@TheGreatNico almost hit once in Massachusetts, then after looking back, I almost hit the cop backing up to catch the First car. Left lane of Route 3, and they had to cross 3 lanes of traffic to get there…
I woke up now. The video is still valid, but what I said about it was not. The problem in that video is that the deer do cross at the signs and this woman wants the state to move the signs so the deer cross less busy streets.
Was that about the woman in the video or me getting what I wanted to say wrong.
I saw a follow up video and I don’t think she is stupid. This was an idea that she had formed as a child and never thought to question as she adulted. I think we all hold similar beliefs (that may or may not be as ludicrous) and the only reason we are not shamed is because we have not aired them so publicly…
I once was speaking to a different woman who said she was bad at math. I started to bring this up as something humorous, but stopped shortly after realizing that by bad at math that she really meant it and would have been as confused as the woman in the video.
@jst1ofknd The woman in the deer vid. Sorry… I disagree. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with thinking of it as a child and not ‘adulting’ into it.
It’s like a sign near a forest that says watch for bear nearby and people thinking the sign is attracting the bear to that area. I do agree she doesn’t sound stupid… she just didn’t think it through. But… for my own humor and sarcasm, I was quoting Bill Engval.
@rrmcgrew Hey my 25 year old ghetto van was a light blue grand caravan. The only wrecks I have been in were caused by others (25 car pile up where I managed to stop my vehicle prior to hitting others in the accident but then a taxi hit me, a honda civic hit the taxi and an 18 wheeler hit us all; teen blowing a stop sign when I didn’t have one).
I’ve lost a tire on the highway. I’m assuming the tire was a retread because the tread peeled off my front tire and flew into the windshield and over the car. It was terrifying. I’m surprised I didn’t hit anyone because I was all over the road. Ended up purposely driving into the guardrail because I couldn’t get control.
I don’t have that specific fear though. I usually freak out when people try to drive and push me out of the lane. My car must be invisible because it happens a lot.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of zombies. Now that I’m an adult, I’m terrified of becoming one. Alzheimer’s has struck down every member of my mom’s side of the family for generations. My aunt calls it the family curse. I’m terrified of ending up a brain dead walking corpse with no family or loved ones to put an end to me.
@moondrake Stop thinking you will or you will think your way right into it. My dad always thought he would die by 70 because most of his family did. Then all of his siblings lost their mind. He’s 83 now, looks like 70. Very active, works out every day, golfs, just helped me move and put some furniture together for me, etc. We had to make him stop saying that he was next yrs ago. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Be the exception. How’s your dad’s side of the family?
@lseeber I actually do get that, and make room for an alternate fate. Each generation has greater genetic diversity, so whatever gene that side of the family has that carries the “curse” gets more diluted every time. And of all the people in the generation before mine, I have the most in common intellectually, socially and behaviorally with my aunt, who didn’t start showing signs till her 80’s. It was 72 for my mom and her brother, 60 for my grandmother, and I think in her fifties for my great grandmother.
@moondrake well you can get tested for one gene that can cause this. If any of those folks are still alive they can be tested to see if they carry that gene. If no one is pos for that gene that there is clearly family history would interest some genetic medical researchers (well presuming at least if some are still alive).
@mfladd Where I live, we have a lot of lakes, and plenty of ice. We’ve had two unrelated cases of people who disappeared over a decade ago get solved this past year because the water levels got low enough that people could see their cars. Neither even went of a bridge, just didn’t make regular turns. So, yeah. Valid fear.
@mfladd@moonhat not until water levels dropped enough. They weren’t that deep in the first place, but with a dry year, it was enough of a drop that the roof of some bit would be just above the surface. Just enough to be visible from the road. I’ve had a couple friends lose cars to the lakes, though, thankfully, they made it out safe.
I had an entire wheel assembly just decide to take leave of the vehicle. The whole thing just came flying off. On the highway going 70 mph. With three kids in the car. Not fun.
@aetris@Kidsandliz Not so much. Highways are just main roads, any major road can be called a highway. Interstates are bigger, but they don’t usually go coast to coast either. There are 5 major ones that do, I-10, I-40, I-70, I-80, I-90. Route 66 used to run Chicago to Santa Monica, but it’s all busted up. Also, one may argue that everything on Earth is moving at about 1,000 mph at all times, lol.
@jst1ofknd HA! I know that town too. Have friends there who raise goats and sell goat milk. And, I think, rent out other goats to “mow” lawns, river beds (I nearly drove off the highway laughing when I saw the city with their riding mowers in the dry river bed near where I lived mowing that), fields, etc.
U.S. Highway 20 (US 20) is an east–west United States highway that stretches from the Pacific Northwest all the way to New England. The “0” in its route number indicates that US 20 is a coast-to-coast route.
@aetris@moondrake I use highway and interstate interchangeably. At this point I am not picky. Anything that doesn’t make right angle turns at field edges and is two lanes each direction and you can go at least 55 (preferably faster) is a highway/interstate as far as I am concerned. I’d love to have more roads that are not one way each direction and have no shoulder around here. PITA to get from point A to point B. Also takes forever.
