How did all these people get their driving licenses??? 
:mad:
“How did all these people get their driving licenses???”
Two words: Rhode island
The barn’s owner should get smart, & dig a trench. 4’ wide X 4’ deep oughtta do it.
The most nauseating aftermath of an accident I’ve seen was where a car had slammed into the back of a semi trailer. The bumper of the trailer was where the upper torso of the driver should have been.
OK, this one had me stifling laughs at my keyboard.
I’ve witnessed an accident in the lane right next to me. My SO and I were on our way to the movies and took a bus because we didn’t have a car at the time. We both sat in the back bench, her on the right side of the isle and me on the left. The bus was in the right-hand eastbound lane of a four-lane boulevard, just past the intersection of another four-lane boulevard and waiting for a light to change. I just happeend to look out my window to see a 25-year-old Chevy pickup zooming in from the southbound lanes of the boulevard behind us, only the driver of the pickup didn’t have anywhere to go because the traffic on the eastbound boulevard was still waiting for their light to change. There was a late-model Ford station wagon, probably a Taurus or the Mercury eqivalent, in the lane directly opposite from where I was sitting. The driver of the pickup struck the wagon without slowing, blowing out the wagon’s rear window and puncturing the pickup’s radiator. The wagon was rammed into the vehicle ahead of it, some sort of Jeep IIRC, which in turn was rammed into the black SUV in the lead. The driver of the SUV, not knowing what happened behind him, took off when our light changed but soon reversed to rejoin the scene. Having that window shatter a few feet from my left ear was quite unsettling.
My SO has also witnessed a hit-and-run on our street. We live at the top of a winding hill which some idiots treat as a high-speed slalom course. Our complex is situated that each unit’s balcony faces away from the parking areas, so all the balconies overlook either the road or the woods. Ours is one that overlooks the road. This one afternoon, she was on the balcony when one of those idiots came roring up the hill in a little black coupe, crossed the center line, and struck a sedan headed in the opposite direction hard enough to spin it around at least once. The sedan had gone through a fence on the opposite side of the street and came to rest in someone’s back yard at about a 30° angle to the road, its front end pointed uphill. The driver of the coupe stopped to quickly assess the damage then took off.
Everyone slows down to look at accidents. This makes me wonder - what do people hope to see? A decapitated body? A dead, broken baby? Keep your eyes and your attention on your driving, and hope you DON’T see anything.
The Weird One, on behalf of the red car driver, and as a victim of two hit-and-runs in the last couple of years, thanks. Thanks a lot. What an impotent, frustrating experience it is to have your car hit and not be able to do a damned thing about it.
I like the memorials because it is a good thing to remind drivers of how incredibly dangerous driving is. Instead of binging when your car door opens, it should say, “Remember, driving is extremely dangerous and you could die every time you get in here.”
They’re probably just thinking something along the lines of “There but for the grace of God go I.”
My mum and I were sitting outside one morning, reading the paper and eating breakfast, when we heard that metallic squeal of tires screeching on pavement, followed by a crumpling sound–and the sound of a child crying. I swear to God, that sound makes your heart jump about three or four miles.
We shot off that deck and banged through the back gate, running out into our alleyway. An elderly guy was trying to make a turn into our alleyway (it’s a particularly bad alleyway for blindspots) and smacked into an oncoming car with a little girl and her mother inside, sideswiping her.
Fortunately, nobody got hurt–just the cars, pretty badly dinged up. I remember getting the girl some cold water while a policewoman came and took notes. The old guy seemed pretty irritated that he was being forced to stick around–he kept huffing and grunting and sighing–and the woman looked pretty frazzled on her cellphone.
I’m really afraid what will happen if a child comes running up the alleyway, though. We have little kids in our neighbourhood, and if a car smacked into them…
Maybe i’m wierd, but smashed up cars just look neat. I don’t slow down to look at them when I’m driving past, but if I’m stopped in traffic already, or walking past, or just see a picture in the newspaper, that’s what I’m looking at.
Smashed up people, on the other hand, I don’t really need to see.
When I first moved to Hawaii, I lived in an 18th floor apartment. One afternoon Mr. SCL and I were just chillin’ with the windows open when we hear that spine-tingling “scccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” of tires on asphalt, followed by a very loud “Bang”. We looked out of the window just in time to see some sort of dark colored sedan, with the sunroof open and at least 5 people in the car, take off from where they had come around the corner so fast and out of control they had hit a pickup truck parked at the curb and knocked it over on its side on the sidewalk. No one was in the truck, but it was badly damaged. IIRC, they did catch the culprit - how far away can you get on Oahu?
My first house here was on a corner lot with a stopsign - not a 4 way stop. People were very bad about not coming to a complete stop at that sign, and there were a fair number of accidents. One day I hear the “scccccccreeeeeeeeeee-BAM” that means we have a new player in How Dumb Can I Be Today, so I go out to see if anyone is injured after I call 911. No one is hurt, just shook up, so I’m heading back to my house when the police arrive. I was really puzzled as to why everyone was giving me funny looks until I got back to what I was doing and looked in the mirror. When I heard the accident, I had just finished my face makeup to play "The Cat In The Hat’ at a Humane Society fundraiser that evening.
