Oh Aspidistra :eek:
All cyclists – even the best of us – have that sort of silly awkward prang sooner or later.
At least you now have a geographical features are named after you: Aspidistra’s Steps
I almost ran over myself a few months ago.
I was driving our truck, and got stuck in a little bit of mud. To put the truck in 4wd,you have to manually turn this knob thingie on both front wheels. So, I hop out, turn the knob on the drivers side wheel start walking around the front of the truck to do the passenger side, and realize the truck is now unstuck and moving forward. I’d forgotten to put it in park first. (in my defense, I usually drive a stick shift.)
Anyway, I managed to get out of the way and get back in the moving truck before it hit either me or the tree it was heading for, but it was close.
My last car accident, about 10 years ago.
Stopped at a light, waiting to turn right (no turn lane). I’m the third car back from the light. Jeep comes screaming up behind me and screeches to a halt about two feet behind me, slightly sideways from the stop.
Old lady in the big caddy up front turns right. Car ahead of me pulls forward only about half a car length. I pull forward…
Jeep slams into me hard. Guy had basically floored it. :eek:
Then his insurance paperwork doesn’t look right (turns out it was a forgery) and he just says he thought I was turning (two cars back from the light, sure.)
Turns out he was an illegal immigrant, the car was a rental under a false name and he had no actual insurance. He may have actually skipped the state too afterwards, because they couldn’t find him.
And an amusing anecdote, which is never worthless!
I do wish I wasn’t so bloody breakable though. My spouse needs to get knocked off his bike and go flying through the air to break and tear things (and even then…!) I just need to look sideways at a hazard and I damage something.
(on the other other hand - how cool are thermoplastic casts? Srsly - I love the way the physio can just go ‘oh - that looks a couple of mills bent the wrong way - lets just dunk it back in the boiling water a few times till we get it right!’)
I hate to burst your bubble, but corner scrapes turning into parking spaces are not typical.
I’ve been driving for 40 years now and have never scraped a corner of my car turning into a parking space.
Actually, they’re remarkably typical. For really bad drivers. IOW the majority.
For anyone who should be allowed to drive they’re as you say: things which never happen.
I also did this, twice! Our brand new car is about 2 inches wider than the old one, and I am hypercareful going into or out of the garage now.
Other than that, I’ve posted before about the time my car and another collided. Not the drivers - the cars. Both cars were parked at a shopping mall and I came out to find my car had been very gently T-boned by another one. Initially suspecting a case of extremely drunk parking (the nearest stores were a beer store and a liquor store) I called the police. The two constables who showed up were inspecting the situation when a woman walked up and said “I think that’s my car. But I didn’t park it there!” It turned out that she hadn’t put it in Park, and there was just enough slope to the lot that it slowly rolled down and hit my car. No damage due the the extremely slow speed. One of the constables remarked after the woman left that she should have ticketed her for “parking while clueless”.
Well, I’ve sheared off a side-view mirror 3 times (once garage entry, twice garage exit). Left side currently winning two to one.
I’ve sheared off a wing mirror once and as the window was open it was deposited neatly on the passenger seat.
I’ve had one car accident in my day. I managed to do $2200 worth of damage after hitting a snow drift in the road and fish tailing into a guard rail. I was only going 35 or 40 miles per hour, but it was still pretty bad money wise. I’m more upset at myself for not being able to pull myself out of it, because I almost had it …but once the back end swings around you just have to hope for the best.
This didn’t happen to me, but it’s entirely worth sharing. Warning: video, and a bit violent (but the guy was OK).