Drivers who move to Southern California and inexplicably forget everything they ever knew about driving. It’s like you’re trying to live up to some sort of bad driver stereotype as if it makes you officially Californian or something. Most of us don’t roll stop signs and freak out when it rains. Ever notice that the worst traffic is in the heart of Los Angeles where a huge portion of the population are transplants? Coincidence? Probably not.
@ZeroCharisma Uhhh… I learned to drive in San Diego in the late 60’s. I learned “California Stop” at a stop-sign, and if you are going speed limit on I-5, I-8 or any other freeway you will get rear-ended by cars driving the correct speed (usually 10 over). Last time I went down there, freeway driving was about the same.
My driving instructor said to enter a freeway at 5 over the speed limit to merge easier.
It’s the idiots up here in the PNW that have no clue how to merge or drive. A few weeks ago, a guy in front of me stopped on a freeway onramp! Shit!
The first one is when I was 16 blazing across Tulsa on I-44 in my Firebird to go pick up my girlfriend before school and my radiator hose broke. Instantly blinded by steam going 75 MPH down the highway is no way to go through life son.
The second time I was in my 20’s driving into work on the highway in a snowstorm when I had a contact fail and disintegrate in my eye, scratching my cornea. Oo boy, being blinded in one eye, in excruciating pain, in a snowstorm is definitely no way to go through life.
I’ve had rear tires blow out at highway speeds, but I can’t imagine what a front tire blow out must be like.
I’ve blown tired going at high rates of speed on the interstate, had engines die in some questionable areas, and so on. Simply said having a good plan in place before hand was the best thing ever.
My greatest driving fear resides in drivers around me. The one’s on their cell phones and not paying attention.
@theonlybuster so true. of the handful of accidents i’ve been in they’ve been the other person’s fault so i am always trying to be as vigilant as possible and leave enough room when possible to give myself options should the person or people around me do something stupid.
my partner who has never been in an accident drives like everyone is always going to do what they’re supposed to which makes me a lousy passenger. hurtling towards someone with their blinker on because he trusts them to switch lanes or take the turn and not that they might change their mind at the last minute or not even know their blinker was on in the first place, for instance. he is a good driver but it’s everyone else that concerns me. he also seems under the impression that if our one car somehow gets totaled ‘everything will work out’ as if the car fairy will just drop a new one at the scene of the accident.
I’ve already lost one car to a deer. All I ever saw of it was a flash of brown before my airbag deployed. Later I found an antler with a chunk of skull still attached completely impaling my radiator, so it was running head-down when I hit it. Something must’ve spooked it good.
When I was getting my stuff out of the backseat, I found a pair of deer whistles, still in the package. The Sheriff who’d stopped to help me put his arm across my shoulders and said, “Son, I think it might be a little too late.” That actually really helped me feel better.
I just had a close call a couple weeks ago, too. A young buck ran at the side of my truck and tapped the fender. No harm to either of us, as far as I could tell, but it definitely got my heard pounding.
I’ve hydroplaned before and it is super scary. I also think the idea of another driver crossing the yellow line and hitting me head-on is scary too. I did have a pickup come across the line at me once but I was watching and swerved enough for it to only take out my side mirror and scare me pretty good. He kept going.
I am perfectly competent within the minimal complexities of suburban, rural, and highway driving. (“It’s a roundabout, not a stop sign. What are you doing?!”)
But put me in a city and I may be too busy trying to keep track of which streets are directional and where the creeping hordes of pedestrians are to notice the stop signs.
I expect that next time I am driving in an urban setting, rush hour will set upon me, I will be pointed the wrong direction, one tire on a curb and another on somebody’s foot, half in the wrong side of some unconsidered transitory patch of pavement wedged between two spiraling asphalt one-way madness corridors, the engine will at that instant melt into a solid mass of slag, and the consequent ramifying deadlock will stop the entire city cold.
had the blown tire on the highway in college. that did give me a good scare but it wasn’t too bad. on a completely desolate unlit highway in the middle of the night. AAA never showed (they were “too busy”) and a cop who stopped didn’t give a shit so my dad drove an hour to help me. very, very lucky to have the parents i do!
another time when i was 17 a guy driving recklessly in the middle of the day rammed me into the jersey barrier at a high speed after hitting the back passenger side once trying to get in my lane where i was boxed in. but by some miracle all it cost me was a bent axle and my ability to drive on highways without shoulders without having panic attacks. could have been worse.
still, the nail in the coffin of relaxing and enjoyable driving was when my engine started to overheat in the tunnel in boston on a friday night. i thought i could at least make it off the exit but the car died on storrow drive. up until then i’d never had a car just give up the ghost mid-drive, so now that’s just a constant possible reality in my mind whenever i’m driving. the one cool thing was a passing crew team (on foot, not in the river;)) saw me totally helpless and a fucking mess and they all pushed me and my car off the exit ramp and to the side of the road where a tow truck easily reached me and towed me the five minutes home.
when you have anxiety/agoraphobia, the car is important. because if anything happens, you can always get in your car and leave. it’s a safety blanket and a home away from home giving you power to do things because there’s a backup plan in place. but if it doesn’t work, or worse, you don’t have a car in the first place, it’s no bueno.
all that said, i think hydroplaning is really scary because you just have no control, and hitting a large animal is also scary because that can really fuck you and your car up, plus the added guilt of gravely injuring it. (knowing something limped off into the woods to wait to die or get eaten is worse than killing it on impact imo.)
