I had heard church websites are pretty bad for being maintained security-wise.

 

[kamkar]

well cant be as bad as just about any Danish public IT undertaking, this year / right now 10.000 of hunters can not join in on the premier for deer due to missing permits, as police are getting a new IT system and as always it is flawed.
Last time police tried to upgrade their IT, it cost the Danish tax payers half a billion DKkr for a piece of software that went strait into a trash bin, no one even tried to get it to work, apparently it was that bad.

I am also waiting for a permit to procure a moderator, normally it take a couple of days, now i am told it will at least be several months ( already waited 1 month )

BTW the Danish people are the most digital people in the world, uncle Sam have wet dreams about being able to have the same amount of file on Americans.
These Databases are regularly hacked, or maybe ( have happened ) a couple of DVDs with unencrypted data get sent to the Chinese embassy instead of some government office.

BUT sadly all this digital forrunning, dont mean we are leaders on the stuff.

 

[erkme73]

Original post updated. Had another encounter with this same van! Totally random, I promise....