Out in the country, I saw something funny going on about 30 yards ahead of me at a stop sign. There was a truck up there, and I couldn’t make out what the truck was doing. I stopped my car the 30 yards back.
The truck then backed up at speed and hit me in my front bumper. The guy paniced and drove forward, thus hitting the car at the stop sign–again.
It was really, really hard convincing my insurance company that he had backed into me rather than me drive into him.
The cops that showed up did squat even though the good ol’ boy driving the truck was drunk, driving barefoot and the cabin held 3 kids not belted in.
I was hanging out at this mansion party 4th of July, 2014. The owner had a golf cart in which he drove like a freaking ATV. He shuttle us back and forth to the fireworks display. He took off so fast that it threw a girl from the cart. She skinned her knee really bad. He threw a second person off a cart when he attempted to drive up a big curb, making the cart rock. Crazy times.
I had something similar happen a few years ago, on the Evergreen Point Bridge returning from the Seattle Boat Show in my little VW Squareback. This was around 11:00 PM and traffic was light and driving at the speed limit or a little above.
Suddenly the car in front of me (a big Cadillac) put his brake lights on, and slowed down to a stop - not so abruptly that I had to slam on the brakes, but definitely to a complete stop. I couldn’t pass him because of oncoming traffic, so also came to a halt about 20 or 30 feet behind him.
Then his backup lights came on, and with steadily increasing speed, backed up until he hit my front end with a resounding bang. After the dust settled (there were no injuries), investigation on my part and on the part of the State Patrolman who was right behind, determined that the driver of the car had fainted at the wheel, and had evidently had enough warning that he was able to bring it to a controlled stop before going unconscious. He did this mainly by braking, not slowing the engine.
Then, as he had the engine running with the car still in drive, His passenger, who happened to be his wife, reached over and tried to shift the car into neutral (with the driver’s feet still on both the brake pedal and the gas pedal). She succeeded in getting the car out of drive, but overshot the mark and ended up in reverse, with the engine still running at significant RPM’s.
I’m here to tell you that it is definitely a thrill to look up and see a vehicle bearing down on you, and you have absolutely nowhere you can go to escape the bang.
The patrolman on the scene quickly analyzed the situation, and told the driver, who by this time had recovered from his faint, that he was to be held responsible for the accident, so there was no nonsense about me running into a stopped car.
All ended well, as my insurance company declared my car totaled, and sent me a check for the value. My neighbor was into car repair for fun and some profit, and fixed my car for about half what my insurance paid me.
I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I had stopped two or three hundred feet behind him, so that the Caddy would have been able to accelerate to a really significant speed before impact.
If looking through my own rear view counts as “seen”, there’s the time I was at a stop sign and then creeped out and then realized I wouldn’t make it. Turns out the area behind you doesn’t magically remain car-free. Backed very slowly into the car that had arrived behind me. She just gave me a “you’re an idiot” hairy eyeball and didn’t bother to get out.
Dumb accident: a city bus line was rerouted due to a summer street festival blocking the way, and this was the last turn-off onto a street wide enough for a bus before it ran into the festival. I had just gotten off the bus and was walking down the street toward the festival when the bus behind mine, clearly operating on auto-pilot, drives past me instead of turning off. Then stops. Then starts backing up. Then backs into the bus stop sign and knocks it down flat. Then pulls forward, stops, backs up again, and runs up onto the sidewalk, nearly hitting the cemetery fence.
At that point I needed to get going, so I didn’t see how the rest of that mess unfolded.
Dumb non-accident: one afternoon I get a phone call from some lady who identifies herself as being with XYZ Insurance company, and she needed to talk to me about the car accident I was in two days ago. I politely tell her she has the wrong number, because my car has been parked in the same spot for about two weeks at that point. I was mostly a public transit user, and only drove the car for shopping trips, and not always then, if the bike would suffice. She insisted that I had run into another car while parking and scratched up their bumper. She sent me photos of the other car as “proof”, to which I responded that there was no visible damage in the photos and in any case my car still hadn’t moved in two weeks. She kept trying to… I dunno, get me to admit to guilt or something? So I finally said “Look lady, if this alleged accident happened when you say it did, it happened when my car was unoccupied and unmoving, so maybe I need to file my own report here? I can’t be at fault if I wasn’t even there, but if someone hit my car…” and suddenly she was really anxious to get off the phone with me to talk to her clients. Never heard from them again.
