A crash has become unavoidable: you cannot stop in time and the space ahead offers a choice between a line of parked cars, a solid concrete pillar, and a hedge rowing the edge of the road. What principle should govern the choice of what to hit?

Why D is correct

When a collision cannot be avoided, the remaining variable is what the car hits, and the physics are ruthless: crash severity tracks the abruptness of deceleration. A hedge, a bush, a snowbank or anything that yields dissipates energy over time and distance; a rigid fixed object converts all of it into the passenger compartment in an instant. Steering for the softer option, keeping the impact glancing rather than square, and using whatever room remains to shed speed first — those are the decisions that turn a fatal template into a survivable one.

Why the other options are wrong

A. Aim for the parked cars because hitting vehicles is always safer than hitting objects

Parked cars are heavy but they move when struck, absorbing energy by accelerating — often safer than a fixed object — but they are also occupied-adjacent hazards with hard edges between them. The rule is give and distance, not a category preference for cars over plants.

B. Close your eyes and keep the wheel straight to avoid making a bad choice worse

Giving up the wheel forfeits the only free variable left. Nearly every survivable 'unavoidable' crash was steered into survivability: the object that gave, the angle that glanced, the gap that was still open when the decision was made.

C. Any object is equivalent once a crash is inevitable, so steer for the nearest

Object equivalence is the exact error the principle corrects. Two crashes at identical speed differ by an order of magnitude in injury depending on whether the energy was spent over two metres of hedge or two inches of concrete.

On the road

Ice, a red light running out, and three options arriving at once: the hedge at the corner, the signal pillar, the row of parked trucks. The driver picks the hedge at a slight angle after the longest possible straight-line braking. The car stops in branches with a crumpled bumper; the pillar would have stopped the same car in six inches of its own front end.

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