As a driver, I’m pretty much fearless. So I’d have to say in regards to driving my greatest fear is my aggressive driving style causing harm to someone else; my passenger, someone in another vehicle or a pedestrian.
I’ve had blowouts at speed, hydroplaned into curbs to keep from going through an intersection, hit black ice and done a 360 on the highway, and one bizarre afternoon very nearly broadsided a train. But my most exciting car story was when I was 22ish, and worked for a local entrepreneur, banker and used car salesman. He had taken a couple of Mustangs in trade in Dallas, and hired my younger brother and me to drive them 600 miles back to El Paso. Me, my teenaged brother, my preteen sister and my kindergartener brother all flew to Dallas and spent the day at Six Flags before picking up these cars. We immediately knew we had more than we had planned on. There was an automatic and a standard. The automatic’s seat was bolted to the floor too far back for me to reach the pedals, so I had to drive the standard, which was so stiff it took a major effort to shift one handed. Both of these cars were just freaking monsters, we would be sitting at a light with the brake fully depressed, and these cars will be snarling and growling like predators and slowly hopping forward. We had to let other drivers get a very good lead, because just brushing the gas pedal with your foot would cause them to leap forward. Because they were so hard to manage we would drive for an hour and stop and take a break then drive for an hour and stop and take a break. I will admit that we found a back road and briefly let these things off their leashs. It was pretty freaking exhilarating, I’ve never driven a car like these before or since . About 200 miles into the drive my brother started noticing a funny sound coming from the automatic’s engine at highway speeds. We pulled into a mechanic and had it looked at, and the mechanic couldn’t find anything wrong. This is before cell phones, so we called from the mechanic’s to the office and told them we were concerned that there might be something wrong with the automatic but the mechanic couldn’t find anything wrong with it. They told us to keep driving. My brother wanted to listen to the car’s engine from the outside, so when we left the mechanic’s I got in the automatic with my kid brother. I couldn’t put on a seatbelt as I had to sit at the very edge of the seat with the steering wheel pressed against my chest in order to be able to reach the pedals. So we get on the highway, Mike driving the standard in the lane beside me, and I get up to the highway speed of 75 or 80. We had gone a mile or two when Mike heard something from the automatic and stamped the gas on the standard, shooting past us. Thank God for that, because a heartbeat later, the whole front quarter passenger side of that car just evaporated. The frame hit the pavement at something just under 75, and yanked us hard to the right across like three lanes of highway, making a noise like the mouth of hell had opened up. It was a freaking miracle that we didn’t get hit or hit anyone. A miracle we didn’t roll over. As soon as the explosion happened I was flung back into my seat, where I could not reach the steering wheel or the brakes. By the time I managed to claw my way back up to the steering wheel we were angling to the guardrail at greatly reduced speed and I managed to steer into a stop in the breakdown lane. After making sure we were okay, my brother got off at the next exit and called for help. My boss sent a wrecker for both cars and plane tickets home. He was very angry, until his mechanic told him what had happened. Evidently these cars had been rebuilt for racing, and neither one of them should have ever undertaken a 600 mile drive. They should have been trailered home. The automatic had thrown a rod into the engine and it blew off the wheel and did mortal damage to the engine. He was able to sell the standard for enough to mostly cover his losses. For you mechanics out there, if any of this sounds off, it has been a couple of decades so I may be getting some details wrong. But that was the long and the short of it. At no point in that whole adventure was I afraid for myself, I’ve been accused of being an adrenaline junkie more than once. But it did scare me that my 5 year old brother had been at such risk.
Oncoming car throwing a brick out the window while I’m going past. Sometimes, I’ll put my non-dominate hand in front of my face to cushion the blow just in case it crashes through my windshield.
Hydroplaned on the highway seemingly out of nowhere (going about 55mph) and found myself heading straight for the center wall and a family of people standing next to their wrecked car. Somehow I was able to steer it back towards the road and straighten it out, but I’ll never forget seeing the faces of a whole family who thought they were about to die.
Also slid around the I-75/285 interchange in South Atlanta about 7 years ago when it completely iced over. I managed to downshift and power my way out of it in time to look behind me and watch about 15 cars bumping off each other like an amusement park.
However, my biggest fear is my 17 year-old daughter behind the wheel.
One time I pulled my parking brake while slowly driving on an iced-over highway. Ended up facing the opposite direction on the shoulder of the opposite lane. Good times.
