Ok, many of us have done it....

In My Humble Opinion
21

When I was 15 I was driving on my learners permit. I was driving down the highway at about 60-65 mph when I dropped two wheels onto the shoulder. I had never been to drivers school and had no idea what to do so I over-corrected and shot off the opposite side of the highway. When we touched down in the ditch on the other side the car slid sideways and executed a few rolls, ending up upside down. We had been on our way to vacation in Idaho, there were 3 passengers in the car. Everyone was belted in so no major damage, just frazzled nerves. To top it all off this was the first new car my mom had ever owned, it was less than a year old. As a result of this wreck I did not get my license 'till I was 18 and my insurance went down.

Fast forward to Dec 2000, it seems to be a common way to rear end someone, I looked down at just the wrong moment and then looked up to see the big butt of a Chevy Tahoe. Needless to say it was not very kind to my car, you could barely tell that it had been hit. I have a very rare car, a 1990 Audi Coupe Quattro.

Only 1700 cars total of that model were ever imported, and Progressive took 3 weeks to decide if they were going to total it. I’m still pissed about it because they over-estimated the cost of the repairs and under-estimated the value of my car so that they could total it quickly and not have to deal with it. I was determined to save the car because of it’s excellent condition and low miles(not to mention it’s rarity), so I ended up buying it back at it’s salvage value. Their estimation of the value of the car was $8,500 and the damage at $6,500+. The blue book for the car was $11,500 and I ended up getting it completely fixed to stunning good looks for $4000. That even includes updating the hood an bumper to a newer body style and putting top-end european headlights on it. Bastards, they just confirmed my worst suspisions about the insurance industry. Next time, and hopefully there won’t be a next time, I will just get a lawyer right off the bat to deal with them.

22

A couple of years ago I had been waiting for my ex-wife to show up to performed that most familiar of divorced parents routines - the child exchange. She was a whopping two hours late. Given that the pickup was already scheduled late and I was exhausted I was not pleased.

The drive back was about two hours and by the end of the first hour I was dragging. Started to have pleasant thoughts about bed and woke up to realize I was doing seventy-five on the shoulder. Jerked the wheel by instinct and did a nifty six rollovers on a very busy highway. Ended up okay amazingly (thank god for airbags). As soon as the car shuddered to a halt the only thing I could think about was locating my cigarettes. Guess it goes to show the power of a nicotine addiction.

23

So my friend and I are wheeling down a gravel road at about 50 mph in his “new” Pinto with me driving. We went over a cross road and the car fishtailed a little in the fresh gravel. I steered into the skid and backed of the gas, the car seemed to be recovering really well and was straightening out.

Until my friend panicked and yanked on the emergency brake!

The car spun around and we went into the ditch backwards shearing off 6 foot pine trees like they were toothpicks. The car travelled at least 50 feet before coming to rest.

We were both able to walk away with a few bruises, the car was still drivable albeit considerably scratched up. My friend had pulled on the E brake with such force he had bent the handle 90 degrees to the right.

My only other accident happened in the winter when I was stopped at an intersection. I was reaching down to grab a tape and as I sat up I looked in the rear view mirror to see this car sliding toward me on the ice. Before I was even sitting upright my car was sent forward into the car in front of me.

When I got put of my car to check the damage I discovered I couldn’t stand up straight without some pain. There was no damage to any of the vehicles. I went home to lie down and when I awoke I couldn’t get out of bed. My chiropractor told me later that I had misaligned nearly every vertabrae in my back and suffered serious whiplash. It was two months before I could go back to work.

24

Late 80s in Ottawa Canada, I’m driving down the divided highway in an old Honda Accord hatchback, with my friend in the passenger seat. The only problem is that it’s -30C degrees outside, the highway is full of other cars who have wisely slowed down because of black-ice, and I’m weaving through the traffic at 30 mph over the speed limit.

At one point I try to change from the middle lane to the right lane, but the car turns left instead, goes across all lanes, hits the center guardrail, ricochets back and crosses all lanes once more, and finally comes to a stop in the snow bank on the right side of the road.

When the dust settles, the car’s chassis is skewed, my friend’s laughing his head off, I’m sitting there wondering what happened, and people are rushing over wondering if we’re ok. And in the middle of all this, some taxi driver screeches to a halt, jumps out, pushes everybody aside, sticks his head through my now-broken window and says “it was your fault you know!”

25

Ok, here’s my 2 cents:
Here in Japan, auto racing is very popular - and not only as a spectator sport. If you have even been to Japan, or you ever looked at a map you will immediately see that the major percentage of the land is mountain: read: autoracing in the mountains is a popular hobby. Granted, there is nothing legal about this at all and the cops try (without much luck) to put a quick end to it. Generally speaking, you can go up into the hills anytime after midnight and find someone racing somewhere. Kids, don’t try this at home.

