Driving Mishaps

[gritch]

Greetings fellow Escapists.

I'll be the first to admit it, I am a terrible driver. I get distracted easily, I have a hard time focusing, and I have no sense for the general location of my car in three dimensional space. But I've always thought of myself to at least be self aware enough and cautious to avoid any serious mishaps.

Well today I was driving along and decided my nice new Sonata just wasn't aerodynamic enough - that passenger side mirror just had to go. So I clipped a parked car today and took out both of our mirrors. The damage isn't that bad but I can't help feeling like the biggest dumbass right now. I'm so pissed at myself for doing something so stupid. I know it could be worse - no one was injured and the car was still fine save for its mirror but I can't help but beat myself up over it.

So has anyone else got another stories of driving mishaps?

 

[soren7550]

Well, there was this time a few years back me and my mother were going to the mall. She's driving all fine when she makes a turn down a road where she's clearly going the wrong way. As she's going the wrong way with cars swerving to get away from her and me shrieking 'you're going the wrong way', this dolt has the nerve to say "I think all these guys are going the wrong way."
Now, it's not like she's never been here before, features of the area were changed, it was dark out, there was nothing there that would have made any sane rational person think that it was OK to drive down the street the wrong way.

Bad driving is the family way I suppose.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Oh, hohoho shiet, have I got a story for you!

Alright, so this is back in September of last year: I'm with my friend, we're driving out for a bite to eat. Now the car I had at the time was a total POS. Crumpled fenders, rust wherever there was metal, an engine that barely ran, a seat that stabbed you in the back whenever you sat in it, you know, the works of a bad automobile. If you can name a problem, it probably had it at some point.

Anyway, we were going to get something to eat, and on the way there's this big interstate, right? So we go down this big-ass road, and suddenly the light turns red. I do what normal people do when the light turns red: I press the brake to stop. My car didn't stop. Instead, it slid right UNDER the guy ahead of me. Luckily no one was hurt, save for a concussion on my part. Almost lost my license over it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Back in high school, when I was still Dirty Hipsters Jr., I was going out to eat with some friends, and on the way back from eating I was driving through an intersection I had driven through a hundred times before. The problem was that the intersection had recently been changed, and what had once been a stop sign was now a light.

Well, I was chatting with my friends instead of paying attention, so rather then stop at the red light, I stopped for about half a second, then drove straight through the intersection. As my friends were screaming something along the lines of "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" and "OH GOD THIS IS HOW I DIE!" I realized my folly, and managed to weave through three perpendicular lanes of moving traffic and emerge on the other side completely unscathed.

This was 6 years ago and my friends still give me shit for it.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I don't have any of my own mishaps to share because I am the greatest driver of all time. But my sister managed to total her car by driving into a parked car while going about 40-50 km/h on our street, believe it or not. She was fiddling with the radio apparently. Fortunately she came away with nothing wounded but her pride.

 

[Fractral]

I've never been out on the road, but I've spent a good while driving at airfields and racetracks as part of a young drivers thingy. Given that I'm driving alongside 12 year old's who are too short to see out of the windscreen and use the pedals at the same time, it gets hairy now and again. I've made loads of mistakes, like coming onto a roundabout without realizing and managing to go straight through the middle (we use cones to mark out everything), stalling a great number of times, and once grinding the gears so bad that my dads car spent the rest of the day making horrible wrenching noises. Fortunately it wasn't something that needed major repairs.
I've also seen people stall on roundabouts, causing one of those unfixable traffic jams, seen people get stuck on a hill, and start edging slowly closer to my car because they can't do a hill start- that was a worrying time- and seen someone smash a rally car on a rally driving day (which was great fun).
Once a year we also get a whole load of royal mail lorries to play with, which is... interesting. I remember seeing a 13 year old girl in a 14 wheeler articulated lorry take a turn to sharp and demolish a line of cones, and people who didn't quite get how long their lorries were, and end up getting totally stuck on a roundabout.
Like I said, great fun. Fortunately I've never actually crashed.

 

[SirDeadly]

I was driving home from school with a few friends in the car along a narrow street with cars parked on one side. As I got near the end some gun came driving up the other way and instead of waiting for me to pass decided that two cars could fit on a one and a half car wide street. Luckily I only hit the side mirror of a parked car with mine but it could have been worse.

Except for a few idiots nearly killing me on the road I am generally a safe driver.

 

[Alfador_VII]

I don't have any of my own mishaps to share because I am the greatest driver of all time.

I am more scared of you than anyone else on this thread! I'm sure that attitude has caused many accidents.

I've only had about 3 minor ones myself, only one of them my fault. I still wouldn't say I'm much better than average at driving though.

 

[purplecactus]

In the first year after I'd passed my test I had trouble judging where the front of my mother's car was ('cause I'm small and even with the seat cranked all the way up I can't see the end of the nose on that beast), so I kept bumping into things when I was parking nose first. Thankfully I've now learned how to judge it properly, and there were no dents to speak of

The only other 'major' one I can remember is while I was still learning (and again in my mother's car. With her in the passenger seat. Bad times.). There was a car indicating to go right, and they'd stopped in the middle of the road, so I decided there was enough space to go around them. This would have been fine now, but back then I thought cars needed approximately two miles between them and ended up mounting the kerb at 35mph and almost hitting a row of wheelie bins. I got yelled at for that one...

I haven't really had all that many mishaps, I have to say. Heh, I'm feeling pretty good about my driving now.

...this means the worst is yet to come, doesn't it?

 

[DanielBrown]

I once got distracted by some road constructions on the other side of the road, which resulted in me driving in 50km/h past a red light. Luckily no one was walking across, but it could have ended really badly.

 

[lRookiel]

The only boring thing I did which caused no damage at all was bumping into a curb at 2 mph, whoops.

I'm pretty much the best driver I know :3

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I am more scared of you than anyone else on this thread! I'm sure that attitude has caused many accidents.

Well in all seriousness I'm actually an overly cautious driver and haven't been in any accidents. I'm probably the safest driver out of anyone I know.

 

[Starik20X6]

I've never caused an accident, but I've been on the receiving end of one:

I was riding home (I ride a Vespa) and was coming along a main road. I see a car drive up to a stop street ahead of me and stop... For about half second, then he pulled out. I only had time to brake for a fraction of a second before I slammed into the side-rear of his car, just near the back wheel. Suddenly 60km/h of momentum throws me into the road, and I'm lying there pinned under my bike, in the middle of this 3 lane road. Luckily no major injuries, just some scrapes and bruises (always be sure to wear full protective gear when riding, kiddies!).

Other than that I've been pretty good... A few close shaves- I discovered it is entirely possible to drift a motorbike under the right circumstances, a phrase here which means "I thought that truck was further away, so I need to speed up across this corner intersection or it'll pancake me".

 

[Hawk of Battle]

I've written off 2 cars since I started driving. The first wasn't my fault, the area was poorly signposted (to the point it had actually caused several accidents prior to mine, and has since been changed) and it was the other car that hit me.

The second time I crashed a works van. It was raining, I was coming around a long winding sliproad when suddenly traffic started building up. I braked and skidded out of control and hit the barrier, after spinning about 720. No one was hurt but the van was ruined. In retrospect I was probably going too fast for the conditions.

I'm not a very good driver, made worse by every car I buy turning out to be a pile of shit.

 

[Private Custard]

snip

Did you own up to what you'd done to the other car?

I work in a bodyshop and, at times, have been stunned at the cost of replacement mirrors. I'd be mightily pissed off if someone did that to my car and didn't own up to it.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Once, I turned the wrong direction into a motorway. As you may or may not know, once you get on, you don't get off, and as it happened it was a tollway as well, and I'm a cheap bastard. This is at 2am and I'd never driven the route before and already stopped 4 times to check the street directory, for context. So I go along for a little bit (as in a couple of kilometres, there were cars all around me) saying "Shitshitshitshitshit how am I going to turn around, if I was transport minister I'd mandate some giant fucking roundabouts in these" before eventually managing to pull into the shoulder, where cars go when they break down. I do about a 15-point turn to avoid crossing into the lanes of traffic, turn on my hazard lights and proceed to drive back the way I came, along the shoulder that is just as wide as my car, at a fair pace. Get to the end, swing wildly across the fortunately empty intersection, and am back on track. Home in 15 minutes unscathed, fuck the police.

If you knew my real name I wouldn't be telling you this.

The only other two incidents of note were both relatively trivial, it's when you've gone and parked behind someone and while you're wherever some ************ comes and parks within a few centimetres of you from behind and you have to do dozens of points worth of turn to get out. And the thing is, my judgment of distance has an inverse relationship with the number of tiny back-and-forths I've had to do already. I have no sympathy for them in hindsight, but at the time I was a little frantic until in both cases I turned out to have done no damage.

 

[gritch]

snip

Did you own up to what you'd done to the other car?

I work in a bodyshop and, at times, have been stunned at the cost of replacement mirrors. I'd be mightily pissed off if someone did that to my car and didn't own up to it.

Of course. I pulled over right away and exchanged insurance info and whatnot with the owner of the other car (who apparently saw it from his house). I'm not a great driver but I try at least to take responsibility for what I've done.

captcha: good samaritan

 

[Private Custard]

snip

Did you own up to what you'd done to the other car?

I work in a bodyshop and, at times, have been stunned at the cost of replacement mirrors. I'd be mightily pissed off if someone did that to my car and didn't own up to it.

Of course. I pulled over right away and exchanged insurance info and whatnot with the owner of the other car (who apparently saw it from his house). I'm not a great driver but I try at least to take responsibility for what I've done.

captcha: good samaritan

Nice captcha!

Good of you to own up. Most people nowadays don't care about others all that much!

 

[The Funslinger]

Fortunately she came away with nothing wounded but her pride.

And her insurance claim records.

 

[Beat14]

Hit a drunk guy in the middle of a of country road. Luckily for me I had a witness, the passenger with me. I swerved and got a glancing hit so to speak. We both got out the car and ranted at him and his associates.

You see him and his friend had broken down. They had left their headlight on, whilst pulled to the side of the road. He tried to flag us down by standing in the middle of the wrong side of the road, my side of the road! Headlights blinding me and a guy in the middle of the road with dark clothing. He is lucky he didn't meet the centre of the bonnet.