@medz Snow and ice. So much fun to drive in. In Chicago a bunch of us spun out on the highway as the slush on the road froze at sunset - started under the bridge. Fortunately I had foresight to, once I was off the shoulder and into the snow (where I had traction again), turn the wheel hard to head back to the bridge so I wouldn’t be hit by the next car. Good thing. 5 or 6 cars almost immediately did the same (I forget how many) and most of them ran into each other in the snow. Pre cell phone days and I was the only one brave enough to hitchhike to the nearest exit to call a tow truck (who then picked me up). That guy made a fortune pulling us all out of the snowbank.
The 25 car pile up on the highway I was in was in the snow too. That was the next day on a different highway maybe 350 miles away from the Chicago mess. That totaled my car out (fortunately that was just a few miles from home - a real trip driving home with a really bent frame, cracked radiator, dents and smashed in bits on all 4 sides of the car - I was lucky it would drive at all). Between the two it caused me clutch a bit about driving in the snow for a while.
A few years ago I leased a new Kia Forte. I had 248 miles on it and a deer jumped out in front of me on a new stretch of highway and did over $14,000 worth of damage to it.
And I’ll be damned… they actually fixed it! Looked pretty good too! They had it a whole month and I was told another $500 in damage would have totalled it.
Having a blowout on front tire of motorcycle. Had rear tire blow out once while out on the highway. Only thing I can think is that I hit something in the road.
Also late one night I hit some unmarked grooved pavement where two highways come together, and because of how they grooved it, the grooves ran across a couple of lanes. My front tire caught the grooves and quickly sent me across two additional lanes. Thankfully, the traffic was light and I went right between a couple of cars. Pulled over, caught my breath, and checked my underwear before heading back out … a little more cautiously.
Second to that is hitting an animal while on on motorcycle. It happened to my Dad one evening while we were riding together. I was following him over a bridge when all of the sudden I was driving through what seemed to be a very small cloud. Turned out to be a cloud of feathers - happy that I wear a fill face helmet. Evidently a seagull that was sitting on the railing decided that was the perfect time to take flight… right into his path. When we stopped on the far side half the bird was embedded into the fairing, it just missed hitting and knocking out his headlight. I also had the pleasure of removing bits of bird parts for my fairing and feathers from my helmet.
@Grumman Got caught in a nasty storm one time on a highway that seemed to be half covered in tar strips. Every rider knows what that feeling of tar ice is like. There was literally nowhere I could ride to stay off of them. Just slowed down a lot and slid my way back and forth.
Other drivers. Two accidents in my life, cars totaled. One was a drunk driver who ran a stop sign, the other a truck that pulled into my lane, I was in his blind spot.
Considering I’m in Florida, wrong way driver coming in my lane
@TheGreatNico almost hit once in Massachusetts, then after looking back, I almost hit the cop backing up to catch the First car. Left lane of Route 3, and they had to cross 3 lanes of traffic to get there…
Shanking my ball into the woods.
Thankfully the deer around here are courteous enough to cross at the marked Deer Crossings.
@The_Tim
That’s not the case everywhere.
I woke up now. The video is still valid, but what I said about it was not. The problem in that video is that the deer do cross at the signs and this woman wants the state to move the signs so the deer cross less busy streets.
@jst1ofknd You can’t fix stupid.
@lseeber
Was that about the woman in the video or me getting what I wanted to say wrong.
I saw a follow up video and I don’t think she is stupid. This was an idea that she had formed as a child and never thought to question as she adulted. I think we all hold similar beliefs (that may or may not be as ludicrous) and the only reason we are not shamed is because we have not aired them so publicly…
@lseeber
Speaking of the deer woman reminded me of this video. I think some further education is needed in this case…
@jst1ofknd the deer one was funny. I felt bad for the quarter cups lady. I laughed at first then stopped laughing when she couldn’t get it.
@RiotDemon
I once was speaking to a different woman who said she was bad at math. I started to bring this up as something humorous, but stopped shortly after realizing that by bad at math that she really meant it and would have been as confused as the woman in the video.
@RiotDemon
Also if they had put it as how many quarters in a dollar and equated a cup to a dollar, she surely would have gotten the concept easily.
@jst1ofknd The woman in the deer vid. Sorry… I disagree. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with thinking of it as a child and not ‘adulting’ into it.
It’s like a sign near a forest that says watch for bear nearby and people thinking the sign is attracting the bear to that area. I do agree she doesn’t sound stupid… she just didn’t think it through. But… for my own humor and sarcasm, I was quoting Bill Engval.
Silver Dodge Caravan minivans
When I see one, I go ahead and cover the brake. People in those have lost the will to live, so they are capable of anything.
@rrmcgrew - I was going to say, “the Idiot in the Odyssey,” but yours is the better answer.
@rrmcgrew Hey my 25 year old ghetto van was a light blue grand caravan. The only wrecks I have been in were caused by others (25 car pile up where I managed to stop my vehicle prior to hitting others in the accident but then a taxi hit me, a honda civic hit the taxi and an 18 wheeler hit us all; teen blowing a stop sign when I didn’t have one).
@rrmcgrew Nissan Murono, which I have dubbed the moron-o, due to the ability of it’s drivers
In general, dumb fucks who are paying more attention to their phones instead of the road.
@narfcake Could you use shorter words in your posts? it’s too hard to read on the highway like this.
Fucking texting idiots.
@ThatsHeadly Yeah, me too; I hate it when she won’t put the phone down for that fifteen seconds.
Getting peed on from an overpass.
@Ignorant This seems like an oddly specific fear.
Other drivers…
Looking at their phone.
Being drunk.
Falling asleep.
Thinking they’re Jamie McMurray (I just googled for that).
Hitting a pedestrian, particularly kids. Fuckers just materialize in the road sometimes it seems.
Can anyone tell me the airspeed of a swallow? I really wanna cross this bridge.
@hchavers african or european?
@hchavers @nolrak
/wootstalker https://shirt.woot.com/offers/a-simple-question
A Simple Question
Price: $19.00
Condition: Probably New
@hchavers laden or unladen?
@accelerator @hchavers I can’t believe it took this long for someone to ask that.
I’ve lost a tire on the highway. I’m assuming the tire was a retread because the tread peeled off my front tire and flew into the windshield and over the car. It was terrifying. I’m surprised I didn’t hit anyone because I was all over the road. Ended up purposely driving into the guardrail because I couldn’t get control.
I don’t have that specific fear though. I usually freak out when people try to drive and push me out of the lane. My car must be invisible because it happens a lot.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of zombies. Now that I’m an adult, I’m terrified of becoming one. Alzheimer’s has struck down every member of my mom’s side of the family for generations. My aunt calls it the family curse. I’m terrified of ending up a brain dead walking corpse with no family or loved ones to put an end to me.
@moondrake OK, so how do we tie this to driving? I was fine until you said “walking” and ruined my planned zombie taxi joke, but whatever.
@simplersimon Lol, I read “greatest driving fear”, in the motivational meaning of driving, not the vehicular version.
@moondrake Stop thinking you will or you will think your way right into it. My dad always thought he would die by 70 because most of his family did. Then all of his siblings lost their mind. He’s 83 now, looks like 70. Very active, works out every day, golfs, just helped me move and put some furniture together for me, etc. We had to make him stop saying that he was next yrs ago. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Be the exception. How’s your dad’s side of the family?
@lseeber I actually do get that, and make room for an alternate fate. Each generation has greater genetic diversity, so whatever gene that side of the family has that carries the “curse” gets more diluted every time. And of all the people in the generation before mine, I have the most in common intellectually, socially and behaviorally with my aunt, who didn’t start showing signs till her 80’s. It was 72 for my mom and her brother, 60 for my grandmother, and I think in her fifties for my great grandmother.
@moondrake well you can get tested for one gene that can cause this. If any of those folks are still alive they can be tested to see if they carry that gene. If no one is pos for that gene that there is clearly family history would interest some genetic medical researchers (well presuming at least if some are still alive).
Plunging off a bridge into icy water.
@mfladd Where I live, we have a lot of lakes, and plenty of ice. We’ve had two unrelated cases of people who disappeared over a decade ago get solved this past year because the water levels got low enough that people could see their cars. Neither even went of a bridge, just didn’t make regular turns. So, yeah. Valid fear.
@mfladd @simplersimon seriously? That’s just creepy. You could see the cars down there??
@mfladd @moonhat not until water levels dropped enough. They weren’t that deep in the first place, but with a dry year, it was enough of a drop that the roof of some bit would be just above the surface. Just enough to be visible from the road. I’ve had a couple friends lose cars to the lakes, though, thankfully, they made it out safe.
Black ice
@mega1
@mega1 Oh no you didn’t!!
Other drivers.
I had an entire wheel assembly just decide to take leave of the vehicle. The whole thing just came flying off. On the highway going 70 mph. With three kids in the car. Not fun.
@katbyter On the track:
@narfcake yep. Pretty much just like that, but without the safety equipment. I have a pic but don’t know how to attach it.
Hydroplaning. Good thing I like riddles.
@jnicholson0619
Hey, me too! Want to form a band of rebels?
What goes from coast to coast without ever moving?
@aetris @jnicholson0619 The sun?
@moondrake - No, but you’re getting warm.
Not because the answer was close, though.
@aetris @jnicholson0619 A highway
@Kidsandliz - YOU MAY PASS.
@aetris @Kidsandliz Not so much. Highways are just main roads, any major road can be called a highway. Interstates are bigger, but they don’t usually go coast to coast either. There are 5 major ones that do, I-10, I-40, I-70, I-80, I-90. Route 66 used to run Chicago to Santa Monica, but it’s all busted up. Also, one may argue that everything on Earth is moving at about 1,000 mph at all times, lol.
@aetris @Kidsandliz @moondrake
I live near where I-40 and I-35 intersect.
@jst1ofknd I lived around there but south of there, down in that town with the big college football stadium and crazed fans (of which I was not one).
@Kidsandliz
We used to live furthur up north near another big crazy football stadium with crazy fans that hated the fans you lived near (and I am not a fan).
@jst1ofknd
OKC!
@jst1ofknd HA! I know that town too. Have friends there who raise goats and sell goat milk. And, I think, rent out other goats to “mow” lawns, river beds (I nearly drove off the highway laughing when I saw the city with their riding mowers in the dry river bed near where I lived mowing that), fields, etc.
