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You've drifted off topic, and started giving advice about "vehicle broken down on active highway" which isn't the scenario being discussed.

Yes, getting off the highway makes sense if you are in a disabled vehicle on an active highway, assuming there is something solid to shield you from the vehicles/debris that goes flying when your car is hit.

No, getting out of your car in a winter storm when all traffic is halted due to the conditions does not make sense at all.



Getting out of your car on an active highway is actually much more likely to kill you than staying in it - you instantly go from a big, strong noticeable metal cage (hopefully with flashing lights on) to a small, soft, very fragile person. People who don't see a car on the shoulder also don't see a person walking.

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/stopped-vehicle-crashes-res...


This advice may be unique to the United States.

UK: It’s usually safest to get out of your car (using the doors facing away from passing traffic) and wait behind a barrier. https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/what-to-do-moto...

France: Any passengers should get out of the car on the side away from traffic and take shelter behind safety rails at the side of the road, if there are any. https://www.thelocal.fr/20210820/breakdowns-crashes-and-poli...

I'm interested in this part from your link:

>However, more than half the deaths and almost 1 in 5 serious injuries occur when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian who is leaving, working on, or returning to a stopped vehicle.

Is a breakdown of the different groups available?

• Leaving

• Working on

• Returning to

I agree that groups 2 and 3 are to be strongly encouraged against.

Group 1, choosing to leave your vehicle and stand off the road, behind solid infrastructure, is actively reducing their risk, albeit at the tradeoff of being briefly exposed to traffic.

I wouldn't recommend anyone exit a vehicle into fast moving traffic. For my comment above, I condsidered adding "if a suitable break in the traffic appears", but I decided it was overly wordy and to some extent self-evident.




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