@TheCO2 demolition derby? Party crashing? Of course, this is why official vocab guidelines say we should refer to them as “traffic collisions” rather than “accidents”
When I was 16 and my brother was 14, we worked all summer to save money to buy a car together. I got into a wreck and totaled it before he ever got a chance to drive it.
A few. Most serious ones: 1) got hit while walking in Walmart parking lot at night, and 2) I swerved to avoid hydroplaning car and start planing myself, rolled all the way over. He took out a street lamp that just missed a third car. Relatively minor damage on both cars, he seemed fine, and worst injury was a seat belt bruise across my chest.
25 car pile up in a white out on the highway. I stopped without hitting anyone, trouble was taxi hit me and an 18 wheeler hit him and then pushed us both into other crap
teen came out of a residential side street, blew the stop sign and I had no traffic signal on a main 4 lane 45mph road. Parents were screaming at me until the cop shut them up and told them their kid caused the accident.
Car totaled both times. Fortunately I was somewhat less than totaled.
The car pedestrian accident later in this thread reminded me… Riding bike slowly on sidewalk due to pedestrians. Car pulled out of the McD’s paying more attention to her fries than me and hit me (narrowly missing a pedestrian who jumped out of the way, I had to go the other way to miss the pedestrian and the car hit me), knocking me into a very busy street with no bike lane where luckily I was missed by on coming cars. 14" bruise on my thigh (This was a college town, driver was a college student). Bike totaled. Driver took off. I got license plate. She got ticket.
This was back in the 90’s leaving a friend’s birthday party in Pasadena …
I was going 35 mph and the other driver ran a red going 40 mph; my light was green for over a block.
I had no time to react. The hit was the front of my car to their right front …
Her car went up the center island and stopped about 150’ down. Windshield, right side door glass, rear window, all busted. Both airbags deployed. Fire department and ambulances were very quick to arrive – for good reason - her 7 year old was in the front passenger seat … and there was only a third of that seat left. The damage on her Civic was from the front right corner to the C-pillar.
My car spun a 180 through the middle of the intersection. Okay, I’m intact. I double check … okay … took a breath, unbuckled the seat belt, opened the door … and walked out.
The front of my Volvo 245 was 2’ shorter and twisted 18" to the right, but everything behind the A-pillar remained intact. The center console was pushed in about a quarter inch, but what was designed to crumple did and what wasn’t didn’t.
The pain came afterwards. Spent the next few months treating for soft tissue injuries (by my regular physician) and had to retain an attorney to sue her piece of shit “lowest priced” insurance company.
I was driving in my sister’s car around a bend in a bit of snow, started sliding, and ran straight into a rock. I just got a few scratches on my face from the airbag deploying, but I was fine otherwise. She had bought the car 8 months before, so I felt pretty terrible. But it was old and she only bought it for $500 from a family friend, so it wasn’t too much of a loss.
My boyfriend (driving) and I were rear-ended when a person w̶a̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶p̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶a̶d̶ whose “brakes failed” hit someone who consequently hit us. We had just gone through a stop light when this person slammed into the person behind us with enough force to push them straight into our butts. That was a fight with the insurance company as they tried to tell us it was a faulty brakes, when from what we could tell, she had just bought the car and drove it off the lot 10 minutes earlier. My boyfriend’s poor van had to be totaled because of the damage to the frame and trunk hatch. We weren’t injured at all, just a bit shaken up. The accident itself took up two lanes of a main highway, so you can imagine the traffic it caused…
Crashed Porsche 914 into Toyota parked in middle of road without power. Porsche destroyed. 1982.
Spin out in training at Skip Barber Racing School at Lime Rock, coming into turn 2. Hit tire wall backwards at about 90mph. 2002.
Slammed into Armco (steel rail) (West Bend, Lime Rock) at 160mph during Skip Barber Race Weekend. Car disintegrated, I bounced down the hill in the roll cage. I had to be winched out. Wife held up infant son as I arrived back in the pits. Last. Race. Ever. 2003.
@droopus Not sure race car crashes quite count in the same way since I think the odds of crashing are ga zillion times higher LOL. Glad you lived to tell the tale though.
@Chops Heh, interesting. “The base of the uphill” is directly after the back straight and is a common place for accidents. The back straight is about 500 meters into a hard right that goes uphill. Lots of folks don’t make the turn. The main reason is they don’t realize the huge compression they get as they hit the uphill so tend to overcorrect and WHAP!
The Tony Monk death happened a few feet to the left of my Armco hit. He hit concrete, which doesn’t have the give of the steel. A 900-pound car hitting concrete at 150+ doesn’t leave much. Open-wheel track racing is physically and mentally insanely difficult. F1 and NASCAR drivers are athletes.
Not a ghost, but I’m glad I took my wife’s advice. I wasn’t a great driver and probably would have ended up in your story.
I got rear-ended by a guy who was putting Chapstick on and didn’t come to a full stop before just barely hitting me (no damage at all, so we just left without calling the police; get a little farther down the road and there was a huge accident, so probably a good thing we didn’t).
I have avoided accidents many times in my little blue (invisible?) car because people pulled out in front of me, including once when I have no idea how I didn’t hit the guy who was turning right on red (had to go change my underwear when I got home). Traded little blue car for red SUV, and still have people pulling out in front of me as though my car is (my reaction is to move my hand to the horn and prepare to slam on the brakes when I see someone stop at a stop sign when I’m on a main road don’t have one).
I have been in so many car accidents - in one year I had four within six months because of the medication I was on. Luckily I got three waived by the insurance because the first one was determined not to be my fault and the the second/third did not do enough damage to charge it to me. The final one I got charged for. Since then I have had two more accidents - both when I rear ended someone.
The most serious accident I was in was with my ex-husband and I hit a patch of black ice going around a curve on a residential street doing about 30 mph. We ended up in someone's yard and I hit a rather large tree - he could get out of the car but I was trapped and they had to cut me out. I blacked out and remember coming to with my head laid back on my headrest and the snow falling on my face. I got transported to the hospital via ambulance and I just ended up breaking my elbow - ended up getting surgery on it; he ended up breaking a bone in his hand because he broke it on my elbow.
@LovelyLadyBumps I didn’t list the accident where I broke my ribs. I was driving along feeling fine and all of a sudden I blacked out - it was like I had a seizure (this was the year I had all the accidents and had been taken off my meds cold turkey). I come to and realize that my Mazda 9 SUV had rolled up and over a parked Toyota Tacoma (in a residential neighborhood less than a mile from my office). Totally destroyed the right side of my car from front to back. Thought USAA would total it but the estimate came through $500 less than their threshold to total it. Got it fixed and drove it for about a year before I traded it in last May for my 2015 Kia Forte5. That’s the one that’s had two accidents where I rear ended someone (Nov 2015 & Feb 2016).
@LovelyLadyBumps I hate to say it, @mehtherfucker was way less diplomatic than I would have been, but I share much of the same sentiment. How your license has not been rescinded is beyond me.
While I can understand the hesitance to remove yourself from the road, the hassle of having to depend on other people or mass transit in our very non-mass-transit society, the reality is that you’ve had by my count no less than six accidents in the last 2-3 years, any single one of which could have resulted in your killing some hapless pedestrian or another motorist. Your convenience is not more important than another person’s life.
Yeah carpooling is a pain and whatnot but millions of people manage with that hassle every day. The same with taking the bus. Please, for the sake of the person you may kill some day, think about what you’re doing.
I can’t pretend to know about the intimate details of whatever ails you but I like to think that in your place after the third accident I would have been thinking long and hard about whether or not I belonged behind the wheel, never mind the fifth or sixth.
@mehtherfucker@jbartus My spouse & I went to my then doc and told him about how bad the meds were interfering with my life and that we needed him to decrease them or put me on alternate meds. The doc gave me one month’s worth of new meds and then when I called the next week to make my appointment for the next month, was told that the doc had fired me from the practice for questioning their judgement. This is when I went off the meds cold turkey and before I knew that based on how long I had been the meds that I had been on, I should’ve been tapered off them because they alter your brain chemistry if you’re on them for more than a couple of weeks at the dose I had been on - I’d been on it for close to a year (hence the blackout the next month).
I am now seeing a better doctor who understands my need to be on medication that doesn’t interfere with my ability to work or drive. Though I am not in any way trying to use this as an excuse, I was chronically exhausted at the time because my 22 year old son had come him with a massive TBI after being in a coma for 7 months and I was pretty much the sole caregiver for him. The Military did not pay for any of his care or treatment or recovery and despite his massive disability, because he lived with us, my income and my spouse’s disqualified my son from getting assistance through his Medicaid. I was doing all of the physical labor of bathing him, getting him dressed, taking him to the bathroom, doing his laundry, helping him walk up and down the stairs, taking him to the docs, working 40+ hours a week at my own job, plus taking care of what things my spouse couldn’t do (such as the grocery shopping - my son’s food had to be purchased separately since it was paid for through funds from SSI/Social Security in his bank account), the cooking (again, my spouse can’t cook and my son was on a special diet because he couldn’t swallow food unless it was thickened so I had to cook all of our food together then thicken his food up from that and feed him), and take care of his dealings with the military. I went for months on 2-3 hours of sleep. My dad filled in during the day but left when I left for work at 7:30 AM and my spouse got home at 3:30 PM.