@compunaut
Yes! I live in the greater OKC area. The city where anywhere you need to go is typically 30 minutes or less away.
@Kidsandliz
I really want goats, but the city probably wouldn’t like them. I’d like to see how the dogs and cats got on with them.
@moondrake - YOU MAY NOT PASS.
Report to the Gorge of Eternal Peril forthwith.
@aetris @moondrake I use highway and interstate interchangeably. At this point I am not picky. Anything that doesn’t make right angle turns at field edges and is two lanes each direction and you can go at least 55 (preferably faster) is a highway/interstate as far as I am concerned. I’d love to have more roads that are not one way each direction and have no shoulder around here. PITA to get from point A to point B. Also takes forever.
@aetris So H20 works. Highway in general does not.
Engine dying, because it’s probably going to cost me a lot of money I don’t have and not be covered by insurance
Drivers who move to Southern California and inexplicably forget everything they ever knew about driving. It’s like you’re trying to live up to some sort of bad driver stereotype as if it makes you officially Californian or something. Most of us don’t roll stop signs and freak out when it rains. Ever notice that the worst traffic is in the heart of Los Angeles where a huge portion of the population are transplants? Coincidence? Probably not.
@ZeroCharisma It’s good to hear that our nationwide transplant program of crappy drivers is working. They’re your problem now.
@ZeroCharisma Uhhh… I learned to drive in San Diego in the late 60’s. I learned “California Stop” at a stop-sign, and if you are going speed limit on I-5, I-8 or any other freeway you will get rear-ended by cars driving the correct speed (usually 10 over). Last time I went down there, freeway driving was about the same.
My driving instructor said to enter a freeway at 5 over the speed limit to merge easier.
It’s the idiots up here in the PNW that have no clue how to merge or drive. A few weeks ago, a guy in front of me stopped on a freeway onramp! Shit!
@daveinwarsh @ZeroCharisma Eek! Shit!
I’ve got two highway stories.
The first one is when I was 16 blazing across Tulsa on I-44 in my Firebird to go pick up my girlfriend before school and my radiator hose broke. Instantly blinded by steam going 75 MPH down the highway is no way to go through life son.
The second time I was in my 20’s driving into work on the highway in a snowstorm when I had a contact fail and disintegrate in my eye, scratching my cornea. Oo boy, being blinded in one eye, in excruciating pain, in a snowstorm is definitely no way to go through life.
I’ve had rear tires blow out at highway speeds, but I can’t imagine what a front tire blow out must be like.
@therealjrn The moral of the story here is to avoid highways.
@Targaryen who knew?
I’ve blown tired going at high rates of speed on the interstate, had engines die in some questionable areas, and so on. Simply said having a good plan in place before hand was the best thing ever.
My greatest driving fear resides in drivers around me. The one’s on their cell phones and not paying attention.
@theonlybuster so true. of the handful of accidents i’ve been in they’ve been the other person’s fault so i am always trying to be as vigilant as possible and leave enough room when possible to give myself options should the person or people around me do something stupid.
my partner who has never been in an accident drives like everyone is always going to do what they’re supposed to which makes me a lousy passenger. hurtling towards someone with their blinker on because he trusts them to switch lanes or take the turn and not that they might change their mind at the last minute or not even know their blinker was on in the first place, for instance. he is a good driver but it’s everyone else that concerns me. he also seems under the impression that if our one car somehow gets totaled ‘everything will work out’ as if the car fairy will just drop a new one at the scene of the accident.
All my greatest fears feature an Earth-crossing Asteroid.
Hey, might as well go big.
@PocketBrain - A driving-across-Earth asteroid?
@aetris Like this, only bigger:
@PocketBrain Seems to happen a lot in and around Russia. So you might be ok?
@PocketBrain - That MIGHT have been a silver Dodge Caravan.
I’ve already lost one car to a deer. All I ever saw of it was a flash of brown before my airbag deployed. Later I found an antler with a chunk of skull still attached completely impaling my radiator, so it was running head-down when I hit it. Something must’ve spooked it good.
When I was getting my stuff out of the backseat, I found a pair of deer whistles, still in the package. The Sheriff who’d stopped to help me put his arm across my shoulders and said, “Son, I think it might be a little too late.” That actually really helped me feel better.
I just had a close call a couple weeks ago, too. A young buck ran at the side of my truck and tapped the fender. No harm to either of us, as far as I could tell, but it definitely got my heard pounding.
I’ve hydroplaned before and it is super scary. I also think the idea of another driver crossing the yellow line and hitting me head-on is scary too. I did have a pickup come across the line at me once but I was watching and swerved enough for it to only take out my side mirror and scare me pretty good. He kept going.
Probably having to drive in a city.
I am perfectly competent within the minimal complexities of suburban, rural, and highway driving. (“It’s a roundabout, not a stop sign. What are you doing?!”)
But put me in a city and I may be too busy trying to keep track of which streets are directional and where the creeping hordes of pedestrians are to notice the stop signs.
