Car accidents--do they happen this much to you, too?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, this is ridiculous. My hubby and I seem to have cars equipped with some secret magnet, or at least a “HIT ME!” sign. PLEASE tell me some other Dopers out there have had this kind of rotten luck.

Note: Every collision we’ve had has occurred with us at a standstill–at a light, in traffic, etc–and being hit by an out-of-control party.

The rundown:

January 1996 My little blue Honda is stopped at an intersection, waiting to turn right. It is pouring down rain. Suddenly, a teenager who approached the intersection too quickly hydroplanes out of control and into my car. Fortunately, there was no visible damage–just a little black paint from her Nissan on my car door.

December 1996 While driving to San Diego in the most God-awful rainstorm I’ve seen (good ole El Nino), I’d managed to navigate the worst of the worst and was in the clear on the 5. I was doing maybe 50 when I hit some standing water and hydroplaned before losing control of the car and fishtailing all over the place. Fortunately, the only thing shattered was my nerves. Turned out my tires were bald–note, this is 1 of 2 out-of-control incidents involving problem tires.

September 1997 The worst of all the incidents. My little blue Honda, stuck in traffic on the 10, is rear-ended by a 55-ton 18 wheeler that didn’t see the stopped cars until too late. He slammed on the brakes (the noise drew my attention to the rear-view mirror, where I saw the behemoth skidding toward me), managed to turn somewhat before hitting me. Impact was approx. 45-50MPH and completely shaved the rear right side off my car. It looked like something had taken a bit out of it. Amazingly, I walked away. Car was not so fortunate and was totaled.

January 1999 Now-hubby’s then-roommate slams into hubby’s car when backing out of the driveway a little too quickly. Really munched up the driver’s side door, but was reparable. Hubby was not in car. $1100 worth of damage, and no injuries.

February 2001 Soon-to-be-hubby and I are waiting at a stop sign. Little old lady in big Olds cuts across traffic (and again, this is rainy weather), gets slammed by a Metro minibus, and skids into my new white Honda. $4000 worth of damage there, no injuries.

February 2002 While en route to San Diego on a Friday evening, we hit a huge tire tread in the middle of the lane. It gets caught in my undercarriage, briefly locked up the left tire, and sent us careening all over the road. For entirely too long we were fishtailing all over the place before I finally regained control of the Honda. No damage or collision–just completely frayed nerves. Later, we discovered one of our new tires had been improperly installed and had leaked out 1/2 the air pressure. Obviously, this played a role in our struggle to maintain control of the car.

July 2002–Yesterday Hubby is out on errands, thrilled to have his classic 1968 Volvo back as we’d just paid to have the long-worn suspension fixed. We’d just picked it up that morning. While stopped at a stoplight, he hears SCREE-CRASH! and looks up just in time to get rear-ended himself. 4 cars total were involved–another hubby, following wife home, hit her; she hit a Toyota; Toyota hit hubby. Damage is a pretty crunched up tailight and shifted trunk.

So, that makes a total of 3 collisions and 2 fishtails for me, and 2 collisions for hubby. Without ever being at fault!

Is anyone else this accident-prone? Or shall we just stay holed up in our house for a bit?

2

I think its just you :slight_smile:

ALthough I did have 2 accidents, about a year apart from one another when I started driving. The first one, I was turning left at a light (I had priority) and someone ran a red light and hit me on the drivers side. No injuries. I was driving my moms 8-month old Altima, and there was over 5000$ damage on it, although we were covered. I felt terrible, though. I remember having the tow truck bring me to my mom’s work, and I was so upset! He brought me to the dealership where they also do the repairs, and gave me a rental car, but I was really upset and had trouble driving the 10 minutes to get home that night. However, I got over it -I love driving and just couldn’t let that stop me.

The following year, I was driving my brother’s Crapmobile (85 Toyota Corroder - uh - Corolla), and was leaving a restauraunt, following a friend of mine. A light turned yellow, and I remember thinking that my friend was going to run it, and that I’d stop, but he didnt, and the brakes on my car were TERRIBLE, especially since the road was wet from a flash rain storm about 15 minutes before. I had a twisted headlight and the hood of the car was split (top coloured piece half off the frame part). His car was a bit worse, since apparently GM thinks thin hollow tube-like parts make good bumpers. Both cars were cheap and old, so it wasn’t that big a deal for either of us. He was able to repair his himself, and I drove with my flapping hood for about a month until my dad finally agreed that it was time to look for a better car - the one I have now, a 96 Tercel.

