>>Most accidents involve no option
Many or most, sure.
>>”’Ive had dogs run out in front of, slammed on the brake..
What if that meant getting rear-ended? What if braking wouldn’t work and the choice was property damage? How much would be acceptable?
>>”Buy time. It is the answer in reality.”
You always choose the bad result furtherest away. It is quite possible that reduced inertia makes little difference in outcome to the target. Both targets could be quite close. You’ve merely made a value judgement -in effect - that the distance from you makes it of less value. It’s easy to imagine many cases where that would not be true.
I do understand the obvious point of maximizing options, giving oneself more time, decreasing velocity... all of these are excellent tactical approaches. It’s just not enough to cover every situation, will not always succeed in doing no harm. If they did, there would be no problem.
No time to for those decision. Dog is 20 feet out, will be hit in about 1/3 of a second. You jam on the brakes or you don’t. You don’t look in the mirrors, by the time you did you’d have hit the dog already.
There’s a reason why the first lesson of defensive driving classes is to look further down the road, and the second lesson is give yourself an escape path. They are both focused on the one thing that can actually make a difference in kind of potential accident: buy time. You see the problem sooner, have more time to react, and with an escape path you have avoided being in a Trolley. Because in the end the only value judgement that matters is AVOIDING the accident.