My most spectacular accident was when a lady yacking on her cell phone sailed through a red light and broadsided me at 40+mph in my first Honda Civic. My car was picked up off the street, rotated 180 degrees and flung about 30 feet onto the sidewalk. It was lunch hour downtown and pure luck that no one was on the sidewalk. The police were obviously shocked that no one in my car was seriously hurt. One cop looked at the massive damage to my car and her BMW, saw that my friend and I were unhurt (he had a mild concussion from hitting his head on the side window) and said he was buying his daughter a Honda.
My funniest accident we were sitting at a stop sign in the rain and a police car hydroplaned into us. No damage, the cop was suitably embarassed and apologetic.
@moondrake my brother had a similar-ish accident in a Honda. It was over a decade ago and I don’t remember many details but he supposedly landed with his ass on the ground, car totaled of course. Went to the hospital because some sort of regulation but he walked out shortly after. Then again, he’s always been military material.
@moondrake @ alphapeaches For the law enforcement it’s called CYA. They always call for paramedics on any type of scene where someone claims injuries- no matter how small or nonexistent that they are. Husband just “loves” the middle of the night domestics, bar fights and the prisoners who want to get out of jail for a while. It’s why he is now assigned to the engine company- he got tired of writing the EMS reports.
10 years ago in November some idiot lady just didn’t feel like stopping for a stop sign
Life changed
Broken knee cap
Nerve damage
Ruptured disc
Got a settlement check
Would return it for my health back.
Does getting hit by a car count? Just out of boarding school I went to visit some friends and we got hungry so we went to get food. The driver was someone I didn’t know and he was driving like an idiot. He was speeding when we came upon a curve and we went off the road into a farmers field. It had been raining for two days and we couldn’t get the truck pushed out so we (four of us) started walking back to his house. It was a backroad with little traffic and steep ditches on both sides so when a car was coming up behind us we were getting ready to cross to the other side. The other three made it in time but yelled at me to stay put because the car was going too fast. Unfortunately the driver was watching the other three and started to drift off the road and when she finally saw me she slammed on the breaks, over corrected and was sliding toward me. I had started running when I saw her drifting but she hit me and I flew up and over the car and landed in the ditch full of water. Not a fun time and I had to stay overnight in the hospital. She had just gotten her license two weeks earlier.
If that doesn’t count- just bought a new car and was sitting at a red light when I was hit from behind and the bumper was ripped off my new car.
@jerk_nugget Thank you that means a lot to me. I was lucky and I know it. I only had to get a lipoma surgically removed from my thigh a few years later where the car made impact. Everything else healed up rather well for the most part. When I landed I did a face plant and I now have the joy of arthritis in my neck and lower back where the shock vibrated down along my spine. Fun times!
Spun out in winter a few times, was a passenger in a car that got rear-ended gently at a stop light, had a deer run into the side of my car, had another person drive their car (presumably) into the side of mine while it was parked a few winters ago, and the other evening, a woman door-dinged my driver side door while I was sitting in the driver’s seat, before exclaiming, “I didn’t hurt your car”, without looking.
Oh, and I almost got rear ended driving back from Kentucky for that eclipse. Squealing tires and an excited looking driver in the rear view… bumpers must have been an inch from touching.
@InnocuousFarmer my partner was in the drive thru at mcdonalds or something recently when a woman apparently backed into him and basically did the same “it’s fine” kind of thing. wtf? and why are you backing up in the drive thru to begin with? apparently she announced flippantly “oh, i thought i had enough space.” for what? and how can you have any space with a car right behind you?
@InnocuousFarmer haha, same - one of these days i have to get a video of my neighbor parking her minivan. we have one driveway that splits into (opens up into?) two ‘lots’ (each holds 4-5 cars) and watching her it’s as though she has a compulsion in which she must drive over every inch of pavement before finally coming to a stop. either that or she’s imagining she’s driving an eighteen wheeler. i always wonder where she drives to since we live in the city. wherever she goes, she must just drive by and not actually park and go in.
@InnocuousFarmer I certainly don’t condone it, but I understand the impulse between hit and run drivers. If I pretend hard enough it just won’t have happened. Watched a movie last night with that theme, four teens whose parents are out of town break into the extensive gun cabinet and engage in some drunken target practice, accidentally killing a neighbor kid. The desperate efforts to wish it away, hide it, escape it, of course destroy them all.
soon after i got my license, my dad had to let go of our beloved chevy nova hatchback. he returned home with a geo prism and i cried. that car was…well, i never felt particularly safe in it.