OTOH, my mom has had a few minor rear-enders like you, hence the nickname my dad gave her: Boom-boom Barnard :slight_smile:

3

I have only been in two auto accidents since I started driving 17 years ago, and both were within a year of getting my license. My wife has been in three or four accidents in 15 years of driving. Amazingly, though, two of those were in the last four months. Both of them took place on I-66 eastbound in Fairfax. In the first, she was traveling at less than 20 miles per hour when the car directly in front of her suddenly changed lanes without signaling. They did so, apparently, because the car in front of them was at a dead stop. My wife slammed her brakes on and had to swerve slightly, and was hit by a light truck in the lane to her right. Smashed the rear quarter panel and caused a little more than $2,000 in damage. ($500 deductible on our policy)

The second happened two months later. She was stopped, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, when someone in a rental car hit another vehicle four cars behind her, causing a chain reaction with our car at the front. Slight bumper damage, no serious damage to the other cars. As it happened, we had not yet scheduled the body work for the previous accident, so the bumper repair was already covered under the other estimate, and cost us nothing.

As it happens, nobody ever received a police citation for either accident, but don’t get me started on that.

4

If your 2 fishtails resulted in any kind of damage to your vehicle or other surrounding objects, you would have been at fault for the accident. My brother swerved to avoid a truck tire tread in the road (similar to your experience) and a lady swerved to avoid my brother and hit a guardrail. My brother was found at fault for the accident and had to pay to repair the ladies car and replace the damaged guardrail. In the 2 instances you describe, you were at fault, but lucky.

5

Only partially, racer72. The first instance of hydroplaning would have most certainly been my fault.

However, the tire tread incident is not as clear cut and I do not believe I would be held completely responsible. I did not swerve to avoid it as it wasn’t in view until it was in my headlights (it’s a very dark stretch of highway)–which is basically a fraction of a second before I ran over it. The tire tread locked up my front left tire and sent my car careening. Ultimately, the huge tread was at fault and, I would assume, would be written down more as an act-of-God kind of thing than my own negligence. I was not the only person to hit it; when we exited and pulled into a parking lot to call 911, there was another person in the same lot who’d also hit the tread, lost control briefly, and was calling 911 as well.

Additionally, CostCo would pay out the ass if there’d been any damage. As it was, I sent them a rather “strongly worded” letter–this was the 3rd problem tire of 4 new ones purchased just 2 months prior, with them insisting each time they were all fine–and in it I detailed the tire tread incident to them. I was immediately contacted and immediately given 4 brand new upgraded tires, and from what I understand, the tire department got a hell of a shake-up. It’s a long story and I vented about it here, in a Pit thread on the temp boards.

6

I’ve been in four accidents. In three of them I was stopped in traffic- twice rear ended and once sideswiped by someone who was speeding around the traffic, hit the car behind me, and then me. The worst part was that one of the rear-ends happened on my way to work and the side-swipe nappened the same day on the way home. All three were on the same street. I don’t take that street anymore

7

I’ve been in four accidents. In three of them I was stopped in traffic- twice rear ended and once sideswiped by someone who was speeding around the traffic, hit the car behind me, and then me. The worst part was that one of the rear-ends happened on my way to work and the side-swipe nappened the same day on the way home. All three were on the same street. I don’t take that street anymore

8

You have appalling luck.

I have been in two accidents myself, neither of which was my fault. I’ve been a passenger in three, though one was so long ago and I was so young that I can’t remember it. I’m 30 years old, BTW.

9

8 wrecks
5 totaled vehicles
0 injuries (but I did lose a shoe one time)

10

I hope I am not jinksing myself to mention this, but the last real accident that I was in happened over 20 years ago when I was ten years old. My dad was driving. I was riding in the front seat with my mother, who was sitting in the middle. My sister was sprawled out across the back seat sleeping. Needless to say she was in for a very rude awakening. A drunk driver was approaching us and was on the wrong side of the road. In spite of my father’s best efforts to avoid hitting him, his car ended up side-swiping ours, hitting the side I was sitting on. To say I was scared shitless is an understatement. I was very lucky to have not been injured considering I was not wearing a seatbelt (seatbelt laws were not in place in Idaho at the time). Ever since then I have hardly experienced so much as a fender-bender. Twice in the last five years I had a vehicle hit my car from behind while stopped at a red light or a stop sign, but at very low speed (the driver wasn’t paying attention to their stopping distance in both cases). No damage was done in either of these instances. It sounds a lot worse when it happens, so I got out to check and make sure no damage was done.