Carpooling was something I looked into after my son was in rehab after the first accident but my office isn’t public transportation accessible and my spouse is on the road at 4:30 AM. My work wouldn’t let me switch hours to commute with them, nor would my elderly dad agree to stay with us during the week so I could carpool with my spouse if my work agreed. We live 30 miles from my office and despite putting up ads for carpools for months from my area, no one responded. Even if I could take public transportation, I would have had to leave the house at 4:30 AM with my spouse to have him drop me at the closest subway, so that still wouldn’t have worked. I would have to hire someone to come in for three hours until my dad got there and we didn’t have the money for that. I could’ve turned my car back in but I still would’ve had to pay my car payment and have it impact my credit. I couldn’t and can’t file bankruptcy because it would mean my spouse would lose their security clearance.
I consider myself very fortunate that no one else got hurt or killed. I feel very fortunate that I didn’t end up dying too. The other two “accidents” were claims I made because I misjudged the size of my SUV pulling it into the garage in the snow so I could put my son in the car to take him to therapy and I scratched the side of the car up and the second one was because I was trying to pull into a parking space at work in it and scratched the side of the SUV on a cement pillar which happened within two months of me getting the vehicle.
I had only gotten an SUV because I had to trade my 2 seater car in at a huge loss for this ginormous SUV that I had driven for all of two days before he got home with his wheelchair and all his equipment we’d have to take whenever we went out plus changes of clothes/adult diapers since he was incontinent as well as giant medicine containers since he was on 25 of them spaced throughout the day. It was the only vehicle that I could get approved for because my credit was shot from driving to another state for 7 months to be with him while he was in the coma. I drained my 401k for his care, my bills, his bills I inherited, and then getting this stupid SUV. I couldn’t not work during all of this because we needed every cent that came in.
ETA:
The one I was not at fault for was someone side swiping me. The accident with my exhusband was in 2000. The one from November 2015 and February 2016 were totally my fault and I recognize that.
@LovelyLadyBumps I feel kind of shitty after reading all of that. Without the context (which you were under no obligation to share at any time) I admittedly assumed that the non-specified accidents were not dissimilar in circumstance to the ones you did elaborate on (for what it’s worth I wouldn’t even count those scratching incidents). I apologize for the assumption and judgement that accompanied it. I cannot even begin to imagine what it’s like to be you, dealing with the circumstances you have been dealt, you certainly don’t need the grief of getting piled on by strangers on an online forum for circumstances they don’t know the first thing about.
I don’t really know what else to say except that I hope things get better for you, your husband, and your son. Being uncomfortably close to him in age I can’t even imagine… I… anything more I could try to say I’m sure you’ve heard a million times. I wish you all the best.
@LovelyLadyBumps Justification for a gofundme page - and I’ll contribute - no justification to put untold innocent lives at risk. The judge would see it the same way if the consequences of your making a choice to drive had led to tragedy. You’re right to say you are lucky it didn’t. Just like all those lives you could have taken are lucky too.
When I was sixteen, going camping with my parents (because they knew if they left me home, there would most likely be shenanigans), I was sleeping in the backseat and a drunk ran a stop sign, hitting the car where my head was. Three cats that were loose in the car were never seen again, they found the damned dog, and they couldn’t find me. I was wedged between the front and back seat on the floor. They got me out, the car caught fire shortly after that.
I ended up with a broken sternum and back (lost an inch in height). The drunk driver died, leaving behind a wife with three children and no insurance.
Then a few years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in Anaheim (I’m in San Diego), fairly early when a truck didn’t see me and pulled into my lane. There would have been contact and according to our insurance company, I should have let him hit me (I have that in writing). But when things are happening that quickly, the first thing I wanted to do was avoid getting hit. So, I moved over, but I guess I moved too quickly. And even though the car and wheels were facing the road straight ahead, the car kept sliding over to the right, where it hit the curb, then slid across wet grass and rolled over one and a quarter times, hit a fence, did a 180° and landed on Miramar property. When everything came to a stop, the car was on it’s side, passenger side down, facing the opposite direction of where I was headed.
The guy who caused it saw it happening and was the one who pulled me out of the car (I couldn’t undo the seatbelt, I was hanging). I remember the CD player was still going. I did turn that off.
I was pretty shaken up, but there was no major physical damage. But I don’t drive very far nowadays.
When I called home (I had to use someone else’s phone, I couldn’t find mine) my hands were shaking so badly, he had to dial. It had been less than fifteen minutes since I left home. I wasn’t even ten miles away. And my first words to my husband?
“I totaled the car!”
The Highway Patrol officer stayed with me until he got there (I guess the week before there had been an almost identical accident and the woman wasn’t wearing her seat belt…she didn’t make it). While we waited for the tow truck, Brian emptied the car and put as much as he could in his truck.
Watching the video, you’ll see the fence. Getting it over that fence was the hard part for the tow truck.
@lisaviolet can’t blame you. Convertibles are extremely unsafe in general. A lot of a car’s structural integrity is contingent upon the roof members. Cut em out and…
@jbartus, I have a Mazda Tribute (which I love), which is essentially the same as a Ford Escape… they are officially listed as a “compact SUV.” They are actually shorter than many sedans out there.
@narfcake well, my first reaction was “what the fuck was that?!”. my second reaction after seeing what i hit was “oh fuck”. luckily, the captain on duty that night was cool about it. he said “besides the shit we’re going to give you about this for the next year, i think you should have to go sweep the gun range for empty casings.” (outdoor range the police department also let us use)
so, all in all, i got off pretty easy. but man, they definitely lived up to the promise to give me shit about it.
@duodec i had to give them back. it was mostly 9mm and .40. at that time, i just had a .45, so it was of no use to me. and, i didn’t reload my own anyway. but, the range was quite nice and to be able to use it for free at just about any time was an awesome perk!
@MrsPavlov bone collector?!? how dare you! i also collected various bodily fluids.
I got side-swiped by a delivery truck the first day after buying my first car. I was 18 and it was a junker anyway and just cosmetic body damage, so I didn’t even bother having it fixed. It was mostly just embarrassing, with a car full of my friends, and me the first one to have a car of their own.
Got rear-ended on a wet slushy highway by a guy whose English wasn’t very good and he could not comprehend the cop telling him that he was at fault. I had slowed down to avoid another fender-bender ahead of me, and the guy behind me didn’t slow in time. In the end it was moot whether he accepted fault or not, because he had no insurance (which was legal in that state at the time) so again I just accepted the body damage.
Got rear-ended on a very busy road by an elderly guy who then drove off. I had my 18-month-old son in the car and was kind of freaked out, although he seemed fine. Long story short, the old man’s wife had just died and he was addled - in the moment it made sense to him to drive away and find a pay phone to call cops, not thinking about how it looked from my perspective. His insurance paid for my repairs and replacement carseat for my son. I never heard if they took his license away.
Driving 70mph on the highway, front hood latch released, the hood flew up and smashed the windshield. I don’t believe in a god, but by the grace of something, the car behind me was able to slow down in time to not hit me, and I was able to pull off on the shoulder despite zero forward visibility. Also miraculously, the only damage to me was a few little scratches from broken glass. Well, that and the psychological damage. I couldn’t drive on the highway again for a long time.
My car was rear-ended while I was stopped, waiting for a traffic light. Thirty years later, my car (different car) was rear-ended while waiting at the same traffic light. Relatively minor damage to my car (<$1000 in repairs) and no injuries both times, but jeez.
@macromeh I was rear ended about a decade ago when I was down at SDCC. “I thought you were going to run the red.”
Hard parts damaged on my wagon were the bumper cover, bumper rebar, bumper shocks, rear hatch, frame pull on the rear quarter. Allstate (my insurance) wanted to total my car – they didn’t even want to listen that “I don’t mind if you’re putting used parts; I just want my car fixed.” The other party’s insurance, State Farm, said “let’s see what the body shop thinks.” A used hatch, bumper rebar, and bumper shocks were sourced for $180 instead of the $900 in just labor to repair the aluminum hatch, which kept the grand total of repair to under $3k.
@narfcake
We also dropped Allstate after an insurance dispute so lengthy and ridiculous that we had to get the top insurance commissioner guy for Florida (Bill Nelson at the time) involved to resolve the issue. Allstate sucks. I pity anyone that has to deal with them. And seriously the damage to our car was less than 1k, ridiculous what we had to go through.
Several little fender-benders (only one my fault).
The most expensive, however, for me was hitting a deer just last year. If you looked at the damage, you’d say “replace the driver’s side headlight and bang out a couple of dents in the fender and door - $500 tops”. However, it triggered the side-curtain airbags. Had to replace all the airbags, both front seat-belts, and the entire door (because it was cheaper to get a door than to replace a sensor and fix the existing door). $5000 when all was said and done - and, of course, I had liability only so that was out-of-pocket. ouch
My other really bad experience wasn’t for me. I can promise that when you get a phone call and the CallerID says “911 Emergency”, it makes your heart sink. Teenage son rolled his truck and it ended up upside-down. Truck was totaled. Child ended up without a bruise - only a piece of glass near his elbow from when he crawled out. Three years ago this weekend, now that I’m thinking about it.
@smyle I once hit a deer which did some damage to my car, though not as extensive as your experience. I had no collision coverage, but my comprehensive coverage (fire, theft, vandalism, etc.) paid for the repairs, with only $100 deductible. (Allstate)
@macromeh The average (according to stats I’ve seen) is that in Kansas (where I live) a driver hits a deer once every 5 years. I’ve made it with 2 deer collisions in my 45 years (31 of those driving). I would have paid far more for comprehensive over the years than I would by paying out-of-pocket. It’s just a big hit all at once.
@smyle I had exactly the same thing happen to me - the damage (crumpled hood and fender, antler through the radiator) would only have come to a couple hundred bucks if the airbags hadn’t deployed. And since it was a 20-year-old Escort, it wasn’t really worth fixing.
Had a few. Funniest one was back when I had a Volkswagon Camper and I was a pony-tail tye-dye wearing hippie… and I broadsided an FBI agent.
You talk about getting your butt puckered up when I stepped out of my bus to see a guy in a sportcoat and sunglasses talking on a microphone with the cord stretched into his car. Man I thought I was toast. He turned out to be super cool and it was just a ticket.
Only have been in 2 accidents and was the driver in one. A 19 year old in an Audi A4 rear ended my Mazda 3 (zoom zoom) in a construction zone on the highway when I was going down to my Mom’s for the weekend. After being rear ended, the driver side of my Mazda was thrown into the median/concrete divider since there wasn’t a shoulder, mostly above the front tire was messed up. Kid tried to be a jerk to the state trooper until the trooper told him he shouldn’t have hit me. Turns out he didn’t have his drivers license on him, proof of insurance, and the plates were out of date. Also, the tow truck for the kid’s car picks up the wrong car because we have to wait until the cars are picked up since it was a construction zone. Whole thing took about 3 hours between the tow trucks and looking up the kids license. Once this was finally finished, the state trouper took me to a rest area up the road where my mom is waiting, gives her 2 hugs, and his boss meets us there and gives my mom a hug. I was super polite so the state trooper really liked me. My mom had a very stressful weekend, my sister was in an accident about 18 hrs before I was in mine. My sister’s car was totaled and my car should have been totaled but I took it to a crappy body shop the first time I got it repaired.
I don’t drive, but I’ve been a passenger in the occasional fender-bender. Always had my seatbelt on.
As a kid, I was hit by cars three times. Never going fast enough to cause damage. I’m a bit more careful when crossing the street these days.
The worst vehicular accident I was involved in was a giant chunk of ice flying off the back of a tractor-trailer and smashing into the windshield of my Dad’s minivan, right in front of me in the passenger seat. The windshield cracked, but held. Dad overtook the truck, and forced the driver over to the median while I called 911. The trucker was pretty blasé about the whole thing until a Jersey State Trooper pulled up and gave him the riot act.
I’ve been in a couple - hit a deer once, and was a passenger in a couple fender benders.
The worst was a few years ago. A friend wanted to show off his sports car, and took us for a ride out in the country. We were going way too fast, swerved to miss a deer, rolled three times, hit a tree, and skidded for about 30 feet.
I was in the passenger side of the back seat. I had a minor concussion, a nosebleed, and some bruising from the seatbelt. The person beside me had a compound fracture. The guys in the front were completely unhurt. All in all, it could’ve been a lot worse.
Totaled my first truck when I was 18. I was going 45mph coming up to an intersection with a green light. There was a guy in a van stopped in the turn lane going the opposite direction. He decided to turn left in front of me, so I ended up hitting the side of his van hard enough to push him into the turn lane of the cross road. All the windows on the side and back of the van exploded. Even though one of the passengers was loaded onto a backboard… They all walked out of the hospital before I was even treated.
The airbag went off smashing my glasses on my face, burning my skin with the airbag powder, and pretty uncomfortable bruising from the seatbelt… I broke my arm in three places, and fucked up my tendon connected to my middle finger when the airbag flung my arm into the rearview mirror breaking it off the windshield. Two surgeries and a cast… Now I have a metal plate in my arm, and I can’t snap my fingers on that hand anymore. Could of been much worse.
After that, I got an old 82 Celica (this was in 2001) while I was suing my insurance because the other people didn’t have insurance and my insurance wasn’t willing to pay (even though I had uninsured motorist coverage…)
Driving it on the highway during rush hour, the tire tread separated, peeling off and flying up into my windshield. I lost control and went completely across all three lanes a couple of times before I managed to force the car into the guardrail to stop. I have no idea how I managed not to hit anyone. I was in tears. Luckily someone stopped and let me use their phone. After this I got my first cell phone.
The worst part is the hospital completely sucked in my care… And my mom being a nurse, took me out of the hospital because they wouldn’t do surgery. So I spent the entire next day on a shit load of pain meds because the medic in the ambulance insisted on splinting my arm for the ten minute drive… And then the hospital resplinted it with a fiberglass splint… Well, to splint it, they forced me to bend my wrist upward which ground all the pieces of bone together in my arm that was already three times the size of normal.
So I went home from the hospital and puked up the Percocet they gave me… Took a bunch of hydrocodone… Slept surrounded by a shit load of pillows so I couldn’t move… Slept until med time. Took meds, slept, took meds, slept… Next day, surgery.
@jbartus they ended up settling. Too bad I was pretty stupid about the money. Over 15 years later, I still have a mattress and dryer that I bought with that money. I’m sure some other things too, but no major purchases that I remember.
@jbartus i didn’t buy them right away, so they’re not 15 years old.
My mattress is actually in awesome shape. It feels like it did when I first bought it. Anyone that sleeps on it loves it. I know everyone suggests replacing your mattress every ten years or something… but if it’s barely worn, why?
@jbartus I believe it’s a serta beautyrest, pillow top. The king size cost me around $1100. I’m not sure about inflation how much that would be today. It was worth every penny to me.
I’ve been driving for almost 35yrs; I wonder if my accident rate is higher than it should be. It’s possible I should pay better attention to help avoid issues?
I’ve spun the car out in bad weather 3 times (2 snow, 1 rainy/leaf-covered road). Had to be towed/pushed out of the ditch each time.
Got sandwiched between a stopped pickup and the guy behind me who couldn’t stop in time and (barely) pushed me into contact. My front bumper had a couple small scratches from the truck; that Camaro in back ruined his swoopy new front fascia by wrapping it around my hitch.
Caught the left rear bumper of a behemoth Chrysler when an elderly man pulled out (slowly) from a side street to cross the highway & I couldn’t stop in time (left a good set of skid marks - this was long before antilock brakes). That old Newport was heavy & the chrome sturdy: it hardly even looked damaged but the ‘frame’ of my 8yr old Mazda 626 was bent enough that insurance decided not to repair. No injuries, but the oldster probably shouldn’t have been driving.
Got run onto the right shoulder in the middle of the night by a big yellowish Cadillac while driving my black Fiero (maybe they didn’t see me?). Trouble was, the road was rapidly transitioning to overpass and the shoulder disappeared. I crashed head-on into a couple of those giant orange/white striped barrels filled with vermiculite (or something). When I opened my eyes, that stuff was raining down on my roof. Fiero totaled. No injuries; not even a scratch (had my seatbelt on but don’t remember if there was an airbag). Had to call a cab from a very sketchy all-nite convenience store to take me home (propositioned twice to buy drugs while I waited).
Driving south at night on I-25 in Colorado during a snowstorm. As the weather degrades into a blizzard, we’re crawling along in our VW Passat wagon at maybe 20-30mph, navigating only by the right hand road stripe. Suddenly we’re passed at high speed by some maniac double-semi-truck driver, leaving a complete white-out in their wake. In the ensuing minute (?) of confusion I lose directional bearings and out of the swirling snow realize we’re coming up FAST on some kind of sign post. Hit it dead nuts centered and next thing I know we’re headed down a shallow gulley. At first I’m worried about getting stuck in deep snow but I’m able to keep up some momentum and maybe 50-60 yards later I can make out lights from some tall highway poles up ahead. We’re able to keep driving forward & to the right, up the embankment, and somehow back onto the road! There was a tiny bit more excitement that night, but the bottom line was we didn’t find ANY damage (bumper, hood, or windshield) until the next morning: a giant crease down the center of the roof where the (apparently severed) post landed lengthwise & bounced off. No injuries (some kind of miracle), air bag did not deploy (!). Had to replace the entire roof, though.
Just a couple other minor (2-3mph) incidents in parking lots: simultaneous backing out of diagonal spots without seeing each other. Scrapes and minor cracks in rear bumper covers; otherwise no damage.
TL;DR: A few cases of rapid deceleration while at the wheel (one that’s kinda exciting); no one’s ever been hurt.
First official accident was while my mother was pregnant with me. Two teenagers decided to steal their dad’s motorcycle and go joy riding through the alleys. My dad ended up hitting them as they flew out of an alley at a cross road. Teens ended up in the hospital with injuries. Mom went as a precaution and that’s when mom and dad found out they were having a little girl. Silver lining.
There had been others where no one was hurt or involved inanimate objects.
Worst one, for me, has to be two years ago. A day before her 8th birthday, me and my daughter were rear-ended at a red light on the way to her endo appointment (she has type 1 diabetes). The other driver swore he didn’t see me until it was too late. I have a very black car…it was a very clear day. He also hit me doing somewhere around 50mph, lucky we weren’t hurt worse. Ended up spending the entire day at the hospital after my daughter’s appointment, because we both had to go to the ER and get checked out.
I hope that we never have to experience that again. Ever!
@Kidsandliz I drove exclusively older used vehicles until this May, there’s nothing wrong with them. I just opted to spend on a newer car because my work was stacking the miles on fast and repairs for mileage based things were coming on hot and heavy. Car history:
1999 Oldsmobile Intrigue
2000 Pontiac Grand Am
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix
1997 Subaru Legacy SUS
2001 Audi A6 Quattro
2014 Subaru XV Crosstrek (purchased CPO in May 2016)
@Kidsandliz oh gotcha. Yeah they’re crazy now. The thing is they got bigger on the outsides but the insides are either the same size or smaller due to having to cram all of those airbags in so keep that in mind!
In 1982 and ‘83, I rode my bike from Flushing Queens into midtown Manhattan ~6 days a week, 11 miles one way. Twice, going down the right side of 2nd Ave, obeying lights etc., cars made right turns through me. Neither driver stopped, though on the 2nd car (a station wagon with glass windows all around) I shattered the passenger side rear window swinging a 4’ piece of very heavy chain from around my neck as I slid under the back of the car. (I met cute women with both crashes, too, tho nothing came of either meeting.)
In 1999ish, my parked Camry wagon has hit on the side of the rear wheel by a drunk driver (SIL of neighbor to my landlord) when his illegal u-turn (over the median with curbs, etc.) got wider after being hit by the car he didn’t see. Cops arrested him in the ambulance and handcuffed him to the gurney for the trip to the hospital. (That accident is why I won’t consider Geico insurance… their delaying tactics ended up costing me $416 out of pocket in excess rental fees: scummy company. At least the drunk ended up losing his job (commercial truck driver), and eventually his house and wife, as a result of the arrest. Not saying he deserved this, but sometimes people get what they ask for.)*
Most recent accident (2008) was getting rear ended in my 1993 Bonneville SSE on the Grand Central Pkwy (I stopped due to traffic, guy behind me in a big old SUV apparently wasn’t paying that much attention. I heard when he locked up his brakes, about 65 feet behind me and watched him slide into my trunk. It totaled my car (damage was about the same as book value). But I was lucky… I got annoyed waiting for cops, so called 911 a second time after 18 minutes and said my chest was hurting… ambulance was there 3 minutes later and long story short, five days later I got borg’d (pacemaker for sinus bradycardia and atrioventricular conduction disease… my heart was stopping for 5-7 seconds at a time in wee hours of each morning… freaked the nurses out, tho I was sleeping thru it, at least until they woke me up each day). I also started getting treated for OSA as a result (possibly the OSA is what damaged my heart), so all in all, that accident was a good thing for me.
*I realized after typing this up, that I really wasn’t involved in the Camry accident: I was inside watching TV when it happened and didn’t even hear it, my landlord rang my bell to tell me about it. But I typed it, so you might as well read it.
@baqui63 congrats on the happy accident with your Bonneville, silver linings and what not. I never was a fan of that car so I can’t mourn it with you, much as I love Pontiac, so I’ll just have to be happy for your diagnoses!
@jbartus eh. I don’t really pick cars… More like the situation at the time picks them for me.
I got the 1993 Bonneville SSE in 2004 for $1000 after my 1988 Camry wagon finally died (failed oil pressure lamp coupled with an unnoticed and fairly severe oil leak). That morning, the Bonneville had been moved to my mechanic’s lot because its single owner had just said he wanted to sell it. Since my mechanic was the only guy who had worked on the car, he knew its issues and said I should take it and I did.
The 1988 Camry wagon (dark gray, of course) was purchased 1996 for $4000 from a co-worker who wanted something younger for the more frequent trips he was making between NYC and his fixer-uper house in Maine. I needed something quickly because my (now ex-)wife kept our Camry sedan when we separated.
The Bonneville was totaled in 2008 driving home from a b’day party for daughter unit 2 at which my sister announced that the lawyer for whom she’d worked for years was retiring and she would soon be unemployed. This less than a month after she’d gotten a good deal (tho with payments) on an almost new (<7K miles) 2004 Ford Taurus SEL. So she now had two cars (the other was a nice Solara hatchback coupe) and no job. Since I needed a car after the accident, and the daughter units didn’t like the idea of a coupe, I took the Taurus off my sister’s hands for what she owed on it.
No idea what I’ll do for my next car. The 2004 Ford has <70K miles and runs perfectly, so it isn’t likely to get replaced any time soon, barring accidents.
Twice within six months recently. Both very similar, and neither was my fault.
First one (above), I had stopped on the freeway because of an accident up ahead. The guy behind me didn’t stop and plowed into my car going about 60. Walked away from it, though I was sore for a coupla weeks afterward.
The second one was worse, if only because I wasn’t by myself. I was stopped at a stop light and a drunk driver plowed into the back end of my car going about 70. Again, I walked away from it, but my friend who was in the passenger seat suffered some fractured vertebrae and a ruptured aorta. She’s lucky to be alive, but pretty much fully recovered now.
I’m guessing it was just nature’s way of destroying two diesel Jettas.
I had a 1990 Dodge W250 Club Cab Long Bed pickup, aka the ‘farm implement’ as my Celica-driving brother named it. Big truck. I was hit four times by motorcycles or their riders. Apparently they couldn’t see it. Three times I was stopped and the bikers were trying to thread lanes; twice they whacked my side mirror, once they scraped the front fender. The last hit me from behind and dented the tailgate, possibly with their helmet. All four of them took off, though the two that face planted into the side mirrors were kind of shaky-looking. I snicker when I see the signs and bumper stickers demanding car drivers ‘see’ motorcycles…
I took a brick out of a chicago building with that truck; my only ‘fault’ accident. I was helping a friend move and the only place to unload was an alley and the only way in required a multipoint jockey to make a very restricted turn (the truck was 21’ long). I mis-steered one jockey. I really miss that truck but the illinois salt just did too much damage despite all the washing and cleaning…
@RiotDemon I need a truck every other month or so. I have a Jeep Liberty and its fine the rest of the time, but I do miss my big truck. I’d still love to get a '93 Ramcharger with a 4BT Cummins transplant or a really nice 12 valve Cummins pickup (long bed) but its not in the cards while we’re here; maybe when we retire.
I haven’t had any motorcycles run into the Jeep, though. And its much smaller.
@jbartus I didn’t mean to sound like I was knocking an suv. Those seem more practical than a truck with a little bed because there is more enclosed space.
@duodec occasionally I’ll think that having a truck is convenient… But you’d be surprised how much I can fit in the hatchback. Lawnmower… Screen door…
I had a ranger, so the bed wasn’t the biggest, but there was a time where we managed to cram a couch and a loveseat into it at the same time. It was perfect size for carrying around hay bales.
I was hit head on by a Ford truck. His Tonka truck versus my matchbox, my matchbox lost. Hurt like hell.
I was hit by a car. I assume it was an accident.
Concussion. Unconsciousness. Hospital.
What is it called if a car wreck is done on purpose?
(Other than insurance fraud)
@TheCO2 demolition derby? Party crashing? Of course, this is why official vocab guidelines say we should refer to them as “traffic collisions” rather than “accidents”
@TheCO2 Road rage?
When I was 16 and my brother was 14, we worked all summer to save money to buy a car together. I got into a wreck and totaled it before he ever got a chance to drive it.
A few. Most serious ones: 1) got hit while walking in Walmart parking lot at night, and 2) I swerved to avoid hydroplaning car and start planing myself, rolled all the way over. He took out a street lamp that just missed a third car. Relatively minor damage on both cars, he seemed fine, and worst injury was a seat belt bruise across my chest.
25 car pile up in a white out on the highway. I stopped without hitting anyone, trouble was taxi hit me and an 18 wheeler hit him and then pushed us both into other crap
teen came out of a residential side street, blew the stop sign and I had no traffic signal on a main 4 lane 45mph road. Parents were screaming at me until the cop shut them up and told them their kid caused the accident.
Car totaled both times. Fortunately I was somewhat less than totaled.
Safe for the last 26 years.
The car pedestrian accident later in this thread reminded me… Riding bike slowly on sidewalk due to pedestrians. Car pulled out of the McD’s paying more attention to her fries than me and hit me (narrowly missing a pedestrian who jumped out of the way, I had to go the other way to miss the pedestrian and the car hit me), knocking me into a very busy street with no bike lane where luckily I was missed by on coming cars. 14" bruise on my thigh (This was a college town, driver was a college student). Bike totaled. Driver took off. I got license plate. She got ticket.
This was back in the 90’s leaving a friend’s birthday party in Pasadena …
I was going 35 mph and the other driver ran a red going 40 mph; my light was green for over a block.
I had no time to react. The hit was the front of my car to their right front …
Her car went up the center island and stopped about 150’ down. Windshield, right side door glass, rear window, all busted. Both airbags deployed. Fire department and ambulances were very quick to arrive – for good reason - her 7 year old was in the front passenger seat … and there was only a third of that seat left. The damage on her Civic was from the front right corner to the C-pillar.
My car spun a 180 through the middle of the intersection. Okay, I’m intact. I double check … okay … took a breath, unbuckled the seat belt, opened the door … and walked out.
The front of my Volvo 245 was 2’ shorter and twisted 18" to the right, but everything behind the A-pillar remained intact. The center console was pushed in about a quarter inch, but what was designed to crumple did and what wasn’t didn’t.
The pain came afterwards. Spent the next few months treating for soft tissue injuries (by my regular physician) and had to retain an attorney to sue her piece of shit “lowest priced” insurance company.
I never asked what happened to her daughter.
I still drive a Volvo.
For a long while I had a perfect record – totaled every car I ever owned.
I was driving in my sister’s car around a bend in a bit of snow, started sliding, and ran straight into a rock. I just got a few scratches on my face from the airbag deploying, but I was fine otherwise. She had bought the car 8 months before, so I felt pretty terrible. But it was old and she only bought it for $500 from a family friend, so it wasn’t too much of a loss.
My boyfriend (driving) and I were rear-ended when a person w̶a̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶p̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶a̶d̶ whose “brakes failed” hit someone who consequently hit us. We had just gone through a stop light when this person slammed into the person behind us with enough force to push them straight into our butts. That was a fight with the insurance company as they tried to tell us it was a faulty brakes, when from what we could tell, she had just bought the car and drove it off the lot 10 minutes earlier. My boyfriend’s poor van had to be totaled because of the damage to the frame and trunk hatch. We weren’t injured at all, just a bit shaken up. The accident itself took up two lanes of a main highway, so you can imagine the traffic it caused…
Crashed Porsche 914 into Toyota parked in middle of road without power. Porsche destroyed. 1982.
Spin out in training at Skip Barber Racing School at Lime Rock, coming into turn 2. Hit tire wall backwards at about 90mph. 2002.
Slammed into Armco (steel rail) (West Bend, Lime Rock) at 160mph during Skip Barber Race Weekend. Car disintegrated, I bounced down the hill in the roll cage. I had to be winched out. Wife held up infant son as I arrived back in the pits. Last. Race. Ever. 2003.
(Still drive an M3. Shhh!)
@droopus Not sure race car crashes quite count in the same way since I think the odds of crashing are ga zillion times higher LOL. Glad you lived to tell the tale though.
@Kidsandliz True that. Also in a race crash, you know it’s coming and there’s not a thing you can do about it. I’m glad I lived too.
@droopus are… are you a ghost?
Because you know you have to tell me if you’re a ghost. It’s the law.
http://articles.courant.com/2003-06-15/sports/0306152183_1_trans-am-series-scca-killed
@Chops Heh, interesting. “The base of the uphill” is directly after the back straight and is a common place for accidents. The back straight is about 500 meters into a hard right that goes uphill. Lots of folks don’t make the turn. The main reason is they don’t realize the huge compression they get as they hit the uphill so tend to overcorrect and WHAP!
The Tony Monk death happened a few feet to the left of my Armco hit. He hit concrete, which doesn’t have the give of the steel. A 900-pound car hitting concrete at 150+ doesn’t leave much. Open-wheel track racing is physically and mentally insanely difficult. F1 and NASCAR drivers are athletes.
Not a ghost, but I’m glad I took my wife’s advice. I wasn’t a great driver and probably would have ended up in your story.
I got rear-ended by a guy who was putting Chapstick on and didn’t come to a full stop before just barely hitting me (no damage at all, so we just left without calling the police; get a little farther down the road and there was a huge accident, so probably a good thing we didn’t).
I have avoided accidents many times in my little blue (invisible?) car because people pulled out in front of me, including once when I have no idea how I didn’t hit the guy who was turning right on red (had to go change my underwear when I got home). Traded little blue car for red SUV, and still have people pulling out in front of me as though my car is (my reaction is to move my hand to the horn and prepare to slam on the brakes when I see someone stop at a stop sign when I’m on a main road don’t have one).
The tree was just walking across the road, I didn’t have time to stop!
Worst one resulted in a broken jaw and femur (oh, the pain). I got a helicopter ride…remember the loud noise.
@pcolachiller I hope you at least got credit for discovering a new species of tree (grin)
@pcolachiller that was supposed to go to @ethansight - sorry about that… wasn’t paying attention.
Drive a big car, and you won’t get totaled. Walk and you go to the hospital.
@olperfesser (#4) Yeah, those left right turns will get you every time.
@LovelyLadyBumps I didn’t list the accident where I broke my ribs. I was driving along feeling fine and all of a sudden I blacked out - it was like I had a seizure (this was the year I had all the accidents and had been taken off my meds cold turkey). I come to and realize that my Mazda 9 SUV had rolled up and over a parked Toyota Tacoma (in a residential neighborhood less than a mile from my office). Totally destroyed the right side of my car from front to back. Thought USAA would total it but the estimate came through $500 less than their threshold to total it. Got it fixed and drove it for about a year before I traded it in last May for my 2015 Kia Forte5. That’s the one that’s had two accidents where I rear ended someone (Nov 2015 & Feb 2016).
@LovelyLadyBumps
The fuck? Try not driving on your meds and actually consider others on the road. How about not driving at all? What will it take? You killing someone?
@LovelyLadyBumps I hate to say it, @mehtherfucker was way less diplomatic than I would have been, but I share much of the same sentiment. How your license has not been rescinded is beyond me.
While I can understand the hesitance to remove yourself from the road, the hassle of having to depend on other people or mass transit in our very non-mass-transit society, the reality is that you’ve had by my count no less than six accidents in the last 2-3 years, any single one of which could have resulted in your killing some hapless pedestrian or another motorist. Your convenience is not more important than another person’s life.
Yeah carpooling is a pain and whatnot but millions of people manage with that hassle every day. The same with taking the bus. Please, for the sake of the person you may kill some day, think about what you’re doing.
I can’t pretend to know about the intimate details of whatever ails you but I like to think that in your place after the third accident I would have been thinking long and hard about whether or not I belonged behind the wheel, never mind the fifth or sixth.
@mehtherfucker @jbartus My spouse & I went to my then doc and told him about how bad the meds were interfering with my life and that we needed him to decrease them or put me on alternate meds. The doc gave me one month’s worth of new meds and then when I called the next week to make my appointment for the next month, was told that the doc had fired me from the practice for questioning their judgement. This is when I went off the meds cold turkey and before I knew that based on how long I had been the meds that I had been on, I should’ve been tapered off them because they alter your brain chemistry if you’re on them for more than a couple of weeks at the dose I had been on - I’d been on it for close to a year (hence the blackout the next month).
I am now seeing a better doctor who understands my need to be on medication that doesn’t interfere with my ability to work or drive. Though I am not in any way trying to use this as an excuse, I was chronically exhausted at the time because my 22 year old son had come him with a massive TBI after being in a coma for 7 months and I was pretty much the sole caregiver for him. The Military did not pay for any of his care or treatment or recovery and despite his massive disability, because he lived with us, my income and my spouse’s disqualified my son from getting assistance through his Medicaid. I was doing all of the physical labor of bathing him, getting him dressed, taking him to the bathroom, doing his laundry, helping him walk up and down the stairs, taking him to the docs, working 40+ hours a week at my own job, plus taking care of what things my spouse couldn’t do (such as the grocery shopping - my son’s food had to be purchased separately since it was paid for through funds from SSI/Social Security in his bank account), the cooking (again, my spouse can’t cook and my son was on a special diet because he couldn’t swallow food unless it was thickened so I had to cook all of our food together then thicken his food up from that and feed him), and take care of his dealings with the military. I went for months on 2-3 hours of sleep. My dad filled in during the day but left when I left for work at 7:30 AM and my spouse got home at 3:30 PM.
Carpooling was something I looked into after my son was in rehab after the first accident but my office isn’t public transportation accessible and my spouse is on the road at 4:30 AM. My work wouldn’t let me switch hours to commute with them, nor would my elderly dad agree to stay with us during the week so I could carpool with my spouse if my work agreed. We live 30 miles from my office and despite putting up ads for carpools for months from my area, no one responded. Even if I could take public transportation, I would have had to leave the house at 4:30 AM with my spouse to have him drop me at the closest subway, so that still wouldn’t have worked. I would have to hire someone to come in for three hours until my dad got there and we didn’t have the money for that. I could’ve turned my car back in but I still would’ve had to pay my car payment and have it impact my credit. I couldn’t and can’t file bankruptcy because it would mean my spouse would lose their security clearance.
I consider myself very fortunate that no one else got hurt or killed. I feel very fortunate that I didn’t end up dying too. The other two “accidents” were claims I made because I misjudged the size of my SUV pulling it into the garage in the snow so I could put my son in the car to take him to therapy and I scratched the side of the car up and the second one was because I was trying to pull into a parking space at work in it and scratched the side of the SUV on a cement pillar which happened within two months of me getting the vehicle.
I had only gotten an SUV because I had to trade my 2 seater car in at a huge loss for this ginormous SUV that I had driven for all of two days before he got home with his wheelchair and all his equipment we’d have to take whenever we went out plus changes of clothes/adult diapers since he was incontinent as well as giant medicine containers since he was on 25 of them spaced throughout the day. It was the only vehicle that I could get approved for because my credit was shot from driving to another state for 7 months to be with him while he was in the coma. I drained my 401k for his care, my bills, his bills I inherited, and then getting this stupid SUV. I couldn’t not work during all of this because we needed every cent that came in.
ETA:
The one I was not at fault for was someone side swiping me. The accident with my exhusband was in 2000. The one from November 2015 and February 2016 were totally my fault and I recognize that.
@LovelyLadyBumps I feel kind of shitty after reading all of that. Without the context (which you were under no obligation to share at any time) I admittedly assumed that the non-specified accidents were not dissimilar in circumstance to the ones you did elaborate on (for what it’s worth I wouldn’t even count those scratching incidents). I apologize for the assumption and judgement that accompanied it. I cannot even begin to imagine what it’s like to be you, dealing with the circumstances you have been dealt, you certainly don’t need the grief of getting piled on by strangers on an online forum for circumstances they don’t know the first thing about.
I don’t really know what else to say except that I hope things get better for you, your husband, and your son. Being uncomfortably close to him in age I can’t even imagine… I… anything more I could try to say I’m sure you’ve heard a million times. I wish you all the best.
@LovelyLadyBumps Justification for a gofundme page - and I’ll contribute - no justification to put untold innocent lives at risk. The judge would see it the same way if the consequences of your making a choice to drive had led to tragedy. You’re right to say you are lucky it didn’t. Just like all those lives you could have taken are lucky too.
Don’t drive impaired.
When I was sixteen, going camping with my parents (because they knew if they left me home, there would most likely be shenanigans), I was sleeping in the backseat and a drunk ran a stop sign, hitting the car where my head was. Three cats that were loose in the car were never seen again, they found the damned dog, and they couldn’t find me. I was wedged between the front and back seat on the floor. They got me out, the car caught fire shortly after that.
I ended up with a broken sternum and back (lost an inch in height). The drunk driver died, leaving behind a wife with three children and no insurance.
Then a few years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in Anaheim (I’m in San Diego), fairly early when a truck didn’t see me and pulled into my lane. There would have been contact and according to our insurance company, I should have let him hit me (I have that in writing). But when things are happening that quickly, the first thing I wanted to do was avoid getting hit. So, I moved over, but I guess I moved too quickly. And even though the car and wheels were facing the road straight ahead, the car kept sliding over to the right, where it hit the curb, then slid across wet grass and rolled over one and a quarter times, hit a fence, did a 180° and landed on Miramar property. When everything came to a stop, the car was on it’s side, passenger side down, facing the opposite direction of where I was headed.
The guy who caused it saw it happening and was the one who pulled me out of the car (I couldn’t undo the seatbelt, I was hanging). I remember the CD player was still going. I did turn that off.
I was pretty shaken up, but there was no major physical damage. But I don’t drive very far nowadays.
When I called home (I had to use someone else’s phone, I couldn’t find mine) my hands were shaking so badly, he had to dial. It had been less than fifteen minutes since I left home. I wasn’t even ten miles away. And my first words to my husband?
“I totaled the car!”
The Highway Patrol officer stayed with me until he got there (I guess the week before there had been an almost identical accident and the woman wasn’t wearing her seat belt…she didn’t make it). While we waited for the tow truck, Brian emptied the car and put as much as he could in his truck.
Watching the video, you’ll see the fence. Getting it over that fence was the hard part for the tow truck.
@lisaviolet Fuck drunk drivers. Every time there’s a DUI checkpoint setup on the street, I thank the officers when I stop.
For the latter - whoa. That had got to be very very frightening. Glad you did make it out alright.
@lisaviolet how the hell did that trucker miss your giant SUV!!! Christ…
@jbartus Giant? …laughing…it’s a 2005 Escape. Not a very big vehicle.
@lisaviolet it’s bigger than a lot of vehicles on the road. :|
@jbartus Our other car was a '90 Mustang convertible. We sold it because I never felt safe in it again.
@lisaviolet can’t blame you. Convertibles are extremely unsafe in general. A lot of a car’s structural integrity is contingent upon the roof members. Cut em out and…
@jbartus, I have a Mazda Tribute (which I love), which is essentially the same as a Ford Escape… they are officially listed as a “compact SUV.” They are actually shorter than many sedans out there.
does backing my ambulance into a police car count as an accident?
@carl669 Yes. Was your first reaction “Oh. Fuck.”?
@narfcake well, my first reaction was “what the fuck was that?!”. my second reaction after seeing what i hit was “oh fuck”. luckily, the captain on duty that night was cool about it. he said “besides the shit we’re going to give you about this for the next year, i think you should have to go sweep the gun range for empty casings.” (outdoor range the police department also let us use)
so, all in all, i got off pretty easy. but man, they definitely lived up to the promise to give me shit about it.
@carl669 No - it sounds like a rite of passage for a bone collector.
@carl669 Free brass. Nice. Unless they made you give them back…
@duodec i had to give them back. it was mostly 9mm and .40. at that time, i just had a .45, so it was of no use to me. and, i didn’t reload my own anyway. but, the range was quite nice and to be able to use it for free at just about any time was an awesome perk!
@MrsPavlov bone collector?!? how dare you! i also collected various bodily fluids.
I got side-swiped by a delivery truck the first day after buying my first car. I was 18 and it was a junker anyway and just cosmetic body damage, so I didn’t even bother having it fixed. It was mostly just embarrassing, with a car full of my friends, and me the first one to have a car of their own.
Got rear-ended on a wet slushy highway by a guy whose English wasn’t very good and he could not comprehend the cop telling him that he was at fault. I had slowed down to avoid another fender-bender ahead of me, and the guy behind me didn’t slow in time. In the end it was moot whether he accepted fault or not, because he had no insurance (which was legal in that state at the time) so again I just accepted the body damage.
Got rear-ended on a very busy road by an elderly guy who then drove off. I had my 18-month-old son in the car and was kind of freaked out, although he seemed fine. Long story short, the old man’s wife had just died and he was addled - in the moment it made sense to him to drive away and find a pay phone to call cops, not thinking about how it looked from my perspective. His insurance paid for my repairs and replacement carseat for my son. I never heard if they took his license away.
Driving 70mph on the highway, front hood latch released, the hood flew up and smashed the windshield. I don’t believe in a god, but by the grace of something, the car behind me was able to slow down in time to not hit me, and I was able to pull off on the shoulder despite zero forward visibility. Also miraculously, the only damage to me was a few little scratches from broken glass. Well, that and the psychological damage. I couldn’t drive on the highway again for a long time.
My car was rear-ended while I was stopped, waiting for a traffic light. Thirty years later, my car (different car) was rear-ended while waiting at the same traffic light. Relatively minor damage to my car (<$1000 in repairs) and no injuries both times, but jeez.
@macromeh I was rear ended about a decade ago when I was down at SDCC. “I thought you were going to run the red.”