So here’s the deal: I’m about 19 and found my way to a popular race spot up in the hills and decide to give it a shot…guess what - totaled my ride (1988 Nissan Skyline GTS-R Turbo). Hairpin corners are a blast until you overspeed one, spin-out and smack the guardrail on the other side. Right on the corner where everyone gathers to watch - no less. Pushed the front end of the car in enough to crack the block and break engine mounts. Fortunately, no injuries. That 4 Point racing harness I installed left a couple of nice bruises, though. Call a tow truck, you say? Nah, my friend’s RX-7 did the job that night. Funny sight, I might add.

I’m still a racer, although I keep it legal nowadays. Rally, Autocross, etc. Hence my user name: “Hashiriya” means racer in Japanese.

26

hashiriya- Are you a displaced American, or an actual Japanese national? You would be amazed how the Asian Import racing thing has blown up here… I’m just getting into it, but mayhaps you can help me with some questions…

I need to learn how to drift a FWD car… it’s starting to catch on here, and I’d like to be in the front of that little movement…hehehehhe

27

hehehe…displaced American - I like that, I think I’ll add it to my sig if you don’t mind. Actually I am an American. I have been in Japan for about 9 years now.

I will email you privately for the rest of the info.

28

I just thought that I would come back and share what happened to me the onther day…

For those of you that know Atlanta, Ga I was on I-75 Southbound right before the 120 Loop on the northside.

I was in the second lane from the right doing about 70 MPH and was moving with the speed of traffic driving in to work. In the right hand lane about 25 yards ahead of me was a Ford Explorer and directly in front of him was a small white coupe. (I didn’t get a good look at it) On the right shoulder we were about to pass a trucker changing a tire on his 18 wheeler.

Suddenly the man driving the Explorer slammed on his brakes, because he was about to slam into the back of the coupe, and made a quick move to the right, but he relised that with the rig in the way he wasn’t going to be able to go that direction. So he then jerked his wheel to the left and cut over into the lane I was in. Seeing him doing this I quickly jerked my car into the next lane to the left to keep from hitting him and then I watched as he jerked his wheel to the right to avoide hitting someone else. When he pulled the wheel to the right I watched the right wheels come off the ground,(I could see this because at the time he was less than 5 feet from me) the SUV turned sideways and began to flip and roll down I-75 at 70 MPH.

I quickly stoped my car and ran back to the accident where the driver was crawling out of his window. We helped him to the side of the road and then waited for the police.

While we were waiting we pieced together what had happened. The driver of the coupe was slowing down to avoid hitting the driver of the 18 wheeler on the side of the road. The man driving the Ford had just bought a new cell phone and was reading the direction book that came with it. When he looked up he saw that he was about to hit the car in front of him so he tried to move out of the way but with a death grip on his phone in one hand he was unable to control his speeding SUV with just the other. The accident was a direct result of driver stupidity, arrogence and cell phone use.

This is why I never talk on a cell phone while driving and for your safety I truly hope you never will either.

Tyklfe

29

Oh. My. God. In my case, I didn’t total it, but I hit a parked car with my dad’s truck when I had only had my license for a week. Weird, isn’t it? (yours wasn’t by any chance in an Osco parking lot, was it?)
Another one. It wasn’t completely totalled, but it did cause over $3,000 in damage. I was driving and a 90 year old woman made a left hand turn out of the right hand turn lane on a red light and hit me. Busted the engine block, among other things.

30

I scrolled ahead of this post before I found where I’d left off, and my eye was caught by the phrase “death grip on his cell phone”. I figured the anecdote would be about someone who caused an accident because he was merely talking on his cell phone. But reading the instruction book? This is sheer stupidity way beyond the cell phone phenomenon. That jackass would have been a moron in any era. He would have been the one caveman who held his spear with the sharp end facing himself. He would have been on a whaling ship, bashing the anchor into the hull and sinking it. In fact, anyone who doesn’t realize that when you drive, you look at the road, not anything else: the road, should have lived in an earlier time, where he would have been weeded out much earlier.

31

At 16…
After outrunning the local police car, my radio started to short out. After two quick whaps to the front it started back up. This is the point at which I looked up from my stereo to see an oncoming curve in the road. I overcorrected a tad (purple passion) and flipped my 1970 Charger 3 times landing on the roof. I can still hear the warble of Led Zeppelins “Living, loving (she’s just a woman)” in the background.

32

[slight admiration]
Lucky bas&%¤d… Twin Turbo I-6, AWD… I would’ve LOVED to have that car back then, since nobody knew about the car in North America, and would blow the doors off of most sports cars.
[/slight admiration]

33

Mix:
*1 day heavy snowfall
*1 -5 degree (celcius) night
in a west (read: wet) coast environment
*stir until flothy white with a slick, sloppy wet base.