About two months ago I came damn close to rear-ending someone at about 35 mph. I was in the left lane of a four-lane (two-way) street. They were just driving along and then suddenly they skidded to a stop, apparently because they weren’t paying attention to the vehicle in front of them. Their break lights were not working, so this diminished my ability to react quickly. I had to swerve around them. I must have come within mere inches of hitting the corner of their bumper as well as within inches of slamming into the car that was coming up behind me in the right lane.

11

My husband insists we’re nothing out of the ordinary. Truly, of all the items listed above, I’ve had just 2 “real” accidents (those requiring repairs), and he’s had what he considers just one–the one from yesterday. He doesn’t count his roomie backing into his car as the car was parked. That was all roomie and never went to insurance; the roomie wrote a check for repairs.

Technically, one of our fender-benders, the one with the old lady in the caddy, was “his” accident as he was the driver. Doesn’t matter much, though, as it was all about the elderly woman not watching carefully enough on a rainy day.

It must be partially southern California. In addition to what’s happened to us, we’ve seen (in the last 5 years) a dishwasher fly out of the bed of a truck and smash up a car in a neighboring lane (a piece flying off merely dented hubby’s car), a woman not watching a light rear end a van, another (and harder) rear ending of several cars in a neighboring lane, and then–just last week–another minor fender-bender as an inattentive woman driver braked too late at an intersection and hit the SUV in front of her.

I’m really curious, now, what the experiences are for other Southern California drivers.

12

I think it’s partly bad luck for the OP

However, I would recommend that you be a little more diligent about checking the condition of your tires. You seem to be driving a lot in an area with lots of other drivers - you need good tires to help you dodge the weirdness.

Also, I wish everyone who drove small cars was truly aware just how easily they hydroplane. My old Festiva used to hydro at 40mph. I could not safely drive at more than that speed in many rainy conditions and would, in fact, pull off the road when necessary. Sure, I got where I was going a little later, but I got there without an accident.

Getting rear-eneded in the rain happens - but try to remember that any vehicle bigger than yours takes longer to stop (I forget that once and got rear-ended. Fortunately, very minor damage)

Road debris happens - you have to stay alert

Drunk drivers happen - stay alert

What does that mean, “stay alert”? Pay attention to what’s going on around you. Look further ahead than the car just in front of you. If you see an interruption in traffic flow 5 or 6 cars ahead get ready for something requiring diversion. If you see someone driving in an unsafe manner put distance between you and him. Dropping behind such a driver, for instance, makes it far more likely he’ll be first at the scene of the accident and not you. I realize that for many American drivers the notion of slowing down is a tough concept, but it has its uses. If a situation comes up, if traffic gets tricky or heavy, put conversation with your passenger on hold. Be aware of people hauling loads with either cars or pickups - if it looks at all precarious put some distance between you and them.

None of this garauntees a no-accident driving career - but it helps.

13

In most of the accidents you got hit while you where stopped. Not much you can do about that. When driving in rain/snow give extra room for everyone. Expect that the person behind you may follow too close. Leave extra room in front of you so that if you need to slow down, you don’t need to do a ‘panic’ stop’.

I drive in snow/ice 6 months out of the year. Good tires are a must. I replace them when they are about half worn out. Costs money - don’t care. Give me good tires. I also need 4 wheel drive where I live. No other way to get home in the winter. So good tires mean a lot to me. Buy them.

My parents taught me to drive when I was about 10. Understand that this was out on very rural roads. Or just driving tractors, work trucks and such. Teach your kids how to drive as soon as you think they can handle it. Worked for me.

I got my drivers licenses in 1976. I have never had, or been involved in an accident. I drive about 15,000 miles a year.

My brother got his licenses in 1972. He’s a truck driver. Probably about 100,000 miles a year (WAG). No accidents.

My wife driving since 1977, one small fender bender. Not her fault. The person that hit her had such a bad driving record she did not want to report it to insurance. $500 damage to a $400 car.

I’m a amazed that there aren’t more accidents. No one really seems to pay attention to the job/task of driving.

Good drivers save bad drivers from themselves. I see it and do it every day.

14

I’ve been in one accident as an adult, and one as a child (mom was rear-ended while we were stopped for a school bus)

The accident that I was in involved us stopped at a red light, and the guy in front of us backing up to let someone in…and backing right into our car.

Never been in an accident while moving.

15

2 accidents were caused by uninsured, unemployed people. One of those 2 was a “wetback,” aka illegal resident (or alien). A third was a hit & run bastard. I’m just happy to be alive. Of course, these all involved economic loss on my part.