Kaio, I’m surprised you stayed on the phone that long. ( I come from a telephone company family.) At the first sign that she is being a pest, you should hang up. If she calls again, hang up again, then call her company back (if it exists) and complain about harassing calls (violation of Federal law).
Last week. Major road construction. Route 12 (major artery around here) down to one lane. The inside lane (southbound) was shut down - large cranes, cones, large holes in the road, flaggers - VERY, VERY, VERY clearly marked. Until some dumbass decided that they didn’t want to wait another ten feet before trying to get into the left hand turn lane and went into the closed lane. And directly into a HUGE hole the ditch digger (backhoe? Not sure what it’s officially called - we called it a ditch digger back when we had it as a Tonka toy) had JUST finished digging out. It was sitting in the same lane! The ditch digger! The driver had to go RIGHT NEXT TO IT! I mean right there! Dumbass must have been going 30 mph until BOOM! Front end of the car smashed back to almost the back seat, entire car in the hole (it was a small SUV) - road was then closed with rescue vehicles - and this was right around rush hour.
I have pictures, but I’m afraid to post links - I think it would be an invasion of privacy or rude or wrong or something - I don’t feel right about it.
But even the fire dudes were shaking their heads wondering how anyone could possibly be that stupid? We talked to the fire guy in charge (the one that drives the blazer with the lights and sits in it and does command type things) while we were standing there - he said he’d bet us ten to one that the driver was on a cellphone because nobody could be that willfully stupid. I just smiled and asked him, “Wanna bet?” He laughed.
Anyway, yeah. That was the all time boneheaded move. At least that I’ve been witness to.
Many years ago, I heading for the tennis courts at the local school and passed a couple of guys who had just finished playing what was apparently an excellent game. One of the guys was saying how he’d never played better. Then he hopped into his car and backed directly and forcefully into a pole for a basketball hoop (the parking lot doubled as a basketball court when school was in session).
So not that stupid, because it could happen to anyone, but the contrast between elation and “oh shit” must have been brutal.
Many years ago I was driving on I-70 through Missouri in a blinding snowstorm, one of those ones where everyone is creeping along at 30 mph because visibility is zero. Of course there is always the one guy who thinks he can go faster than everyone else, and sure enough I see this idiot coming up fast from behind in a silver-colored 280-Z with no lights on. (So basically, a completely invisible vehicle in zero visibility conditions.) He zooms past me and everyone else.
About five miles down the road, approaching an overpass. You know how they have guardrails on either side of the bridge supports in the median? There was the 280-Z, straddling the guardrails sideways. I got a good laugh out of that one.
As far as dumb goes, I remember seeing one about a dozen years ago. I was sitting at a red light when an Ambulance came up behind us. Fortunately, there was plenty of space for them to pull up to the light without me moving. They sat at the light, slowly easing out as several passing cars just seemed to ignore the siren, carrying on their merry way through the intersection. Eventually, one car, a Mustang finally comes to a stop and the Ambulance starts into the intersection. BAM! A dump truck plows into the back of the Mustang at full speed and the Mustang flies through the intersection and either just misses or barely taps the ambulance. The EMTs in the ambulance had to get out to check on the guy who just got rear-ended. I really hope that they were able to get another ambulance out quick. And, seriously, how are you driving a dump truck, presumably carrying a load considering how far the Mustang went, and not be far more aware of your surroundings. I suspect he lost his CDL was toast.
