Returning to the scene of the accident

In My Humble Opinion
1

A couple of years back, I had to swerve to avoid hitting a school bus that pulled out in front of me and I wound up taking out a mailbox and trashing the right front of my car. No injuries, just a messed up bit of fender and light. But I have never again driven down that road.

It’s not one I normally took - it was just a fluke that I decided to go that way that day. But I’ve never wanted to go there since. Not sure why - I’m not superstitious. I know it’s irrational, but there you go.

Earlier this week, my husband’s car was totaled at an intersection that’s between our house and many places we drive to. I asked him if going past there bothered him, and he said no. It kinda bothers me, and I wasn’t even in his car when it was hit. I dunno - am I weird?

Do memories of accidents past haunt you when you revisit the scene?

2

Just happen to not be in but rather observed an accident this afternoon. Two way semi-rural road straight as an arrow. Mini-van in front of me slows almost to a stop but has no turn signal on. I was still about 50 yards back. Another suv was approaching in the oncoming lane going about 45. For some odd reason, almost like they didn’t even see them, the mini-van suddenly cuts left across the oncoming lane towards a driveway and right across the path of the suv 25 yards out. Of course they couldn’t stop in time and plowed right into the side of them.
I go down this road every other day but I’m pretty sure for a while when I pass that spot I will slow, grip the wheel a bit tighter, and be extra alert at the other vehicles in the vicinity.

3

I pass the spot where I wrecked(nearly killed) Everytime I leave the house.

For years I’d get antsy, thinking another deer would pop out of the dense brush, at that spot.
Never happened.

They widened the road a few years ago. The brush isn’t so near the shoulder now.

4

Same here for where I was hit. It’s the best route to the school I coach at. Other routes have worse long range visibillity and/or road conditions.
No reaction.

5

I hit a deer on the interstate, while driving back to Chicago from my parents’ house in Wisconsin, in 1994. It was in broad daylight, but I hit it while doing about 60 mph; I was very fortunate to not be injured, but I still have dreams about that moment.

I still know exactly where on the highway it happened (in fact, it’s not too far from @Qadgop_the_Mercotan 's stomping grounds); as it’s on the best route to and from Green Bay, I’ve probably driven that same bit of road well over a hundred times since the accident. I drove past it last night, in fact, at twilight, and I still keep an eye out for deer when I go through there.

6

Back when I was still working, I had encounters with deer on 2 different roads while driving 2 different vehicles. First time was at a very slow speed and it was minor cosmetic damage to my minivan. Second time was at 55MPH in a Scion xA and it resulted in over $3K of damage. The actual sites don’t haunt me, but until I quit driving in the dark, I was very cautious around wooded stretches of road.

These days i mostly encounter deer in my yard as they snack on my landscaping. Stoopit deer.

7

You’re the one who planted a snack bar.

8

I’ve crunched a bunch of cars over the years, far more as a teen/college kid than since. Yeah, I tend to remember “Here’s where I did [this stupid thing]”, but it’s not a traumatic memory, just a “Ooh, there’s a familiar landmark”.

I now live clear across the country from where I lived and drove during HS & college. I was last out there in April of this year. During the course of my rental car peregrinations around the counties I passed two of my old accident sites and thought about them and the aftermath of each. Crunched cars and no injuries leads to a less traumatic view of the events; had somebody been maimed or killed there and then I’d certainly feel differently.

For one of them I noted with satisfaction that somewhere in the intervening ~45 years since they’d altered that particular 270 degree offramp so it no longer had a blind stop sign at the top followed by a zero distance merge. The offramp now ends in its own lane going over the overpass bridge. No trauma; just recollection.


Closer to home and to now, about 3 years ago I totaled my car about 4 miles from my then home in really stupid circumstances. This was a couple weeks after my wife had died. To say I was driving distracted is a monster understatement; it’s a very weird state of mind I don’t recommend to anyone. Fortunately nobody was hurt, and nobody else was much inconvenienced, but a nearly new car was expensive trash.

It wasn’t a road I drive every day, but it also wasn’t a rare one-off like the OP. When I had need of something in that part of town, that was the way I went. The next several times I drove through that spot I was hypervigilant. Not that it was a particularly challenging bit of ordinary suburban street. I’ve since moved a couple miles farther away and rather more rarely make use of that street. But if I do drive past there, I think about that accident. Kinda like everything else associated with her later life, illness, and death now, it’s a wistful sadness for what might have been.

9

I regularly pass the site where my horse fell out of her trailer on to the pavement which was a day of nightmare, a month at the vet hospital ($12K, in case anyone is thinking about getting a horse), and another month of rehab. It used to arouse a flood of memories but it was four years ago, and now sometimes I even pass it without noticing.

