Any good, embarrassing driving stories out there? Mine:
I was 17 and ran a stop sign. Only ticket I’ve ever gotten (knock on wood). Weird thing was, the cop DIDN’T SEE ME DO IT!!!
(If only I hadn’t hit that Vega…)
When I was about 20 or 21, it was cold & snowing, and I had to go to work. I scraped the minimum amount of frost off my front windshield that was required to see, and went on my way. In the 10 minutes it took to get to work, the windshield fogged up so much that I couldn’t see at all. I was squinting and opening windows trying to see the left turn into the driveway of where I worked, and misjudged and ended up in the snowbank a good 30 feet from the driveway. I was literally driving blind. Had to go get a coworker to help me out. I felt completely stupid.
When I was in unversity my neighbor in residence went to downtown Ottawa and got drunk and decided to drive home. He realized he was driving the wrong way on a one way street and he didn’t want to get a ticket, so he drove on the sidwalk. It didn’t work, he got ticketed.
Ohh and on my end, if the ditches are filled with snow it won’t support the weight of a car. It took me three times to learn that lesson
Keith
This is the best yet. Man…and I’m admitting to it. What could be more embarrassing than pulling a stupid driving move? Doing it with a nationally known writer sitting next to you.
A few years ago, author Ian Fraser came to our small campus to teach an interim course. I took him to lunch one day after class, and en route back to the school turned onto a street that I thought (I use that term loosely) was one way. It was NOT. He graciously remarked about the on-coming car and I swerved out of danger. Feeling and admitting to feeling like an idiot.
This would not be so great a faux paus, but Mr. Fraser draws a great deal on his personal experiences for his humorous writing. I knew as I dropped him off that somewhere, somehow, someday I’d be a side-splitter for somebody. And had become a mental note for some humorous anecdote.
I always wanted to be somebody’s muse. Just not like that…
I once drove the wrong way down a one way street – during my road test. The examiner was not happy about it at all.
In high school, a friend of mine bought a “car”.
It was a $400 rust-o-rama Saab - it had different colored doors and hood, the tires had to be re-inflated every morning, and it leaked every fluid that was put into it.
I suspect she bought it because it said “Saab” and it had a sunroof.
Anyway, we were driving around at some point and it started to rain. She turned on the wiper blades and we got on the freeway. All of a sudden, when it started to heavily downpour, the wipers stopped. In order to safely get off the freeway, she needed to get to the exit, but we couldn’t see ANYTHING. So we opened the sunroof, I stuck my body outside (please note in the pouring rain on the freeway), wrapped my jacket in my hand and wiped it back and forth like a windshield wiper.
I refused to step into that death trap after that event, and finally, one day, the engine exploded and that was the end of it.
And that’s a good thing? Sure it’s an ok car but nothing special right?
This is actually my mom’s story, but it’s cute.
During her driver’s test, the examiner directed her to turn onto a one way street. Because there had been some confusion about where she was to turn (“turn here, please” “here?” “no, here”) and because he apparently wanted to test her on something related to her being on a one way street, he then asked, “Do you know what kind of street you’re on?” Despite knowing that the examiner couldn’t ask her to do anything illegal, she panicked and slammed on the brakes, sending the examiner’s head smacking into the glove compartment. He gave her the license anyway.
quote:
I suspect she bought it because it said “Saab”
Juggler said:
Where I grew up (Wisconsin), foreign cars like Mercedes’, BMW’s, Saab’s, Porches’, etc. were only driven by wealthy people and this particular friend wanted to be rich or be perceived as rich. It was sort of her schtick.
I agree that they’re nothing special - I’d go so far as to call them pretty crappy. A good friend of mine here in NY has a fairly new one and it’s constantly breaking down.
I was driving in an unlit parkinglot and drove over a telephone pole used as a divider (it was half buried). It was stuck between my front and back wheels and I could not disloge it. The cops just looked at it funny when they got there, but thecops helped me out by putting their cars crosswise to stop the pole, and one cop drove the car off. They (and I) laughed about it (it -was- funny!).
Rather embarrassing though.
I once drove my sister to her friend’s house, and, all the way there she warned me about the ditch next to their driveway. Sure enough, I drove directly into it.
My first driver’s test lasted about 15 seconds. I did a rolling stop through the first stop sign, and the tester directed me to drive back to the beginning.
One night, I was driving home from work, and I turned onto a certain street and realized it was a tad … dark. I had been driving with my headlights off for about 10 minutes, but I hadn’t noticed until that point because I had been driving on roads that were saturated with streetlights.
One time on the expressway, I was driving and I decided to close my eyes and count to 21. And I did … briskly. I opened my eyes and I was in the adjacent lane.
