Monday Morning QB comment: What did the officer think would happen when he swerved out of the way of the drunk and exposed all those cyclists?
I doubt there was time to do much thinking at all. While it's an interesting question... "would you sacrifice your vehicle and maybe yourself to save the cyclists?"... I suppose most of us would like to think that we'd do the gallant thing.
In reality there probably isn't time to think through all the options or really think about anything. The instinctive jerk of the wheel to avoid an imminent crash is just ingrained in our reflexes, and would happen before you realized the consequences of it.
Sometimes, particularly for certain things that you have imagined in your mind's eye over and over, those instinctive reactions can be trained to do the "harder" thing. I'm thinking of the guy who falls on a grenade to save his comrades. I imagine that the guy who does that has probably wondered before --perhaps at length-- about just such an occasion and whether it might ever happen. When it finally does he instinctively does what he's seen himself doing already.
But in a new situation that you couldn't have imagined so closely, the instinct reverts to whatever you've done before in similar situations. Your hand jerks the wheel to dodge the obstacle. By the time you have time to process what might happen next it's already happened.
My .02