Add:
*1 Toyota Tercel (sex machine if there ever was one)
*70 km/h speed limit (40mph)
*dash of youthful exuberence
*pinch of over-estimating own driving ability and assurances of a FWD car

Add:
*intent ot switch to the right lane
blend with slippery surface until car starts to spin and drivers thinks “oh”.

continue blending until cars spins to 90 degrees irregardless of driver interaction (such as steering into the skid).

Add shovelling properties of car-snow should now sweep up the driver’s side window immediately after driver catches a glimpse of the streetlamp he’s heading toward.

Slowly sift enough control to driver in this mix but no more that steering to twist the car. Inertia should not be altered in anyway. IOW, car WILL hit streetlamp, driver has only enough control to decide WHICH part of the car hits the streetlamp.

(decision time: 2 seconds)

Choices:
Front-- Contains: engine, frame, FWD components
Outcome: Expensive, might hurt quite a bit, car would be immobilized, possibly toast.
Left side-- Contains: side window, door, frame, Darq
Outcome: Very expensive, very painful. High ‘ouch’ factor. Forsee bent frame and glass on Darq.
Rear-- Contains: Trunk, fuel tank
Outcome: Biggest cushion factor. Low pain level, least amount of mechanical damage

Decision of driver:
“Trunk it is.”

Spin steering wheel out of skid and spin gently.
Line up streetlamp in the center of rear-view mirror.
Relax for impact.

Let simmer for 5 seconds.
Serves 1.

I drove away from that one, but until I got rid of the car, I had the funniest-looking “spoiler” on the back. Even my parents were amazed at my aim: 1 cm off dead center. It looked like I got rear-ended by a boat.

The driver’s seat was also snapped back in full recline, so I had to drive around with a bunch of newspapers (or whatever I had around) behind me to prop the seat up to a less-than-Lamborghini seating position.

No insurance (car wasn’t worth it), no fix (car wasn’t worth it), so I drove like that for a while until I finally sold it to a junkyard and was given my father’s hand-me-down Beamer which, two years later, was written off by a lady in an oversized T-Bird… but that’s another story.

34

I’ve had two cars totalled on me.[list=1][li]The year is 1988, and I’m driving down a residential street doing 30-35 in my '80 Corolla hatchback. Somebody coming from my right on a cross street blows right through her stop sign (I didn’t have one) and T-bones me. I spin about 270[sup]o[/sup], stopping when my right front corner hits a telephone pole support wire. (I drove by the scene a few months ago - the paint from my car is still there!)[/li]
Save a tiny cut on my left hand from the passenger window showering little squares of safety glass all over the interior of the car, I’m fine. The other driver is a little dazed (“I thought I stopped,” she said. “Evidently not,” I replied.), but OK. I get the impression that she had been somewhat “dazed” even before the accident. She has no insurance. A bent rear axle is supposedly what pushed my car over the edge: totalled.

[li]Fast forward to 1997. My 1988.5 Escort is parked on the street outside my house. It’s 2:30 a.m. I’m asleep inside, and I’m awakened by a vaguely-perceived loud crash.[/li]
While I’m still trying to decide if I really heard something or only dreamed it, the doorbell rings and I hear the next-door neighbor’s kids excitedly yelling, “Is that your car?” Uh-oh…

Tossing on a bathrobe, I answer the door and see that, yep, it was my car. My car’s rear end is completely smashed in, and it’s turned 90[sup]o[/sup] with the front bumper facing the curb. It was a hit-and-run; one of my neighbors happened to be up and saw the car go streaking by, and he actually hopped in his car to try to chase the offender and get a license plate number. Nice of him, but the guy had too much of a head start.

Surveying my car more closely, we were amazed that the other vehicle was able to flee the scene. Mine sure wasn’t going anywhere. I, my roommate, the cop who filled out the report, and the AAA tow truck guy I called to pivot my car out of the traffic lane were all unanimous in our predictions that the car would be totalled when the insurance folks came and looked at it. We were right.

They never found the bastard.

[li]Hi, Opal![/li][/list=1]

35

My thoughts exactly.

36

Yes indeed, it was a very quick car. - until that night anyway. It was one of the Rear wheel drive models, though. I wasn’t used to driving FR cars at the time and I suppose I got a little carried away with it!

1 Fast Car + 1 Bad Wreck = 1 Lesson Learned

-hashiriya-

37

Tyklfe these are the people who complain about how bad traffic is in Atlanta and who think they can drive well under any circumstances.