I expect that next time I am driving in an urban setting, rush hour will set upon me, I will be pointed the wrong direction, one tire on a curb and another on somebody’s foot, half in the wrong side of some unconsidered transitory patch of pavement wedged between two spiraling asphalt one-way madness corridors, the engine will at that instant melt into a solid mass of slag, and the consequent ramifying deadlock will stop the entire city cold.
@InnocuousFarmer Eloquent.
@InnocuousFarmer Well if that happened you’d surely make the news. You scared of 15 seconds of fame?
@InnocuousFarmer that made me laugh out loud !
@Kidsandliz Well when you put it that way…
@moonhat Thank you. I had an entire coffee.
@InnocuousFarmer especially the “one tire on a curb and another on someone’s foot” - love it! We must be driving twins separated at birth.
@moonhat Heheh, only in a city, mind.
/youtube Mst3k any fruit to declare
No fear!
had the blown tire on the highway in college. that did give me a good scare but it wasn’t too bad. on a completely desolate unlit highway in the middle of the night. AAA never showed (they were “too busy”) and a cop who stopped didn’t give a shit so my dad drove an hour to help me. very, very lucky to have the parents i do!
another time when i was 17 a guy driving recklessly in the middle of the day rammed me into the jersey barrier at a high speed after hitting the back passenger side once trying to get in my lane where i was boxed in. but by some miracle all it cost me was a bent axle and my ability to drive on highways without shoulders without having panic attacks. could have been worse.
still, the nail in the coffin of relaxing and enjoyable driving was when my engine started to overheat in the tunnel in boston on a friday night. i thought i could at least make it off the exit but the car died on storrow drive. up until then i’d never had a car just give up the ghost mid-drive, so now that’s just a constant possible reality in my mind whenever i’m driving. the one cool thing was a passing crew team (on foot, not in the river;)) saw me totally helpless and a fucking mess and they all pushed me and my car off the exit ramp and to the side of the road where a tow truck easily reached me and towed me the five minutes home.
when you have anxiety/agoraphobia, the car is important. because if anything happens, you can always get in your car and leave. it’s a safety blanket and a home away from home giving you power to do things because there’s a backup plan in place. but if it doesn’t work, or worse, you don’t have a car in the first place, it’s no bueno.
all that said, i think hydroplaning is really scary because you just have no control, and hitting a large animal is also scary because that can really fuck you and your car up, plus the added guilt of gravely injuring it. (knowing something limped off into the woods to wait to die or get eaten is worse than killing it on impact imo.)
As a driver, I’m pretty much fearless. So I’d have to say in regards to driving my greatest fear is my aggressive driving style causing harm to someone else; my passenger, someone in another vehicle or a pedestrian.
I’ve had blowouts at speed, hydroplaned into curbs to keep from going through an intersection, hit black ice and done a 360 on the highway, and one bizarre afternoon very nearly broadsided a train. But my most exciting car story was when I was 22ish, and worked for a local entrepreneur, banker and used car salesman. He had taken a couple of Mustangs in trade in Dallas, and hired my younger brother and me to drive them 600 miles back to El Paso. Me, my teenaged brother, my preteen sister and my kindergartener brother all flew to Dallas and spent the day at Six Flags before picking up these cars. We immediately knew we had more than we had planned on. There was an automatic and a standard. The automatic’s seat was bolted to the floor too far back for me to reach the pedals, so I had to drive the standard, which was so stiff it took a major effort to shift one handed. Both of these cars were just freaking monsters, we would be sitting at a light with the brake fully depressed, and these cars will be snarling and growling like predators and slowly hopping forward. We had to let other drivers get a very good lead, because just brushing the gas pedal with your foot would cause them to leap forward. Because they were so hard to manage we would drive for an hour and stop and take a break then drive for an hour and stop and take a break. I will admit that we found a back road and briefly let these things off their leashs. It was pretty freaking exhilarating, I’ve never driven a car like these before or since . About 200 miles into the drive my brother started noticing a funny sound coming from the automatic’s engine at highway speeds. We pulled into a mechanic and had it looked at, and the mechanic couldn’t find anything wrong. This is before cell phones, so we called from the mechanic’s to the office and told them we were concerned that there might be something wrong with the automatic but the mechanic couldn’t find anything wrong with it. They told us to keep driving. My brother wanted to listen to the car’s engine from the outside, so when we left the mechanic’s I got in the automatic with my kid brother. I couldn’t put on a seatbelt as I had to sit at the very edge of the seat with the steering wheel pressed against my chest in order to be able to reach the pedals. So we get on the highway, Mike driving the standard in the lane beside me, and I get up to the highway speed of 75 or 80. We had gone a mile or two when Mike heard something from the automatic and stamped the gas on the standard, shooting past us. Thank God for that, because a heartbeat later, the whole front quarter passenger side of that car just evaporated. The frame hit the pavement at something just under 75, and yanked us hard to the right across like three lanes of highway, making a noise like the mouth of hell had opened up. It was a freaking miracle that we didn’t get hit or hit anyone. A miracle we didn’t roll over. As soon as the explosion happened I was flung back into my seat, where I could not reach the steering wheel or the brakes. By the time I managed to claw my way back up to the steering wheel we were angling to the guardrail at greatly reduced speed and I managed to steer into a stop in the breakdown lane. After making sure we were okay, my brother got off at the next exit and called for help. My boss sent a wrecker for both cars and plane tickets home. He was very angry, until his mechanic told him what had happened. Evidently these cars had been rebuilt for racing, and neither one of them should have ever undertaken a 600 mile drive. They should have been trailered home. The automatic had thrown a rod into the engine and it blew off the wheel and did mortal damage to the engine. He was able to sell the standard for enough to mostly cover his losses. For you mechanics out there, if any of this sounds off, it has been a couple of decades so I may be getting some details wrong. But that was the long and the short of it. At no point in that whole adventure was I afraid for myself, I’ve been accused of being an adrenaline junkie more than once. But it did scare me that my 5 year old brother had been at such risk.
Oncoming car throwing a brick out the window while I’m going past. Sometimes, I’ll put my non-dominate hand in front of my face to cushion the blow just in case it crashes through my windshield.
Drumpf…
Hydroplaned on the highway seemingly out of nowhere (going about 55mph) and found myself heading straight for the center wall and a family of people standing next to their wrecked car. Somehow I was able to steer it back towards the road and straighten it out, but I’ll never forget seeing the faces of a whole family who thought they were about to die.
Also slid around the I-75/285 interchange in South Atlanta about 7 years ago when it completely iced over. I managed to downshift and power my way out of it in time to look behind me and watch about 15 cars bumping off each other like an amusement park.
However, my biggest fear is my 17 year-old daughter behind the wheel.
One time I pulled my parking brake while slowly driving on an iced-over highway. Ended up facing the opposite direction on the shoulder of the opposite lane. Good times.
@medz Snow and ice. So much fun to drive in. In Chicago a bunch of us spun out on the highway as the slush on the road froze at sunset - started under the bridge. Fortunately I had foresight to, once I was off the shoulder and into the snow (where I had traction again), turn the wheel hard to head back to the bridge so I wouldn’t be hit by the next car. Good thing. 5 or 6 cars almost immediately did the same (I forget how many) and most of them ran into each other in the snow. Pre cell phone days and I was the only one brave enough to hitchhike to the nearest exit to call a tow truck (who then picked me up). That guy made a fortune pulling us all out of the snowbank.
The 25 car pile up on the highway I was in was in the snow too. That was the next day on a different highway maybe 350 miles away from the Chicago mess. That totaled my car out (fortunately that was just a few miles from home - a real trip driving home with a really bent frame, cracked radiator, dents and smashed in bits on all 4 sides of the car - I was lucky it would drive at all). Between the two it caused me clutch a bit about driving in the snow for a while.
Cows or Aliens… or alien cows.
@daveinwarsh oh my gosh is that real. I feel bad for the poor cow
@moonhat Not as bad as the cow feels…
They did almost launch that cow into space! lol
My two greatest driving fears are definitely bridges and semi trucks merging into my lane.
@chibisara and icy bridges are the worst. And merging semi’s when it’s pouring rain and this wall of water won’t stop and you can’t see…ugh
@chibisara yes, I am also terrified by the prospect of a bridge merging into my lane
Idiots.
I see idiots.
All the time.
They’re everywhere.
A few years ago I leased a new Kia Forte. I had 248 miles on it and a deer jumped out in front of me on a new stretch of highway and did over $14,000 worth of damage to it.
And I’ll be damned… they actually fixed it! Looked pretty good too! They had it a whole month and I was told another $500 in damage would have totalled it.
BLACK ICE.
Having a blowout on front tire of motorcycle. Had rear tire blow out once while out on the highway. Only thing I can think is that I hit something in the road.
Also late one night I hit some unmarked grooved pavement where two highways come together, and because of how they grooved it, the grooves ran across a couple of lanes. My front tire caught the grooves and quickly sent me across two additional lanes. Thankfully, the traffic was light and I went right between a couple of cars. Pulled over, caught my breath, and checked my underwear before heading back out … a little more cautiously.
Second to that is hitting an animal while on on motorcycle. It happened to my Dad one evening while we were riding together. I was following him over a bridge when all of the sudden I was driving through what seemed to be a very small cloud. Turned out to be a cloud of feathers - happy that I wear a fill face helmet. Evidently a seagull that was sitting on the railing decided that was the perfect time to take flight… right into his path. When we stopped on the far side half the bird was embedded into the fairing, it just missed hitting and knocking out his headlight. I also had the pleasure of removing bits of bird parts for my fairing and feathers from my helmet.
@Grumman Got caught in a nasty storm one time on a highway that seemed to be half covered in tar strips. Every rider knows what that feeling of tar ice is like. There was literally nowhere I could ride to stay off of them. Just slowed down a lot and slid my way back and forth.
Other drivers. Two accidents in my life, cars totaled. One was a drunk driver who ran a stop sign, the other a truck that pulled into my lane, I was in his blind spot.