Driving my less-than-one-year-old 1971 Plymouth station wagon. First new car I ever bought. Backed out of a parking place in front of an appliance business, swung too wide and smacked dead center into the concrete pillar holding the business sign aloft. Put a crease in the rear bumper, but luckily didn’t damage the rear swing gate. I told the insurance company that somebody hit me while I was away from the car. Karma got me for that one, as the rear gate never shut properly after that. I spent the next 13 years going ::slam. . .SLAM. . .SLAM!!. . .FUCKING SLAM!!!::
First time my dad let me drive his 1962 Chrysler. He wanted some fried chicken and had a coupon for it, but had had too much to drink; so in a moment of inebriated insanity, he tosses me the keys. So I’m stylin’ my 17-year old ass all the way across town in the great white whale, laying a little rubber and generally hot-rodding it. I get to the restaurant and they tell me they won’t honor the coupon.
Having almost no cash on me, I’m now pissed off, jump in the car, back out of my spot and burn rubber across the lot toward the alleyway behind the business. Unknown to me, they had removed the ramp going from the lot to the alley, leaving about a two foot dropoff. The front half of the car went over the ledge and came to rest on the frame, leaving the rear wheels and the ass end up in the air. I was able to talk a nearby towing company to lift the car back onto the parking lot for the $5 I had on me, but the walk of shame back into the restaurant to make the phone call was excruciating. Didn’t tell my dad about that until I was about 30.
18 years old, been driving for a few months We had an old Ford Cortinastation wagon and a fairly steep driveway.
Running late to catch up with some friends I jumped into the car, accidently put it in neutral rather than reverse and hit the gas only to roll forward about a foot into the side of the shed (which my dad was working in at the time). Big metal bong sound followed by the noise of *every single hand tool * (screwdrivers, saws, chisels, clamps, hammers etc etc) falling off the wall and landing on the workbench.
Needless to say I was quite late meeting up with my friends after I put all the tools back up in their correct locations - which my dad had helpfully outlined in pencil so I knew exactly where they had to go.
I managed to do both of these feats of adventurous driving within a month of one another.
1 - In order to angle into our garage (with alley access), you had to stomp on the gas and give the wheel a quick hard turn. I got part of that right. I tried to back up to correct my angle and hit the neighbor’s chain link fence with my rear bumper. In those long ago days, bumpers were chrome and didn’t attach to the car on the ends, so I managed to hook the end of the bumper into the chain link fence so thoroughly that I couldn’t get it out. It took me, my mother, the neighbors and finally a neighbor who was a fireman to get my bumper unstuck.
2 - At my summer job, the parking lot had those cement blocks that you snug your wheels up to when you park. I started the car (manuel transmission) and somehow popped the gear just enough that the front tire bounced up and over the cement block. I was stuck. I had to go back into the building and ask for some guys to come help lift my car back over the block.
Oddly - and thankfully - my car sustained no damage in either of those incidents. The only thing damaged was my pride and self-respect. lol
Borrowed the family minivan to drive back from Invermere BC to Edmonton AB with my bike in the back. Since I had all day, I stopped at a few hiking pullouts to see if the x-country riding was any good. At the last one pulling back out, I put it in reverse, but didn’t go anywhere. (Check the parking brake). Figured I was in a rut or something, so gave it s’more gas. (Still nothing… probably a big pothole) - gave it more gas… and it turned out that the noise I heard pulling in was the plastic bumper hooking over the rebar holding the concrete curb block down. Most places they get hammered in flush, but here… well. Pulled the front bumper 1/2 off, and cost 2k$ to replace. :smack:
Two in the past 18 months…jeez, I’m getting old.
First one was in a merge lane to turn right into a fairly busy road. There is a guy in front of me, but I’m looking back at the traffic and see a substantial gap so I know he had to be moving, and I eased up to follow him onto the road. Without looking, of course, since I knew he had to be moving.
Except he wasn’t, of course. Fortunately it was a slow-speed collision and I paid for it (him and me) out of my own pocket to save on the insurance.
Second was heading home with my lawnmower after getting it serviced. What I didn’t do was lower/detach the handle, so it was bumping lightly against the back window (I drive a Chevy Equinox, a mid-size SUV).