The other day, I was on the train going home, and I looked out at GA400. There was a man in a SUV, traveling along with the flow of traffic(it wasn’t backed up, so probably around 70mph). He was reading what was obviously a novel.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I don’t care how good the book is, it’s not worth dying for. People like that are one of the prime reasons I ride the train every day.
Back to the OP-I’ve never had a wreck, much less one that totaled the car. Knock on wood-I’m driving 200 miles round trip every day this week, up to Toccoa, and home, so I’ll watch myself carefully.

38

I’ve totaled 2 in my lifetime (neither was my fault), but this one is better than both of mine combined.

1971, my little brother, age 16 owned an Opel Kadet Wagon. It had a very small engine, would only do 54 MPH downhill (and it had to be a big hill.)

In the rural community we lived in, someone was burning barns for sport. The local citzenry somehow came up with Deputy Sheriff’s Badges, unauthorized of course. And they we a bunch of badge-heavy rednecks.

Little Bro has his date on a deserted road, they are nekkid in the back of this really small Opel wagon. Just about the time they were getting down to business, someone stuck a flashlight up his ass and asked, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Little Bro, being a gentle soul, replied, “Just what the hell does it look like I’m doing?”

To make a short story long, Redneck has a badge and is drunk with authority. He informs Bro he will follow them to the girl’s house, have a chat with her parents, then follow Little Bro home and have a talk with Mom and Dad. Being of a tender age, and not wanting Dad to have a piece of his ass, Little Bro decides to outrun Redneck.

Turns out Redneck is in a Datsun or Toyota that will only do 52 MPH, so Little Bro outruns the fucker. Little Bro, being in kind of a rushed state, was still unclothed when he slid under the wheel of his not-so-fast automobile. When he no longer saw headlights behind him, he started to get dressed, all the while motoring along at 54 MPH. He managed to pull his slacks up, but when he turned loose of the steering wheel to button them in the middle of that curve, he rolled the Opel wagon.

He called me, and Mom and I went to the scene of the accident. The girlfriend for some reason was very wide-eyed and didn’t have a lot to say. The Sheriff’s Deputies (the real ones) arrived to investigate the accident shortly after Mom and I got there.

Then up rolled Redneck. He started in telling my Mom how he had caught them in a compromising position and Little Bro had the audicity (sp) to run from him.

Mom interuppted him to tell him he had better leave while he had the chance. To this day, I think she should have pressed charges. He would probably still be in jail.

Oh yeah, the Opel wagon was in the body shop for 7 weeks. Even had to replace the headliner. Why they didn’t total it I’ll never know.

39

It was just last year. But it wasn’t my fault, really! It easily could have been, though.

My mom had just had lasic surgery, or however you spell it, and was going back to the doctor for a follow up visit. She couldn’t drive, though, just having had eye surgery. So I was taking her, and a 3 month old (at the time) lestrangelet was with us. So we’re cruising down a fairly wide and busy street, talking about, you know, stuff, and not really paying close attention to the road–it’s one I drive on all the time–and the road is wet because it rained earlier in the morning. And as I’m talking, I look ahead and see a car stopped to make a left turn. “Oh, shit,” I think, “I don’t have time to stop!”

But I did–just barely. Whew! I think. That was a close one! My heart is just beginning to slow down when I hear tires squealing again. That’s not me! I look in the rearview mirror. Yep, someone is behind me, trying to imitate my stunt. Only it won’t work, I can see that it won’t work, and I can see that I can’t pull into the other lane without hitting someone else. I say, “Here it comes!” and Bang! We’re slammed into the car ahead of us. The lestrangelet lets out a yell, but he’s fine, strapped tightly into his car seat, just really upset. Well, so am I, and so is my mom. We all pull over. Turns out, the guy behind me was on his way to a golf tournament–he was very excited, this was big national thing (I don’t follow golf, but I knew this was a big deal to have this event in our area) and had tickets to the VIP tent (he took them out of his pocket to show me, it was all he could think about) and he was going way over the speed limit, he was so phyched about getting there. He was about 70. The front end of his car was sort of crumpled.

His insurance company was very pleasant, actually. I had been expecting a hassle, but they were easy to deal with. The car (a minivan) didn’t look too badly damaged–the back bumper was pushed in a little on one side, and the front was a bit worse, but I didn’t think it was as bad as it could have been. But Mr. Lestrange was very upset. “They’re going to total this, damn it, and we won’t be able to replace it for what they’ll give us!” He was right. Mr. Lestrange is a mechan…excuse me, an Automotive Technician. We’d bought the minivan on the cheap and he’d put a lot of work into it. Rebuilt the engine and everything. So it was, in reality, worth more than its blue book value. He still gets steamed if I mention it.

The lestrangelet would have been through the window (or splatted onto it) without the car seat, though. I can’t say enough about car seats, and you bet both lestragelets are going to be using boosters when they grow out of car seats.