Hard parts damaged on my wagon were the bumper cover, bumper rebar, bumper shocks, rear hatch, frame pull on the rear quarter. Allstate (my insurance) wanted to total my car – they didn’t even want to listen that “I don’t mind if you’re putting used parts; I just want my car fixed.” The other party’s insurance, State Farm, said “let’s see what the body shop thinks.” A used hatch, bumper rebar, and bumper shocks were sourced for $180 instead of the $900 in just labor to repair the aluminum hatch, which kept the grand total of repair to under $3k.
I dropped Allstate the following month.
@narfcake Like a good neighbor…
@narfcake
We also dropped Allstate after an insurance dispute so lengthy and ridiculous that we had to get the top insurance commissioner guy for Florida (Bill Nelson at the time) involved to resolve the issue. Allstate sucks. I pity anyone that has to deal with them. And seriously the damage to our car was less than 1k, ridiculous what we had to go through.
Several little fender-benders (only one my fault).
The most expensive, however, for me was hitting a deer just last year. If you looked at the damage, you’d say “replace the driver’s side headlight and bang out a couple of dents in the fender and door - $500 tops”. However, it triggered the side-curtain airbags. Had to replace all the airbags, both front seat-belts, and the entire door (because it was cheaper to get a door than to replace a sensor and fix the existing door). $5000 when all was said and done - and, of course, I had liability only so that was out-of-pocket. ouch
My other really bad experience wasn’t for me. I can promise that when you get a phone call and the CallerID says “911 Emergency”, it makes your heart sink. Teenage son rolled his truck and it ended up upside-down. Truck was totaled. Child ended up without a bruise - only a piece of glass near his elbow from when he crawled out. Three years ago this weekend, now that I’m thinking about it.
@smyle I once hit a deer which did some damage to my car, though not as extensive as your experience. I had no collision coverage, but my comprehensive coverage (fire, theft, vandalism, etc.) paid for the repairs, with only $100 deductible. (Allstate)
@macromeh The average (according to stats I’ve seen) is that in Kansas (where I live) a driver hits a deer once every 5 years. I’ve made it with 2 deer collisions in my 45 years (31 of those driving). I would have paid far more for comprehensive over the years than I would by paying out-of-pocket. It’s just a big hit all at once.
@smyle I had exactly the same thing happen to me - the damage (crumpled hood and fender, antler through the radiator) would only have come to a couple hundred bucks if the airbags hadn’t deployed. And since it was a 20-year-old Escort, it wasn’t really worth fixing.
The car was an Escort, I mean. I have no idea what the deer did for a living.
Had a few. Funniest one was back when I had a Volkswagon Camper and I was a pony-tail tye-dye wearing hippie… and I broadsided an FBI agent.
You talk about getting your butt puckered up when I stepped out of my bus to see a guy in a sportcoat and sunglasses talking on a microphone with the cord stretched into his car. Man I thought I was toast. He turned out to be super cool and it was just a ticket.
Far too many to enumerate.
@DrunkCat Your name says it all.
Only have been in 2 accidents and was the driver in one. A 19 year old in an Audi A4 rear ended my Mazda 3 (zoom zoom) in a construction zone on the highway when I was going down to my Mom’s for the weekend. After being rear ended, the driver side of my Mazda was thrown into the median/concrete divider since there wasn’t a shoulder, mostly above the front tire was messed up. Kid tried to be a jerk to the state trooper until the trooper told him he shouldn’t have hit me. Turns out he didn’t have his drivers license on him, proof of insurance, and the plates were out of date. Also, the tow truck for the kid’s car picks up the wrong car because we have to wait until the cars are picked up since it was a construction zone. Whole thing took about 3 hours between the tow trucks and looking up the kids license. Once this was finally finished, the state trouper took me to a rest area up the road where my mom is waiting, gives her 2 hugs, and his boss meets us there and gives my mom a hug. I was super polite so the state trooper really liked me. My mom had a very stressful weekend, my sister was in an accident about 18 hrs before I was in mine. My sister’s car was totaled and my car should have been totaled but I took it to a crappy body shop the first time I got it repaired.
@skyvette427 Yikes!
@skyvette427 Wow. That could give Subaru’s ‘They Lived’ campaign a run for its money
I don’t drive, but I’ve been a passenger in the occasional fender-bender. Always had my seatbelt on.
As a kid, I was hit by cars three times. Never going fast enough to cause damage. I’m a bit more careful when crossing the street these days.
The worst vehicular accident I was involved in was a giant chunk of ice flying off the back of a tractor-trailer and smashing into the windshield of my Dad’s minivan, right in front of me in the passenger seat. The windshield cracked, but held. Dad overtook the truck, and forced the driver over to the median while I called 911. The trucker was pretty blasé about the whole thing until a Jersey State Trooper pulled up and gave him the riot act.
I’ve been in a couple - hit a deer once, and was a passenger in a couple fender benders.
The worst was a few years ago. A friend wanted to show off his sports car, and took us for a ride out in the country. We were going way too fast, swerved to miss a deer, rolled three times, hit a tree, and skidded for about 30 feet.
I was in the passenger side of the back seat. I had a minor concussion, a nosebleed, and some bruising from the seatbelt. The person beside me had a compound fracture. The guys in the front were completely unhurt. All in all, it could’ve been a lot worse.
@dannybeans Oh no! Poor lil’ bugeye! Best colors too!
Totaled my first truck when I was 18. I was going 45mph coming up to an intersection with a green light. There was a guy in a van stopped in the turn lane going the opposite direction. He decided to turn left in front of me, so I ended up hitting the side of his van hard enough to push him into the turn lane of the cross road. All the windows on the side and back of the van exploded. Even though one of the passengers was loaded onto a backboard… They all walked out of the hospital before I was even treated.
The airbag went off smashing my glasses on my face, burning my skin with the airbag powder, and pretty uncomfortable bruising from the seatbelt… I broke my arm in three places, and fucked up my tendon connected to my middle finger when the airbag flung my arm into the rearview mirror breaking it off the windshield. Two surgeries and a cast… Now I have a metal plate in my arm, and I can’t snap my fingers on that hand anymore. Could of been much worse.
After that, I got an old 82 Celica (this was in 2001) while I was suing my insurance because the other people didn’t have insurance and my insurance wasn’t willing to pay (even though I had uninsured motorist coverage…)
Driving it on the highway during rush hour, the tire tread separated, peeling off and flying up into my windshield. I lost control and went completely across all three lanes a couple of times before I managed to force the car into the guardrail to stop. I have no idea how I managed not to hit anyone. I was in tears. Luckily someone stopped and let me use their phone. After this I got my first cell phone.
I always wear my seatbelt.
The worst part is the hospital completely sucked in my care… And my mom being a nurse, took me out of the hospital because they wouldn’t do surgery. So I spent the entire next day on a shit load of pain meds because the medic in the ambulance insisted on splinting my arm for the ten minute drive… And then the hospital resplinted it with a fiberglass splint… Well, to splint it, they forced me to bend my wrist upward which ground all the pieces of bone together in my arm that was already three times the size of normal.
So I went home from the hospital and puked up the Percocet they gave me… Took a bunch of hydrocodone… Slept surrounded by a shit load of pillows so I couldn’t move… Slept until med time. Took meds, slept, took meds, slept… Next day, surgery.
@RiotDemon I hate insurance companies. So happy to take your money, so unwilling to pay out.
@jbartus they ended up settling. Too bad I was pretty stupid about the money. Over 15 years later, I still have a mattress and dryer that I bought with that money. I’m sure some other things too, but no major purchases that I remember.
Ah, to be young and stupid in love again.
@RiotDemon I suspect you need a new mattress.
@jbartus i didn’t buy them right away, so they’re not 15 years old.
My mattress is actually in awesome shape. It feels like it did when I first bought it. Anyone that sleeps on it loves it. I know everyone suggests replacing your mattress every ten years or something… but if it’s barely worn, why?
@RiotDemon must have been a really good one. My mattress is ~13 years old. I’m sleeping on the couch.
@jbartus I believe it’s a serta beautyrest, pillow top. The king size cost me around $1100. I’m not sure about inflation how much that would be today. It was worth every penny to me.
I’ve been driving for almost 35yrs; I wonder if my accident rate is higher than it should be. It’s possible I should pay better attention to help avoid issues?
TL;DR: A few cases of rapid deceleration while at the wheel (one that’s kinda exciting); no one’s ever been hurt.
I have been in more than a few…
First official accident was while my mother was pregnant with me. Two teenagers decided to steal their dad’s motorcycle and go joy riding through the alleys. My dad ended up hitting them as they flew out of an alley at a cross road. Teens ended up in the hospital with injuries. Mom went as a precaution and that’s when mom and dad found out they were having a little girl.
Silver lining.
There had been others where no one was hurt or involved inanimate objects.
