One thing I appreciated about driving newer school buses was that they have replacet the one tall vertical mirror on each side with 2 shorter mirrors stacked one over the other. That way you can set one to see down the side of the bus for feedback and seeing kids walking right next to the bus and the other one covers your blind spot.
You can also cover your blind spot by rocking forward when youlook in the mirror.
I drove a friends 2015 Honda and they have a side mirror now that is flat 3/4 of the way out but curves at the end. No blind spot. Very nice.
First, bravo @blueskies for being deliberate about improving your driving skills. Thank you for being a responsible driver.
The picture I get from your description of the incident makes me wonder about your lane position. In most places I’ve driven, the rule is “keep right except when passing”. I presume that’s actually a state law most everywhere, though maybe it’s just accepted behavior. Whatever it is, it’s a good practice, but a lot of people simply don’t drive that way, which is pet peeve of mine. OK, sometimes heavy traffic makes that impossible, but sometimes it’s just bad driving. I had a friend who would drive down an empty freeway, sometimes in the right lane, sometimes the left, changing for no rhyme or reason. Lots of people just sit in the left lane with no one in the right lane. Maybe this keep right behavior hasn’t yet been absorbed into your habits.
So, if you were in the left lane in order to pass a car, this near miss scenario would not have occurred - you would have been aware of any car that you were passing.
Instead, you may have been sitting in the left lane, and the grey car wanted to pass, and had only the right lane to do so. Or maybe you had realized that you’d somehow ended up in the left lane and were doing the right thing and moving over, and as has been discussed, missed the grey car in your blind spot.
So chalk it up as a good lesson learned: keep right except when passing. That will make you a more careful driver.
If you used mirrors that are properly set and you checked over your shoulder, most likely this car came up on you quickly. This is why passing on the right is discouraged (or in some places illegal). Without more details on the situation, I don’t know if you should have been in the right lane instead of the center lane, but give that some consideration.
If you have a friend with a sedan, you could go to an empty parking lot and have your friend put his car in various locations next to yours to see if your mirrors are set properly. Possibly you have them too far out. In my car, having them set so that I just miss the side of my own car seems best.
I’m not necessarily a fan of all the “nanny” features being added to cars these days, but I will say that the blind spot monitor on my car is one that’s very good to have. Even an experienced driver can manage to miss a car in the blind spot occasionally. I hope that technology can bubble down to lower-priced cars soon.
I’m glad you signal your lane changes. As you realize now, that kept this accident from happening. Unfortunately there are too many boneheaded drivers out there who think their driving is so perfect that they’ll never make the same mistake.
@gmroadtripper I believe the OP was moving over into an exit lane and the other car was passing her on her right. Rather than allowing an organized move to an exit lane, the guy was trying to pass her on the right to get ahead of her. An aggressive driver that nearly caused an accident.
@gmroadtripper I drove in the center lane of the 3-lane highway on the advice of my friend to avoid dealing with cars exiting and entering. Once I passed the last exit before the one I had to take, I prepared to change lanes into the exit lane (to avoid a last minute lane change) and did the mirror and shoulder checks but still missed the car. To have done what I thought was proper but still missing the car is what shook me up the most.
Thank you everyone for your helpful tips. I will definitely experiment with my mirror settings (in a safe environment, not highway, of course).
I second George’s comment.
It sounds to me like you’re doing a good job, just still in the learning process. Your having posted the question is a really good sign.
I have driven 350,000 miles with the “fish-eye” mirrors which stick on your side mirrors. I use the 3 inch ones. The bigger ones block too much usable mirror. With all those miles it is very seldom that I have a lane-change close call, once I got used to using them. I do not bother to look back because I can see it all while looking to the front and at the mirrors.
I just today installed them on the used 2009 Sienna we bought recently.
Mine are about 2" in diameter. I put them in the outer & upper corners of the mirrors so they don’t interfere with the main portion of the mirrors. I have the main mirrors adjusted so the inner edges just skim the surface of the car’s sides. On my car that works beautifully. All cars are different.
I should mention that I love street rods, especially built around '20s and 30’s cars. Very often I’ll notice on even professionally built rods that there are no rearview mirrors, no windshield wipers, no mufflers, no roofs of any kind, no fenders, and vertical velocity stacks sticking up above the cowlings. To me these are simply “trailer queens”, and no matter how good the workmanship is they just don’t impress me. They can’t be driven if there’s any possibility of rain, and if a heavy rainstorm comes along while the car’s parked, those velocity stacks are going to act like funnels and fill the intake ports with water. I know there are covers for these stacks, but I’ll bet a few have gotten caught in a torrent without the covers.
And no rear view mirrors is just plain dumb IMHO. When pretty becomes more important than safe, even a perfect candy-apple paint job doesn’t matter.
Interesting. I just put two three inchers on the 2009 Sienna I just bought. I put them centered at the outer edge of the mirrors, because that is where they have always been and I am used to it. It will probably be a long time, if ever, when I need to do it again, not sure if I will remember your recommendation.
My car came with built-in blindspot/fisheye mirrors, and they’re in the lower outer corner. I love them. I agree with everyone else: you can avoid this by making sure you’re in the correct lane, and always double checking while making a lane change.