Drove very slowly and softly home with just a couple of light taps on the window, but then I had to break for a light and the mower moved way forward. On the green, I tried to start as slow as possible while reaching back, but my fingers slipped and the mower rolled back, handle toward the window.
You ever have one of those moments…just a split second, really…when you know something bad is going to happen right before your eyes and there is not a damn thing you can do about it? Yep. It did, and cost about $300 to get a new back windshield.
Lawnmower worked fine all summer.
Not really STUPID car accidents but somewhat entertaining:
January of 1988 I was taking one of those Greyhound bus “AmeriPass” trips (flat rate, change buses anywhere you want), westbound from Georgia seeking Santa Cruz CA, and we hit ice storms and freezing rain in Alabama that grounded most scheduled buses. One that was still willing to roll was headed for New Orleans so I opted for it. In Hattiesburg, the bus driver was feathering the bus slowly around a banked curve near the bottom of a hill when an oncoming pickup truck wobbled sideways and caromed against the side of the bus. Bus and truck both stopped, but only after skids and slips and spins.
A Datsun or Toyota came down the hill at a cautious 10 mph or so but instead of coming to a stop went into a spin and broadsided the pickup. A Jeep behind it tried to steer around and slid down the banked incline and banged into the bus.
A police car with flashing lights eased down the hill at walking speed and at 15 yards ice-skated in slow motion to bang into the Jeep and the bus. I watched the police officer open the car door and hold onto it as he put his feet under him, then fall abruptly on his butt when he attempted to close his door.
(Don’t drive in freezing rain, y’all)
A somewhat similar one to AHunter3’s. Not really stupid but rather spectacular.
My boss and I were returning home from doing deliveries in western South Dakota, heading east on I-90 during a snowstorm. We are in a Ford F-150 pickup. We get behind a semi and, in the days when people still had CB’s, the boss gets hold of him and asks if it’s OK if we tag along behind. The semi driver says OK.
We crest the hill that begins the fairly steep descent into the Missouri River valley and notice a semi on the shoulder and one in the median on it’s passenger side off the westbound lane with the driver sticking out of the door. The semi we were following indicates he is going to stop and check it out. He stops behind the semi in the eastbound shoulder and we stop behind him. I and the semi driver get out and my boss stays in the pickup. We check out the stopped eastbound semi but no one is in it. We then go into the median and check out the tipped westbound semi. The driver indicated he was OK but his leg hurt a little. About then a highway patrolman heading west shows up and asks why we are out on a night like this. As we are talking to the cop, a Coca-Cola semi crests the hill heading east and, apparently, noticed all the commotion and hits the brakes. He comes barreling in the ditch along side our pickup and the two semis. The snow was flying everywhere!
The driver of the semi we were following and I decide it’s a good time to leave. As we were walking back to our vehicles, we meet the driver of the Coke semi, who is way underdressed for the weather BTW, and point out the cop to him.
I don’t recall what my boss said about it. I do remember him not seeming to be very excited about almost being rear-ended by a semi though.
Here is a stupid one of mine though.
I had just had the windshield in my car repaired (or replaced, I don’t recall) and was driving home when a vehicle in front of me kicked up a rock and chipped it.
The guy at the glass place gave me a discount on the repair though because of my bad luck.
My old house had a narrow driveway leading to a one car garage that we didn’t park in. The driveway had been widened on one side but not the cutout through the sidewalk. I had no problem backing in at a 45 degree angle around my wife’s car and straightening out and parking on the side of the garage but every time I did that with my wife in the car “OH MY GOD YOU’RE GOING TO HIT MY CAR GASP GASP LOOK OUT GASP YOUR HITTING MY CAR GASP YOU’RE GOING TO HIT MY CAR GASP AHHHHHHHHH GASP YOU’RE GOING TO HIT IT OH MY GOD”
It was very stressful, so eventually I hit her car on purpose and explained that’s the toll for screaming at me while I’m driving. She finally agreed not to yell anymore!