5th-Gen Chevrolet Camaro Driver Turns Late Merger Into Full-Scale Catastrophe

Choose the latter of the two answers, and you might as well sit back and watch your nose grow because you'd be lying through your teeth. As long as taking the exit seems like a viable option, most drivers will take it since nobody has time to waste on useless trips to the next exit these days.

Well, if you're occasionally part of the late mergers brigade yourself, take this clip as a warning and a demonstration of how easily things can go very, very badly. Keep your eyes on the white fifth-gen Chevrolet Camaro convertible on the left.

The clip starts with the unfortunate protagonist driving in the far-left lane with an eighteen-wheeler on its right and few cars in front. As they come to a gap in the wall of semis on their right, you can see the driver realizing they missed a previous forking in the interstate. They brake, considering squeezing between the two semis, but then the little devil sitting on their left shoulder says, "No, there's plenty of time to overtake first", so they put the right blinker on and step on it.

With the large rig on the right cleared, it was time for a sharp turn to the right. We said "sharp". No, no, no, sharper! Oh, too late now. You've gone and wrecked a perfectly nice Camaro, not to mention burying your ego six feet under as well.

The driver didn't realize just how close that divider was. They tried a less aggressive maneuver at first, but there was no space left for any of that. By the time it became clear to them, it was too late, and they clipped the barrier with the left side of the vehicle.

Luckily, it looks as though the concrete divider had a metallic buffer that cushioned part of the impact. If it weren't for that, the car would have absorbed the entire force of the crash and we'd be looking at a much more severe outcome. That's precisely why those metallic attenuators are there in the first place.

Well, it's not as if the Camaro didn't take a beating as it is. It looks just like T-100's face toward the end of the first Terminator movie - half OK, half shaven-off to reveal its steel bones. And if the driver ever dreamt of a scissor door, they've got it now, though it might be of the single-use type.

The funny part of all this is that we bet the Camaro driver blames it on the Ford for not moving fast enough. Assumptions aside, though, it's worth pointing out that everything they did after the crash was spot-on: they managed to bring the car to a halt safely on the shoulder despite the severe damage and, presumably, the shock. Credit where credit is due, but a little too late overall.