16
      • I have an aunt who bought those rain-traction tires when they first came out. Goodyear Aquatreads, I think? Or something like that… She had not been in any accidents in literally years. She got rear-ended three times in the first month while driving on them, because in a line of traffic with a sudden stop, everybody would slam on their brakes, but she would stop faster than everybody else (-this was before the widespread proliferation of anti-lock brakes though). Two weeks later, she got rid of the Aquatread tires and got “normal” ones, and hasn’t had any accidents in the several years since. - DougC
17

Broomstick, I have become outright anal about the condition of my tires. The first incident of hydroplaning was my own ignorance–the tires were very badly worn–not quite bald as I said in the OP, but not far from it. It was a lesson learned, and as soon as my tires on my new car showed appropriate wear, I bought new ones immediately, and just before the rainy season as an added precaution.

The other incident I rest entirely on CostCo’s shoulders. It’s a long story, as I mentioned, but the tires had a slow leak due to damaging the valve stem at installation. The leak quickened when the car was driven at freeway speed over long distances, so fully inflated tires would leak out half their air pressure after approximately 40 minutes. A brief breakdown of the occurences: 1) November: Installation of 4 new tires 2) 2 weeks later: First tire goes completely flat after 1 hour on freeway. Cause: bad valve stem. 3) December: 2nd flat tire. Cause: bad valve stem. We insisted that CostCo check the other 2 tires’ stems. When we picked up the car and asked about the other 2 tires, the mechanic seemed stunned and said no, he didn’t check the others–he was told just to fix the one. The cashier, annoyed, said YES HE DID check the others. We left, uncomfortable, but trusting his word. Bad idea. 4) February: The above skid-out incident with one (previously unattended to) tire half inflated. Cause: bad valve stem. You can imagine our fury after this–obviously, they had not checked the other tires’ valve stems. (We checked the tires’ air pressure before leaving and they’d been fine.) The management was about as pissed off as we were and took immediate action.

You know what’s killer? With our 4 new Micheleins the manager provided us, we had ANOTHER such slow-leak bad-valve-stem episode. This time the manager went back to the garage with the mechanic and my hubby and oversaw the whole thing. We’ve been careful to check tire pressure since and have had no further problems, mercifully.

One completely other thing…We are considering buying an SUV as we’ve witnessed 2 (and been involved in 1) rear-end incidents where an SUV was involved. Every time, the SUV had a small dent or scratch here or there–and the smaller car was considerably crunched.

18

One word of warning. If you go ahaead and buy an SUV then find yourself in an emergency and swerve to avoid an accident you may find two things:

  1. SUV stand for suddenly upside down vehicle. Due to a center of gravity that is way high
  2. The roof structure on many large SUV’s is about as strong as a pup tent.

Driving the LA freeways it’s not uncomon to see an SUV on its roof with the roof crushed to the top of the doors over the front seat.

19

Today is an extremely appropriate day for this thread.

2002 has been a banner year for the Scoutmobile:

April 20th - my car is hit while parked in the gym parking lot. Driver decides to hit and run. A witness jots down the make & license number. Verdict: not my fault, car is fixed at no cost to me.

Mid-June - my car is in the shop from the above accident, and I am driving a Dodge Intrepid rental. The morning I am to return the car, I misjudge the entrance to the parking garage at work, and scrape the right side of the car. Verdict: I’m a putz, but I send a check to Enterprise for the damage, which is less than my deductible.

July 22 (yes, today) - I’m on my way back from the gym (notice a pattern?) and am stopped in a left turn lane. I get rear ended by a city bus. Yep. Damage is much less than you might imagine, probably just to the bumper. At least I know the other guy is insured! Oh, and did I mention that I’m sitting in my BRAND NEW CAR THAT I JUST PICKED UP ON WEDNESDAY??? Verdict: Not my fault. They’ll pay, oh yes they will, and I’ll be going to another branch of 24 Hour Fitness from now on, as this one is obviously located within the Vortex of Doom.

I feel your pain.

20

To clarify myself–the condition of the tire I rest on CostCo’s shoulders. The large tread in the lane was no one’s fault. And again, I stress it was not visible until in my headlights–it was an extremely dark stretch of highway, making this an even more dangerous situation. It scary to consider we can be careful, watch braking distance, speed, tire condition, turn off the cell phone, drive with hands at 10 and 2, etc. and shit can still happen, lethal shit. Dammit.

scout, that’s horrible! But at least, such as our case, you’re not at fault. But criminy! That just plain sucks!

You stay away from 24 Hour Fitness, and we’ll avoid stopping. Waaaaaiiiitttt…