Worst one, for me, has to be two years ago. A day before her 8th birthday, me and my daughter were rear-ended at a red light on the way to her endo appointment (she has type 1 diabetes). The other driver swore he didn’t see me until it was too late. I have a very black car…it was a very clear day. He also hit me doing somewhere around 50mph, lucky we weren’t hurt worse. Ended up spending the entire day at the hospital after my daughter’s appointment, because we both had to go to the ER and get checked out.
I hope that we never have to experience that again. Ever!
Run over in High School. And thats not even the reason they call me Mr. Glass.
Looking at a couple of pics here it is amazing that people lived through those things that barely resemble cars anymore.
@Kidsandliz some cars are built really really well for surviving collisions… Subaru even used a real wrecked car in one of their ad campaigns:
@jbartus Guess I need an updated car. The one that died last year was a 1990. My current “new” one is 2005.
@Kidsandliz I drove exclusively older used vehicles until this May, there’s nothing wrong with them. I just opted to spend on a newer car because my work was stacking the miles on fast and repairs for mileage based things were coming on hot and heavy. Car history:
@jbartus I was thinking of the safety improvements. For the first time ever I own a car with airbags (which of course have now been recalled LOL).
@Kidsandliz oh gotcha. Yeah they’re crazy now. The thing is they got bigger on the outsides but the insides are either the same size or smaller due to having to cram all of those airbags in so keep that in mind!
In 1982 and ‘83, I rode my bike from Flushing Queens into midtown Manhattan ~6 days a week, 11 miles one way. Twice, going down the right side of 2nd Ave, obeying lights etc., cars made right turns through me. Neither driver stopped, though on the 2nd car (a station wagon with glass windows all around) I shattered the passenger side rear window swinging a 4’ piece of very heavy chain from around my neck as I slid under the back of the car. (I met cute women with both crashes, too, tho nothing came of either meeting.)
In 1999ish, my parked Camry wagon has hit on the side of the rear wheel by a drunk driver (SIL of neighbor to my landlord) when his illegal u-turn (over the median with curbs, etc.) got wider after being hit by the car he didn’t see. Cops arrested him in the ambulance and handcuffed him to the gurney for the trip to the hospital. (That accident is why I won’t consider Geico insurance… their delaying tactics ended up costing me $416 out of pocket in excess rental fees: scummy company. At least the drunk ended up losing his job (commercial truck driver), and eventually his house and wife, as a result of the arrest. Not saying he deserved this, but sometimes people get what they ask for.)*
Most recent accident (2008) was getting rear ended in my 1993 Bonneville SSE on the Grand Central Pkwy (I stopped due to traffic, guy behind me in a big old SUV apparently wasn’t paying that much attention. I heard when he locked up his brakes, about 65 feet behind me and watched him slide into my trunk. It totaled my car (damage was about the same as book value). But I was lucky… I got annoyed waiting for cops, so called 911 a second time after 18 minutes and said my chest was hurting… ambulance was there 3 minutes later and long story short, five days later I got borg’d (pacemaker for sinus bradycardia and atrioventricular conduction disease… my heart was stopping for 5-7 seconds at a time in wee hours of each morning… freaked the nurses out, tho I was sleeping thru it, at least until they woke me up each day). I also started getting treated for OSA as a result (possibly the OSA is what damaged my heart), so all in all, that accident was a good thing for me.
*I realized after typing this up, that I really wasn’t involved in the Camry accident: I was inside watching TV when it happened and didn’t even hear it, my landlord rang my bell to tell me about it. But I typed it, so you might as well read it.
@baqui63 congrats on the happy accident with your Bonneville, silver linings and what not. I never was a fan of that car so I can’t mourn it with you, much as I love Pontiac, so I’ll just have to be happy for your diagnoses!
@jbartus eh. I don’t really pick cars… More like the situation at the time picks them for me.
I got the 1993 Bonneville SSE in 2004 for $1000 after my 1988 Camry wagon finally died (failed oil pressure lamp coupled with an unnoticed and fairly severe oil leak). That morning, the Bonneville had been moved to my mechanic’s lot because its single owner had just said he wanted to sell it. Since my mechanic was the only guy who had worked on the car, he knew its issues and said I should take it and I did.
The 1988 Camry wagon (dark gray, of course) was purchased 1996 for $4000 from a co-worker who wanted something younger for the more frequent trips he was making between NYC and his fixer-uper house in Maine. I needed something quickly because my (now ex-)wife kept our Camry sedan when we separated.
The Bonneville was totaled in 2008 driving home from a b’day party for daughter unit 2 at which my sister announced that the lawyer for whom she’d worked for years was retiring and she would soon be unemployed. This less than a month after she’d gotten a good deal (tho with payments) on an almost new (<7K miles) 2004 Ford Taurus SEL. So she now had two cars (the other was a nice Solara hatchback coupe) and no job. Since I needed a car after the accident, and the daughter units didn’t like the idea of a coupe, I took the Taurus off my sister’s hands for what she owed on it.
No idea what I’ll do for my next car. The 2004 Ford has <70K miles and runs perfectly, so it isn’t likely to get replaced any time soon, barring accidents.
First one (above), I had stopped on the freeway because of an accident up ahead. The guy behind me didn’t stop and plowed into my car going about 60. Walked away from it, though I was sore for a coupla weeks afterward.
The second one was worse, if only because I wasn’t by myself. I was stopped at a stop light and a drunk driver plowed into the back end of my car going about 70. Again, I walked away from it, but my friend who was in the passenger seat suffered some fractured vertebrae and a ruptured aorta. She’s lucky to be alive, but pretty much fully recovered now.
I’m guessing it was just nature’s way of destroying two diesel Jettas.
@mrslug Volkswagen’s having a hard run of things
I had a 1990 Dodge W250 Club Cab Long Bed pickup, aka the ‘farm implement’ as my Celica-driving brother named it. Big truck. I was hit four times by motorcycles or their riders. Apparently they couldn’t see it. Three times I was stopped and the bikers were trying to thread lanes; twice they whacked my side mirror, once they scraped the front fender. The last hit me from behind and dented the tailgate, possibly with their helmet. All four of them took off, though the two that face planted into the side mirrors were kind of shaky-looking. I snicker when I see the signs and bumper stickers demanding car drivers ‘see’ motorcycles…
I took a brick out of a chicago building with that truck; my only ‘fault’ accident. I was helping a friend move and the only place to unload was an alley and the only way in required a multipoint jockey to make a very restricted turn (the truck was 21’ long). I mis-steered one jockey. I really miss that truck but the illinois salt just did too much damage despite all the washing and cleaning…
@duodec that’s what I call a truck. Short beds make me want to cry and those extra seats are worth it IMHO!
@jbartus short beds are sad. Might as well just get an suv. The back would hold about the same amount of stuff once you flip the seats down.
@RiotDemon Height. An open short bed still allows for taller things. Also, a bed allows stinky and dirty stuff to stay outside.
@narfcake this is true. Still makes me sad. I’d rather drive a ridiculously long truck.
I drive a prius now, but I miss driving a truck. I just don’t have the need for it anymore.
@RiotDemon Hey, don’t knock my SUV!
@RiotDemon I need a truck every other month or so. I have a Jeep Liberty and its fine the rest of the time, but I do miss my big truck. I’d still love to get a '93 Ramcharger with a 4BT Cummins transplant or a really nice 12 valve Cummins pickup (long bed) but its not in the cards while we’re here; maybe when we retire.
I haven’t had any motorcycles run into the Jeep, though. And its much smaller.
@jbartus I didn’t mean to sound like I was knocking an suv. Those seem more practical than a truck with a little bed because there is more enclosed space.
@RiotDemon I tend to agree. Especially as I have a roof rack and will soon have a roof basket for anything smelly and the like.
@duodec occasionally I’ll think that having a truck is convenient… But you’d be surprised how much I can fit in the hatchback. Lawnmower… Screen door…
I had a ranger, so the bed wasn’t the biggest, but there was a time where we managed to cram a couch and a loveseat into it at the same time. It was perfect size for carrying around hay bales.
@RiotDemon ewwww Ranger.
We have an F-250 Super Duty we use occasionally but mostly it sits around rusting and holding the snow plow we’ve barely used.
@jbartus aww, so much hate for the ranger. I loved that truck. It treated me well for many years.
@RiotDemon it’s a bad car and a worse truck. Our Windstar had more power. Where is the redeeming quality?
@jbartus according to Google the Windstar had a 3.8L V6. My ranger had the 4.0L, not the 3.0L that a lot of other people had.
Maybe I should of been knocking your suv?
@RiotDemon @jbartus
Make sure one of you reports that here.
@duodec reports what?
@RiotDemon my SUV doesn’t pretend to be a truck
@jbartus my truck didn’t pretend. It was very much a truck.
You were all upset when you thought I was knocking your suv… Why you hating on my truck now?
@RiotDemon knocking someones ride might be construed as a reportable accident, at least in this thread.
@RiotDemon I can’t help it, it’s a Ranger