And for a funny one, not too much later, I was driving along a country road with a giant embankment on one side headed up into the mountains. All of the sudden, the right rear tire on the car in front of us flew off. And no, I don’t mean it blew out, it literally came off in one piece and, with the rolling momentum, bounced off the pavement and over the embankment. The car careened out of control, the axle leaving a fountain of sparks behind, but fortunately she came to a stop without any further accidents or injuries. I pulled over to check on her, and then climbed over the embankment to retrieve her tire. As it turned out, she had just left the shop from having her brakes serviced and, well, they screwed up. Her car was completely undriveable, but at least we had a good laugh about it and hopefully she got a nice settlement from the shop for their shoddy workmanship.
Yes, I had edged forward and realized I didn’t have enough time to turn before another car was coming through (no stop sign). By then I was far enough forward that I would have made that car swerve around me so I thought, hey, back up again. :smack:
I saw the same thing. I was driving through a neighborhood and this sedan in front of me completely lost their right rear tire. Fortunately they weren’t going very fast but it was quite a shock to see that part of car suddenly hit the pavement.
I’ve seen a few silly but minor accidents over the years, including one similar to ‘Chefguy’s’ failure to yield accident, with one driver coming off the Meadowbrook SB ramp onto Merchant’s Concourse South, while another was heading South on Merchant’s Concourse; both wanted to occupy the same merge space, neither was willing to yield, so they inevitably scrunched fenders together (breaking marker lights) in one of the slowest speed (and stupidest) collisions I’d ever seen.
However, the most recent one worthy of Car Crash Compilation fame (alas, I didn’t have a dash cam) - stopped at a light SB on Glen Cove Rd, in front of me an one man-landscaper in his pickup truck loaded with various powered lawn implements. Since the tailgate seemed a bit dodgy to me, I remained back when the light changed as he pulled forward and the inevitable happened. It was rather amusing seeing the tail gate flop open and a lawn mower, leaf blower and other equipment fall to the road. The driver, seemingly unhurt, got out to survey the damage, and since Christianity teaches that any fool who won’t secure loose equipment doesn’t deserve the assistance of a Good Samaritan, I drove around him and kept going.
That happened to my mum, many years ago. She’d just had some work done (tyres, IIRC) and the shop had replaced the wheel bolts (not sure why). I was with her at the time and was in the car with her on the way home. The car started vibrating so we pulled off on to some back roads. Just as it was getting bad enough that we were talking about pulling over to have a look (I was about 16 at the time, she hadn’t been driving very long so we were both pretty clueless), she made a right turn into a side road. The passenger wheel had other ideas, though, and decided to carry on on its own merry way. :eek: There was a lot of banging and grinding and we ended up stopped in the middle of the junction. Not much fun.
We found a payphone and called the garage, they came and collected the car, sent us home in a taxi and repaired all the damage (turns out they’d used the wrong bolts :rolleyes: ), so it was all good in the end.
The daft part? While we were waiting, three different drivers stopped and berated us for leaving the car in the middle of the road. You know, the car that clearly only had three wheels. Like, what were we supposed to do? Did they think we just stopped there for a picnic?
That was one of only about three times that I ever heard my mum swear.
Happened to one of my sisters as well. She was driving a VW Beetle at the time, might have been the same Beetle which she later drove home while oblivious to the fact that it was on fire.
We saw a tire leave a vehicle once as it turned. It was funny but only because there were only seconds of sparks and then the driver came jogging out to find his missing tire - which was easily several kilometres down the road.
My hubby and I were on our way to Minneapolis from Winnipeg and took some back road short cut – all is fine as we are approaching a T-intersection (our road was paved, the lane coming from the right was dirt/gravel). There were a number of construction workers working on the paved section after the stop sign – including one with the SLOW sign.
I can only assume that the other driver was trying to beat us to the stop sign. I really don’t have any other explanation because they came ROARING up the gravel/dirt part and did not even slow for the stop sign.
They also must have been operating under the mistaken belief that the T intersection was actually a four way and their road continued. It did not; it went directly into a step ditch. I did see the brake lights flash briefly as the sedan took air coming off the road into the ditch. The worker actually dropped his sign he was so stunned. Everyone was fine (the car was not fine), but it was just so bizarre.