-brakes went to the floor in the rain as i approached a red light and i ended up ‘hitting’ the guy in front of me. barely tapped him thankfully, not even a scratch on either car but he called the cops…who found out he was driving a company car with no license or insurance. like a year later he apparently tried to claim the accident gave him whiplash. only damage was to my parents’ insurance.
-was moving out of my dorm and finally on the road when a woman apparently dropped her sunglasses and rammed into me when reaching for them, causing me to hit the person in front of me. minor trunk/bumper damage
-gave my self a bloody nose and lip one time stopping hard and not wearing a belt (not smart, people!) and bashed my own face on the steering wheel. no damage except to my face
-driving on the highway when a guy driving erratically and speeding tapped the back side of my car trying to pass me - i regained control of the car but then he hit me again ramming me into the jersey barrier. managed to come to a stop and not hit anyone but ended up with a bent axle and some $$ repairs. he never stopped.
-rear ended waiting at a stop light - that one really scared the shit out of me as they hit me hard and i never saw it coming. they never stopped. bumper scraped and dented.
and that’s it i think. that’s really more than enough. i’m in my thirties now and just constantly paranoid about all the other idiots on the road. driving used to be fun and relaxing. so much for that.
@jerk_nugget My beloved Nova was totaled twice within a month. First accident I got sideswiped on the interstate and ping ponged between two cars. Car was still driveable, so I drove it while waiting for the insurance to decide what to do (it was 12 years old at the time, not much value in their eyes). About a month after that, a lady in a van rear ended me full speed while I was stopped to make a left turn.
I got notice from both insurance agents that the car was totaled within days. Bummer is I only got one check.
@themutilator a bummer indeed. i loved that car! right now my car is a '99 camry - when my partner drives it i admit i am not a very good passenger if i’m sober. (usually if we drive together it’s because he’s my DD so it’s not a problem, lol.) he’s a great driver, but he seems to think if someone else causes an accident, the magic car fairy will fly down and give us a brand new car to drive home in because we have magical car insurance. i on the other hand know our car is old enough where if there’s any real damage it’ll be totaled and we’ll be without a paddle, so i’m more cautious of the idiots we have to drive around.
@alphapeaches yup, this one is the only car my family ever bought new, and they bought it to replace an older camry…which replaced another before it. when my mom inherited my gramma’s rav4, the camry came to my partner and i. honestly it still looks great and drives hella smooth. my mom still misses it too, i think.
Passenger seat on a road trip with a friend - plowed into a suddenly-slowed van in front of us and totaled my friend’s car. We escaped with nothing but some whiplash (thank god for effective crumple zones) but I still have trouble sitting up front in any vehicle I’m not driving myself. Nothing like blacking out for a split second and looking up from the impact to see flames coming out of the car engine to really plant some deep-seated anxiety!
Yup. My husband (fiance at the time of the accident) was driving home with me and our son. It was around 2am and he fell asleep at the wheel. We went off the road and hit a small hill that caused us to roll. The insurance guy said from the marks left behind we rolled at least 5x before stopping. My husband and our (then) 3 year old son were fine. But my seatbelt caused a lot of internal damage on me. I was rushed into surgery to repair lacerations on my liver and small intestine. They ended up having to take out about 1" of my colon because it was damaged beyond repair. I had pretty good whiplash, and had bruised my knee cap from where it smacked into the dashboard pretty severely, it was super swollen for the first week or so. Spent 6 months going to physical therapy for those 2 problems. My knee still clicks 7 years later. My ribs were also bruised, one had a hairline fracture in it. All in all I spent 10 days in the hospital, and gained a new nick-name from friends.
I am now known as semi colon.
Best part was my husband and I got married a week and a half after I got out of the hospital. I was so doped up on pain killers to get through the ceremony I don’t even remember it. The pictures are nice though
I’ve driven into a pole (fender bender), run off the road at high speed (everything okay), and I have decapitated a deer (totaled both the deer and my car), but I’ve never been in an accident involving two vehicles.
Bonus image of my car after the deer incident. There’s some blood, but not much indication that there’s $7000 worth of damage lol.
@cranky1950 You would be amazed at the cost of repairing a car made out of fiberglass and aluminum. The hood, front facia, one quarter-panel and one headlight assembly all had to be replaced, but that was it. Seven grand. That time I had a fender bender with a pole? Fifteen hundred for a new bumper. It’s crazy, and don’t even get me started on the tires.