Heeheehee - bet those drivers thought they had hit WAY harder than they did.
Too late. Carl Hiaasen’s book, Skinny Dip, has a character that stops and takes the roadside crosses at the crash memorials. (I think he takes the flowers and teady bears too…)
If they were truck drivers, they probably got them bybribing the Illinois Secretary of State’s office.
Ow, my side… ow.
OK, this happened some fifteen or so years ago. I was living in a second story apartment. The apartment building itself was some twenty yards from the street, set at a slight angle. There’s another building in the same complex about a hundred yards to the south, and no road or parking lot in between.
So one day we (roomie and I) were sitting around and heard this really loud THUMP and the whole building shaked rather violently. We sat for a second looking at each other, then walked over to the window closest to where we heard the sound. Looked outside, didn’t see anything immediately, but we noticed the shrubs between the buildings had been totally levelled at one spot and the grass didn’t look so good either.
So we go outside and around the building to that spot and see a small crowd has already gathered. We round the corner and see …
OK, understand these buildings are set on the side of a slight hill. On the “uphill” side of the building, there’s a railroad tie berm that’s about four feet high and maybe three feet between that and the side of the building.
Sandwiched in between, neat as can be, is a red sports car on its side. Whoever was driving must have been terribly drunk, because I don’t see how anyone even remotely in control of their senses could have veered off the road and spun sideways in order to end up like this car ended up. Heck, I don’t know if a stone sober stunt driver could’ve done this on purpose.
Similar things have been happening in Virginia, California, and Colorado.
I feel like I’ve seen & heard about too many car accidents. It has definitely made me a safer driver. A few of the most memorable:
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driving along an interstate construction area, where they have the concrete walls on either side and it’s very narrow. I’m always nervous about those things because some people drive dangerously close to the walls! Anyway, one day someone about 10 car lengths in front of me (in the lane next to mine) hit the wall, scraped along a few yards, spun around and ended up facing the *opposite *direction when his car stopped! Luckily there was no immediate oncoming traffic (traffic that was behind me), but I always wonder what happened to that car when the next car came flying through that construction zone.
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after a night out with a friend of mine, we were driving across a bridge (Gandy Bridge in Tampa area). Got home later that night and found out that no more than 15 minutes after we crossed the bridge, my friend’s brother (as in, the friend I was with) was driving across the same bridge and was killed in what sounded like a really horrific accident. Someone said he was thrown out of the back end of his car and was dragged by his seatbelt. Holy crap was that a wake-up call. I will never forget the way my friend cried that night.
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A friend of my dads was driving in the mountains one evening and a deer jumped out in front of his car. The deer flew off the hood of his car, but killed the man in the car behind him. I can’t imagine what a terrible experience that would be.
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I’ve also seen 2 dogs get hit right in front of the house I grew up in. I don’t even want to get into the details on that. It was extremely disturbing to see that as a young girl. That’s probably one of the reasons I try to be aware of whether any animals are about to run in front of my car. I’m afraid if I hit a dog, I’d never get over it. And so many freakish scary things happen like that every day.
Yeah… I’m paranoid.
And I won’t be sleeping tonight.
That reminds me of a possible near-hit of mine, Logan. We were driving out to the mountains, and we decided to take the back, scenic road instead of the main highway. We found out later that there had been a horrible, multiple car pile-up on the main highway just when we would have been on it. Gives you a shiver up your spine when you hear something like that.
In about 1970 I was riding in my Mom’s car. We were behind a big old sedan with a back seat packed with little kids, and it stopped at a lonely country crossroads where the cross traffic was doing about 50. Then, for no apparent reason, the sedan took off into the intersection directly in front of another car, which T-boned it good and hard, sending both cars spinning to a stop at least 50 feet away.
Mom then took off and left them all there. I asked if we shouldn’t stay and see if they were OK, but she said somebody else would come along. I’ve always wondered if the kids got hurt.
It wasn’t a collision, but a few years ago my sister and I were driving on a dark mountain road and turned a fairly steep curve to find the lane blocked by a flaming car. Two young girls were in it, and they jumped out safely but were shaking with terror. I tried to call 911 on my cellphone, but no tower was close enough, although I tried walking around and holding it at various angles just in case. Another driver pulled over from the other way and tried his phone, but that service was out also.
The car was blazing, flames licking out through the windshield and all the windows, showering sparks and making hissing crackles. We backed the other cars away from the scene and just stared. We expected a big flash and maybe an explosion when the fire burned through the gas tank. Nobody wanted to be passing close to it when that happened.
It did balloon with a mighty whoosh about halfway through and afterward the flames receded a little, but the interior of the car was red hot, sizzling and sputtering. It was like looking into the inferno.
All this time, nobody else came along and we couldn’t summon help. Eventually, we passed by the burning car safely and headed for the nearest towns to get emergency services. The other guys took the girls because their distance to a town was shorter.
All in all, a night to remember. :eek: