Last night my wife and I were coming home from dinner, it was raining and of course everybody and their dog was out on the roads on Christmas Eve. We were driving on a main road that had heavy traffic and just as we were coming to an underpass for the freeway, I see a long column of headlights waiting in the turn lane to go on the freeway. It's a two lane road with a center lane that's used for turning at that point which leads to the onramp for the freeway. There's no signal there.

The speed limit is normally 45 but I was doing 40 because of the weather conditions. As I approach the line of cars (I'm going in the opposite direction towards them) I see a pair of headlights from the RIGHT lane outside of the line, suddenly turn left, crossing in front of all of them and turning right in front of me....and it's about 60 feet and I'm doing 40, in the rain at night. This clown was impatient and obviously thought he was special and entitled to cut around everybody. I hit the brakes hard expecting to slide, and I'm turning the wheel to the right and I see him closing in on us in slow motion. I see his headlights dip slightly as he too realized what he'd done and hit the brakes. I'm now at about a 45 degree angle heading towards the side of the road and he's at an angle trying to stop in the middle of my lane as he's rapidly cutting me off.

I see his headlights get within a few feet of my door and I turn the wheel left to try and swing the back end of my car around to the right to try and "spin" around him and still stay in the lane...going off the road would have been bad and probably fatal at that spot. At this point I'm fully expecting to collide and was thinking "IDIOT!!! IF I SURVIVE I'M GOING TO POUND HIM!". The car performed like a wonder. No slide, no loss of traction. It dug in, made the hard turn IN THE RAIN on a wet road and never missed a beat. I couldn't have missed him by more than a few inches but miss him I did. :D

Thank you GOD and MAZDA engineers for a brilliant piece of work in the RX8. It's traction control system worked perfectly and I can say is most likely responsible for saving mine and my wife's lives.

Today we're having a happy and safe Christmas, and Blue Thunder is sitting in the garage in one piece and unscratched.

Merry Christmas to one and all, and especially to all those on the RX8 team at Mazda. :)

Yep - for all the "grief" it is giving the tuner type guys, it is a real godsend in many situations!

Pity the other guys car didn't have an anti-f@ckwit device :)

Cheers,
Hymee.

God bless you and the engineers and angels who were watching over you that night. This is a wonderful story and should be dramatized for the next RX-8 commercial. I hope you did get a chance to pound that idiot's face in, though if not I bet he learned his lesson anyway. Now, take the whole family to the garage and give Blue Thunder one big hug. Merry Christmas to one and all.

Glad your OK! I hope that clown pooped his pants and can't get the stink out of his upholstery. Merry Christmas!

holy crap batman!!!

glad you are ok.. did you get to say some kind words to this fellow?

Glad to hear everything turned out ok!!

Wow, glad you came out of that ok!

So did you pound the guy after all? ;)

My, aren't we full of charity and good will towards our fellow men today. But yeah, smash his ugly mug!

My reaction would probably have been to chase this moron down and at least get all the way in his face, letting him know how close he came to getting himself and some other innocents (you and your spouse) killed. The thing that really troubles me in situations like this one is that people this demonstrably stupid will learn absolutely nothing from a call as close as this one. Which means they're likely to go straight out and endanger someone else all over again.

That said, I'm certainly glad you came out of it all right, and that the car performed better than your expectations.

Usually, modern cars are engineered not to get the average driver in a slightly above-average situation into worse trouble. Wonderful to hear that the Mazda engineers clearly aimed for a worst-case scenario and it helped you and yours out of a tight spot.

Congratulations and happy holidays!

Thank God that EVERYBODY was okay. This happened for a reason. It tells us all that not only should we take caution in changing lanes, but be aware of possible stupidity changing heading your way.

I commute on the Hwy 95 from Vegas to Laughlin a lot.
And can you guess how many DEATHS and ACCIDENTS occur????? Esp HEAD ON COLLISIONS.....
SOOOO many, that they're fricking putting more and more AIRPLANES to PATROL the area!!

IF you haven't heard the Hwy 95,

Most of it is just TWO LANES. One forward and one back with a dashed yellow line in the middle.

So many times I see stupid drivers (esp truckers) try to pass not only the slow big rigs, but also regular compact cars like mine even though I'm going 75 with the 65 speed limit.

People either die or become life-long vegetables.

And like I said, the most important thing is to always watch ONCOMING traffic on those deadly roads, cuz you never know if another dumbass driver is gonna indanger your life.

When I driving I pay so much attention to what other people are doing cause I just know some idiot is going to crash in to me. Then you would see me on the news after killing them. Glad to hear you are safe though. Be careful on New Years Eve.

Thanks for sharing this great news! I hope all those who were in-line and watching what happened and saw why it didn't turn into a major wreck are at their Mazda dealership right now...except for your "friend" who should have his license revoked and maybe even his car impounded. Castration might be in order here too.

Must have been a very merry christmas to you and yours. Happy new year! :D !

QUE SUERTE AMIGO, QUE HAYAS PASADO FELIZ NAVIDAD.

Glad to hear you guys are unscathed :)

--Joe M