10

About once per month, I drive over the same spot of highway where my truck was totaled (and where my life’s path was altered to include lots of imaging labs and physical therapists – still ongoing). It doesn’t bother me though, as the probability of another accident there is negligible. It’s kind of weird though, seeing the stains where the vehicles “bled out” following the wreck. For several months, there was still random auto debris scattered in the grass, but it seems to have disappeared.

I’m not as pragmatic about the restaurant parking lot where a violent piece of subhuman garbage caused a similar path change, involving new doctors and concussion treatments. That one still bugs me, and I’ve never been able to eat there again. It shouldn’t bother me, but for some reason I find myself avoiding it.

11

When I was a young man, my grandfather was in a fender bender at an intersection near his home. He was the nervous sort and succumed to a heart attack later that day.
Several years later, my grandmother, his widow, struck a motorcyclist with her car and he died as a result of his injuries…at the same intersection.
I pass this intersection routinely, and you better believe that my head is on a swivel.

12

I was hit by a semi while biking across the Silas Pearman Bridge. I continued to drive across it for the remaining years that I lived in Charleston (not much choice), but I never biked over it again.

I did feel a sense of vindication when they blew it up many years later.

13

“But if I do drive past there, I think about that accident. Kinda like everything else associated with her later life, illness, and death now, it’s a wistful sadness for what might have been.” LSLGuy

I can identify with your wistful sadness.

I have also been in countless car accidents some of them rather serious.

The sites of those accidents have never had a significant impact on me afterwards.

The only one that does, even so many years later, is the spot where my son was killed in a car accident.

I don’t drive by that area too often but it is a major artery to a nearby town and can’t always be avoided.

I often experience a melancholy yearning for what his young life could have been and a profound sorrow at his passing.

14

Last year my wife and I were driving a country lane and we were stopped by a policeman. He asked if we regularly used that road (yes) and if we were using it on the evening before (No).

The point where he stopped us is on the brow of a hill and there is a dirt-track lane leading off to the left. He told us that someone had pulled out of the lane in front of a van with a fatal result.

I was barely aware of the lane before, but now, when we drive past, I have the same reaction as Hampshire above.

15

I very, very rarely pass through the intersection where my Jeep could have been totaled many years ago (a high school kid running late for class didn’t notice that I was stopped at a two-way stop, and plowed into me at 45-50 MPH…fortunately, the car in front of me had just moved ahead, leaving me enough of a cushion to hit the brakes). I wouldn’t have been using that road in the first place if it wasn’t for road construction causing backups and closures on my normal route. I only go through there now if traffic on the main road is excessively heavy and slow. That intersection has since been converted into a four-way stop with flashing lights; even so, I’m still hyper aware of what’s behind me.

16

Did you go back and pay for their mailbox?

17

GEICO did.

18

Both intersections where I got smooshed (Yaris vs 18-wheeler, and bicycle vs F-350) got redesigned right afterwards. Specifically to prevent what happened to me.

Lucky to still be here!

19

That must have been a major project. Did they have to fix more than one approach? What did the intersection look like beforehand?

20

Ok, now I have time to tell you that I crossed a major highway at a stop light. A GREEN light… and got slammed by an 18-wheeler coming downhill at 40mph who never noticed the light changed. It wasn’t until he saw my little red econo-box that he stood on the brakes, twisted the wheel, and probably saved my life.

(Older driver told the cop “Craziest thing. That light went right from green to red!” “Well, sir, let’s watch it… oh, look, it turns yellow for ten seconds, doesn’ it, sir?”)

Within a month that crossing was GONE. Re-engineered so that if you want to cross there, you now have to go down a frontage road, under the highway and around a new roundabout.

~~

The bicycle incident was scarier. The sidewalk is a wide bike route, and I had a green light and a walk light (notice how innocent the storyteller is in all these tales?). This was my normal commute, and never had a problem. Until one rainy night, a huge pickup turns right with minimal slowing down, and T-bones me.

I can still see the monstrously evil grill with those blinding eyes…
Luckily, my foot was right at the top of my pedal rotation, and I shoved it down as hard as I could, shot forward and the truck hit just behind my seat. With my back wheel having hardly any traction on the wet road, it just twirled around and I went flying over the handlebars.

The driver was aghast and after she apologized she asked “Wait, you were on a Bike Boulevard and you had a WALK light! WHY wasn’t there a ‘No Right Turn on Red’ sign facing me?” I was too shaken to care about all that, but she said “See, that’s MY job, I’M the person at the DOT that should’ve done that!”

A few days later, there was a obnoxiously large NO Right Turn sign, made of hundreds of bright LED lights.

Just googled, and someone on reddit called it “a giant mother fucking Lite-Brite-looking no right turn sign.”

So, there’s both a red right turn arrow and a giant mother fucking Lite-Brite-looking no right turn sign. Can I turn right on red with both/either of those no turns signs on. Why not just have a no turn on red sign and be done with it? WTF???

https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/gggswe/first_and_johnson_right_turn_wtf/