@rprebel I get it. I hit a deer in my (older, but rather nice) pickup. If you looked at, you’d say “replace the headlight, replace or repair the fender, no big deal $500ish”. But when it hit the fender, it triggered the side-curtain airbags. Net result: just over $5k. And liability-only insurance, of course, so all out-of-pocket.
At sixteen a drunk driver ran a stop sign and broadsided our car. He died. My back was broken.
Then in 2010, a guy pulled into my lane, and I ended up going off the road, rolled over, hit a fence and landed on Miramar Air Station. I was hanging from my seat, the seat belt keeping me there. I walked away from that. Bruised where my seat belt was, but I walked away.
I was with my boyfriend in his old minivan when we were rear ended. It was a chain reaction where first person hit second person who hit us. No one was hurt, but the poor car in the middle was smashed up and had to be towed along with the first car. Thankfully we were able to drive away, but with a large dent across the back hatch (which made it unable to be opened) and broken tail lights. The van ended up being totalled after huge headaches and complications with the first person’s insurance company and the mechanics. What a time that was…
Car crushed by tree while I was in it. Insurance didn’t know whether to categorize it as comprehensive because tree hit me, or collision because I hit tree.
Never been in an at fault accident. Have lucky with damage to me. Total of two totaled vehicles and mostly limited damage otherwise (to me and my cars).
I was in a 25 car pile up that I managed to stop in time and not hit anyone (highway), taxi ran into me, civic into him, 18 wheeler into the civic and pushed the lot of us into 5 cars stacked up. Pickup totaled. Pre-airbag days. Good thing I was wearing a seatbelt. Side windows hurt though when your head hits them.
Teen blew a side road stop sign (I had no traffic signal and was on a main 4 lane road near my house), totaled my car again. Her parents came and were screaming at me until the cop told them to button it; that their kid got the ticket. I saw her again about 4 months later with a red sports car, stopped by a cop. Stupid parents, stupid teen. Took a while to recover from the fracture of my kneecap when it hit the dashboard. They need to redesign the height of dashboards with car accidents in mind.
Got rear ended at a stop sign in my neighborhood in the ghetto van. Didn’t bother to fix the fender. Van was 22 at the time and already had a ‘kid learning how to drive’ dent where she hit a light pole in an empty shopping mall parking lot on a Sunday morning, trying to back up in a straight line. The lady’s insurance company would have just totaled it and I couldn’t afford that to happen so told her not to report it and forget about it. Not sure what she did about the damage to the front of her car.
Got rear ended at a stop sign where the guy then zoomed off around me, changed his mind and came back. He was driving on a suspended license, smelled of alcohol, with no insurance. Ghetto van (which was around 10 at the time) would have been totaled due to the sheet metal damage and low value of it at that point, but he decided to get it fixed if I wouldn’t call the cops. He paid cash and fixed it. So in that respect I got “lucky”.
Hit black ice coming out from under a bridge at dusk outside of Chicago (highway) and spun out. Had the sense to U-turn, while on the shoulder, to head back to the bridge (and then was in deep enough snow I couldn’t get out). The next 5 cars under the bridge spun out too. Three of them ran into each other as they went right where I would have been were it not for the u-turn. Tow truck got rich that evening pulling 6 of us out of the snow and back onto the road (or shoulder depending on the damage). No damage to me fortunately.
Was backing down a friend’s driveway and suddenly, over the drainage pipe, her driveway collapsed while my car was on it. Van was left resting on its frame and needed cranked out. Trashed the muffler, a tire and a few underbody parts.
Hmm that is a lot of accidents. But in my defense none were my fault.
Why? You a cop or somethin’?
My most spectacular accident was when a lady yacking on her cell phone sailed through a red light and broadsided me at 40+mph in my first Honda Civic. My car was picked up off the street, rotated 180 degrees and flung about 30 feet onto the sidewalk. It was lunch hour downtown and pure luck that no one was on the sidewalk. The police were obviously shocked that no one in my car was seriously hurt. One cop looked at the massive damage to my car and her BMW, saw that my friend and I were unhurt (he had a mild concussion from hitting his head on the side window) and said he was buying his daughter a Honda.
My funniest accident we were sitting at a stop sign in the rain and a police car hydroplaned into us. No damage, the cop was suitably embarassed and apologetic.
@moondrake my brother had a similar-ish accident in a Honda. It was over a decade ago and I don’t remember many details but he supposedly landed with his ass on the ground, car totaled of course. Went to the hospital because some sort of regulation but he walked out shortly after. Then again, he’s always been military material.
