Just a few minutes ago I had a very similar situation, although at day time. I was going at about 40 kmph straight forward my lane near a bus standing at a bus stop at the right side of the street. At the moment I was passing the bus, a young person almost jumped out in front of me, maybe 15-25 meters away. They were hidden behind the bus, so I had no way to see this coming in advance. Fortunately they realized I was coming and backed off and I also managed to stop completely before them.

So if my reaction was 5.7 seconds, I'd definitely have applied brakes far too late. I conclude the total time from classifying the object moving into my way and applying brakes was less than a second. (And btw, my car has emergency braking / pedestrian avoiding system and it didn't trigger, so I was faster).

You had experience "hope that nobody jumps out from behind that bus, as people tend to do", however. Hard to formalize, IMHO.

>Edit: ok, I was just making a bit of a joke at first, but I looked it up. Reaction times vary by person, but tend to be between 0.75 and 3 seconds. 2.5s is used as a standard, so I guess I have to conceded that 1.25s is pretty good... I guess, for whatever that's worth.

We have a rare sight here: someone not being right, learning more about the situation, changing their opinion, and then making an edit about it all.

Kudos, and thanks for making this a better place for discussions :)

It is possible! Happens more on HN than it does on Reddit at least. I'm ok with being wrong.