My belief in God rests primarily on the fact that I have gotten away with all of this without somebody getting killed. I must have been touched by an angel.
I think this was in '88 or so, when my friends and I went to a computer show held in London (England). Took the ferry, and drove straight into London, no sweat. Okay, the first roundabout I encountered, I checked out by stopping 200 yards before I reached it, and walking over to see how something like that worked clockwise.
But when we had almost reached our destination in London, I got some traffic lights, and when they turned green I drove on. This was on a three-lane street, but on every lane I saw cars HEADING STRAIGHT FOR ME! So I yanked that steering wheel and bumped onto the pavement on the left. A Bobby comes up (hat and all) and is all smiles as he offers his help. Turns out it is not a one-way street as I thought it must be, but a roundabout where my access road is completely off-centre. (Something like the lowercase q, but a lot bigger and paved.) The Bobby then walked onto the roundabout and help up the three lanes to give me a chance to get out of there. Way to go for the Bobbies.
One other time I was driving to work, taking a shortcut over a dike. Things didn’t go as fast as I wanted them to, so I started overtaking a row of four or five cars at once. When I just passed the third car from the front, the SECOND car takes a left turn, right in front of me. Now, I was about 20 mph faster than those other cars, so the only thing I could do was slam on the brakes and veer to the right. Skidded straight through the gap that third car had left me, and off the dike at about 60 mph. At the bottom, not four feet from a ditch, I came to a complete stop in grass five feet high. I had grasshoppers on the roof. No damage whatsoever. The best part (after surviving this, obviously) was the look on the people’s faces when they came to see what was left of me.
Somewhere between these two events, I once was driving on a motorway at something like 90 mph. Two friends were in the car with me, one riding shotgun, one in the back seat. The weather was nice, so I had the windows down. At some point there was this horrible smell coming from outside, so naturally I stuck my head out of the window and yelled something to the effect of “What the f* IS that smell!?” At that moment I noticed my exit was coming up, and at 90 mph. Got my head back in, checked for other traffic (nope), slammed the brakes and took that exit; a very sharp right turn. The shocks didn’t like that, gave up, and the car dipped nearly to the road. The shocks then gave it another try, and actually lifted the car off the road for a brief moment. I think at that moment I, along with my friend in the back seat, started laughing hysterically. We both thought we were going to die, right there and then, but we also thought it was a very funny way to go, so it didn’t spoil our mood. Our friend who was riding shotgun wasn’t amused at all. He left finger marks on the dash. No kidding. And when I got the car under control again, he actually said “Man, that was dangerous what you just did!”. And he was serious. That’s when I had to pull over and laughed for about fifteen minutes straight. Shotgun buddy did not get into a car with me driving it, ever.
I’ve done that too.
-
I was going to change lanes to my right when I saw a California Highway Patrol car just appearing out of my blind spot. I got freaked out and continued to change lanes (seeing a CHP car always bothers me because I think I am going to get a ticket regardless of what I did.)
I ended up forcing the CHP car on to the shoulder.
The officer gave me a ticket. Two in fact. I got a second one for having the wrong address on my driver’s license. The DMV told me that they never see that ticket unless the officer is really PO’d. She was. -
I was renting a car in Canada and didn’t realize that the daytime running lights weren’t the same thing as headlights. After driving around for 30 minutes cursing the darkness, I found the switch.
Bonehead, not particularly humorous.
Circa 1985, I was tooling around downtown Columbia with my good buddy I’ll call Ken (because that’s his name). You had to pay attention in downtown Columbia, because some intersections only allowed turns at certain times of day. So I’m busy reading the signs and checking my watch to figure out if I can turn right on red, and I finally decide, yeah, I can, so I check both ways and for pedestrians, and the only thing I spot is a guy standing a few feet back from the edge of the road, so I gun it and I’m out of there.
Buddy Ken says, “Oh sh*t!”
I say, “Whuh?” and look in the rear-view mirror. That’s when I see that the guy on the edge of the road had been pushing in front of him a lady in a wheelchair whom I had narrowly avoided crushing under my back wheel.
Columbia-area Dopers past and present, this is how KneadToKnow almost killed Susan Audé Fisher.
And now you know the rest of the story
I don’t know if this counts or not, but I do this like 5-6 times a year. I’m driving home from work. I start daydreaming. I come to. I missed my exit by about 5 miles. Have to turn around and go back.
And this only happened once, but it was bad. Missed my exit as above, turned around & headed back, began thinking “what was I daydreaming about anyway?”, come to and realize I missed my exit AGAIN. Turn around and head back, start thinking, “why was that so important that I was thinking about it so hard” … and missed my exit a third time! Boy did I feel dumb.