@moondrake @ alphapeaches For the law enforcement it’s called CYA. They always call for paramedics on any type of scene where someone claims injuries- no matter how small or nonexistent that they are. Husband just “loves” the middle of the night domestics, bar fights and the prisoners who want to get out of jail for a while. It’s why he is now assigned to the engine company- he got tired of writing the EMS reports.
Yep
A few that belonged to me, but
10 years ago in November some idiot lady just didn’t feel like stopping for a stop sign
Life changed
Broken knee cap
Nerve damage
Ruptured disc
Got a settlement check
Would return it for my health back.
I feel like I’m pretty good at predicting and avoiding other driver’s stupidity. Not so good at predicting my own.
Does getting hit by a car count? Just out of boarding school I went to visit some friends and we got hungry so we went to get food. The driver was someone I didn’t know and he was driving like an idiot. He was speeding when we came upon a curve and we went off the road into a farmers field. It had been raining for two days and we couldn’t get the truck pushed out so we (four of us) started walking back to his house. It was a backroad with little traffic and steep ditches on both sides so when a car was coming up behind us we were getting ready to cross to the other side. The other three made it in time but yelled at me to stay put because the car was going too fast. Unfortunately the driver was watching the other three and started to drift off the road and when she finally saw me she slammed on the breaks, over corrected and was sliding toward me. I had started running when I saw her drifting but she hit me and I flew up and over the car and landed in the ditch full of water. Not a fun time and I had to stay overnight in the hospital. She had just gotten her license two weeks earlier.
If that doesn’t count- just bought a new car and was sitting at a red light when I was hit from behind and the bumper was ripped off my new car.
@WTFsunshine that is really scary! i’m glad you ended up okay.
@jerk_nugget Thank you that means a lot to me. I was lucky and I know it. I only had to get a lipoma surgically removed from my thigh a few years later where the car made impact. Everything else healed up rather well for the most part. When I landed I did a face plant and I now have the joy of arthritis in my neck and lower back where the shock vibrated down along my spine. Fun times!
@WTFsunshine man…bodies, amirite? in all seriousness though,
/giphy glad you’re here
/giphy dammit giphy
@jerk_nugget Gotta love/hate our relationship with the giphy.
Spun out in winter a few times, was a passenger in a car that got rear-ended gently at a stop light, had a deer run into the side of my car, had another person drive their car (presumably) into the side of mine while it was parked a few winters ago, and the other evening, a woman door-dinged my driver side door while I was sitting in the driver’s seat, before exclaiming, “I didn’t hurt your car”, without looking.
Oh, and I almost got rear ended driving back from Kentucky for that eclipse. Squealing tires and an excited looking driver in the rear view… bumpers must have been an inch from touching.
So I’d say “No”, depending on who’s asking.
@InnocuousFarmer my partner was in the drive thru at mcdonalds or something recently when a woman apparently backed into him and basically did the same “it’s fine” kind of thing. wtf? and why are you backing up in the drive thru to begin with? apparently she announced flippantly “oh, i thought i had enough space.” for what? and how can you have any space with a car right behind you?
@jerk_nugget if it had happened slower, I’d have thought that she was a terrible Jedi.
I cannot conceive of the wishful impulse that must consume people in those moments.
@InnocuousFarmer haha, same - one of these days i have to get a video of my neighbor parking her minivan. we have one driveway that splits into (opens up into?) two ‘lots’ (each holds 4-5 cars) and watching her it’s as though she has a compulsion in which she must drive over every inch of pavement before finally coming to a stop. either that or she’s imagining she’s driving an eighteen wheeler. i always wonder where she drives to since we live in the city. wherever she goes, she must just drive by and not actually park and go in.
@InnocuousFarmer I certainly don’t condone it, but I understand the impulse between hit and run drivers. If I pretend hard enough it just won’t have happened. Watched a movie last night with that theme, four teens whose parents are out of town break into the extensive gun cabinet and engage in some drunken target practice, accidentally killing a neighbor kid. The desperate efforts to wish it away, hide it, escape it, of course destroy them all.
soon after i got my license, my dad had to let go of our beloved chevy nova hatchback. he returned home with a geo prism and i cried. that car was…well, i never felt particularly safe in it.
-brakes went to the floor in the rain as i approached a red light and i ended up ‘hitting’ the guy in front of me. barely tapped him thankfully, not even a scratch on either car but he called the cops…who found out he was driving a company car with no license or insurance. like a year later he apparently tried to claim the accident gave him whiplash. only damage was to my parents’ insurance.
-was moving out of my dorm and finally on the road when a woman apparently dropped her sunglasses and rammed into me when reaching for them, causing me to hit the person in front of me. minor trunk/bumper damage
-gave my self a bloody nose and lip one time stopping hard and not wearing a belt (not smart, people!) and bashed my own face on the steering wheel. no damage except to my face
-driving on the highway when a guy driving erratically and speeding tapped the back side of my car trying to pass me - i regained control of the car but then he hit me again ramming me into the jersey barrier. managed to come to a stop and not hit anyone but ended up with a bent axle and some $$ repairs. he never stopped.
-rear ended waiting at a stop light - that one really scared the shit out of me as they hit me hard and i never saw it coming. they never stopped. bumper scraped and dented.
and that’s it i think. that’s really more than enough. i’m in my thirties now and just constantly paranoid about all the other idiots on the road. driving used to be fun and relaxing. so much for that.
@jerk_nugget My beloved Nova was totaled twice within a month. First accident I got sideswiped on the interstate and ping ponged between two cars. Car was still driveable, so I drove it while waiting for the insurance to decide what to do (it was 12 years old at the time, not much value in their eyes). About a month after that, a lady in a van rear ended me full speed while I was stopped to make a left turn.
I got notice from both insurance agents that the car was totaled within days. Bummer is I only got one check.
@themutilator a bummer indeed. i loved that car! right now my car is a '99 camry - when my partner drives it i admit i am not a very good passenger if i’m sober. (usually if we drive together it’s because he’s my DD so it’s not a problem, lol.) he’s a great driver, but he seems to think if someone else causes an accident, the magic car fairy will fly down and give us a brand new car to drive home in because we have magical car insurance. i on the other hand know our car is old enough where if there’s any real damage it’ll be totaled and we’ll be without a paddle, so i’m more cautious of the idiots we have to drive around.
@jerk_nugget I have a camry back home. She’s a reliable car, never gave me much trouble. I’d even go so far as to say I miss her.
@alphapeaches yup, this one is the only car my family ever bought new, and they bought it to replace an older camry…which replaced another before it. when my mom inherited my gramma’s rav4, the camry came to my partner and i. honestly it still looks great and drives hella smooth. my mom still misses it too, i think.
Passenger seat on a road trip with a friend - plowed into a suddenly-slowed van in front of us and totaled my friend’s car. We escaped with nothing but some whiplash (thank god for effective crumple zones) but I still have trouble sitting up front in any vehicle I’m not driving myself. Nothing like blacking out for a split second and looking up from the impact to see flames coming out of the car engine to really plant some deep-seated anxiety!
Yup. My husband (fiance at the time of the accident) was driving home with me and our son. It was around 2am and he fell asleep at the wheel. We went off the road and hit a small hill that caused us to roll. The insurance guy said from the marks left behind we rolled at least 5x before stopping. My husband and our (then) 3 year old son were fine. But my seatbelt caused a lot of internal damage on me. I was rushed into surgery to repair lacerations on my liver and small intestine. They ended up having to take out about 1" of my colon because it was damaged beyond repair. I had pretty good whiplash, and had bruised my knee cap from where it smacked into the dashboard pretty severely, it was super swollen for the first week or so. Spent 6 months going to physical therapy for those 2 problems. My knee still clicks 7 years later. My ribs were also bruised, one had a hairline fracture in it. All in all I spent 10 days in the hospital, and gained a new nick-name from friends.
I am now known as semi colon.
Best part was my husband and I got married a week and a half after I got out of the hospital. I was so doped up on pain killers to get through the ceremony I don’t even remember it. The pictures are nice though
@Ayer87 Is the marriage even valid? Maybe you wouldn’t’ve gone through with it if you were sober!
I’ve driven into a pole (fender bender), run off the road at high speed (everything okay), and I have decapitated a deer (totaled both the deer and my car), but I’ve never been in an accident involving two vehicles.
Bonus image of my car after the deer incident. There’s some blood, but not much indication that there’s $7000 worth of damage lol.
@rprebel How much did you have to kick back to the adjuster?
@cranky1950 You would be amazed at the cost of repairing a car made out of fiberglass and aluminum. The hood, front facia, one quarter-panel and one headlight assembly all had to be replaced, but that was it. Seven grand. That time I had a fender bender with a pole? Fifteen hundred for a new bumper. It’s crazy, and don’t even get me started on the tires.
@rprebel
Seeing how Nissan used headlights from a Lamborghini Diablo, I totally understand the high replacement cost.
(Yeah, I know it’s actually the opposite, but they really did use the same headlights.)
Beyond the material costs are the labor costs. Those Z32s were mechanically packed tight.
Side note: damage an alloy structure on a newer vehicle, and it’s a write off.
http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-corvette-was-totaled-because-of-one-inch-of-1806727930
@rprebel I get it. I hit a deer in my (older, but rather nice) pickup. If you looked at, you’d say “replace the headlight, replace or repair the fender, no big deal $500ish”. But when it hit the fender, it triggered the side-curtain airbags. Net result: just over $5k. And liability-only insurance, of course, so all out-of-pocket.
Good old Lakitu…
@Al_Coholic His 3 coin fee is expensive, though.
At sixteen a drunk driver ran a stop sign and broadsided our car. He died. My back was broken.
Then in 2010, a guy pulled into my lane, and I ended up going off the road, rolled over, hit a fence and landed on Miramar Air Station. I was hanging from my seat, the seat belt keeping me there. I walked away from that. Bruised where my seat belt was, but I walked away.
@lisaviolet
/giphy stranger hugs
@RiotDemon youch! Puts my ingrown toenail into perspective.
I was with my boyfriend in his old minivan when we were rear ended. It was a chain reaction where first person hit second person who hit us. No one was hurt, but the poor car in the middle was smashed up and had to be towed along with the first car. Thankfully we were able to drive away, but with a large dent across the back hatch (which made it unable to be opened) and broken tail lights. The van ended up being totalled after huge headaches and complications with the first person’s insurance company and the mechanics. What a time that was…
Car crushed by tree while I was in it. Insurance didn’t know whether to categorize it as comprehensive because tree hit me, or collision because I hit tree.
I hope this has a rapid erase feature in case I am one at fault in accident.
Not my fault… Passenger and my side got hit. 8 years later and I can still feel the results. And a couple smaller ones.
Why are you a sleazy lawyer???
@somf69 I’m not typically a stickler for grammar, but the missing punctuation here really hits my funny-bone for some reason.
@somf69 So many answers.
Because there’s a lot of money in it!
Is there any other kind?
I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.
Never been in an at fault accident. Have lucky with damage to me. Total of two totaled vehicles and mostly limited damage otherwise (to me and my cars).
I was in a 25 car pile up that I managed to stop in time and not hit anyone (highway), taxi ran into me, civic into him, 18 wheeler into the civic and pushed the lot of us into 5 cars stacked up. Pickup totaled. Pre-airbag days. Good thing I was wearing a seatbelt. Side windows hurt though when your head hits them.
Teen blew a side road stop sign (I had no traffic signal and was on a main 4 lane road near my house), totaled my car again. Her parents came and were screaming at me until the cop told them to button it; that their kid got the ticket. I saw her again about 4 months later with a red sports car, stopped by a cop. Stupid parents, stupid teen. Took a while to recover from the fracture of my kneecap when it hit the dashboard. They need to redesign the height of dashboards with car accidents in mind.
Got rear ended at a stop sign in my neighborhood in the ghetto van. Didn’t bother to fix the fender. Van was 22 at the time and already had a ‘kid learning how to drive’ dent where she hit a light pole in an empty shopping mall parking lot on a Sunday morning, trying to back up in a straight line. The lady’s insurance company would have just totaled it and I couldn’t afford that to happen so told her not to report it and forget about it. Not sure what she did about the damage to the front of her car.
Got rear ended at a stop sign where the guy then zoomed off around me, changed his mind and came back. He was driving on a suspended license, smelled of alcohol, with no insurance. Ghetto van (which was around 10 at the time) would have been totaled due to the sheet metal damage and low value of it at that point, but he decided to get it fixed if I wouldn’t call the cops. He paid cash and fixed it. So in that respect I got “lucky”.
Hit black ice coming out from under a bridge at dusk outside of Chicago (highway) and spun out. Had the sense to U-turn, while on the shoulder, to head back to the bridge (and then was in deep enough snow I couldn’t get out). The next 5 cars under the bridge spun out too. Three of them ran into each other as they went right where I would have been were it not for the u-turn. Tow truck got rich that evening pulling 6 of us out of the snow and back onto the road (or shoulder depending on the damage). No damage to me fortunately.
Was backing down a friend’s driveway and suddenly, over the drainage pipe, her driveway collapsed while my car was on it. Van was left resting on its frame and needed cranked out. Trashed the muffler, a tire and a few underbody parts.
Hmm that is a lot of accidents. But in my defense none were my fault.