And help me feel better. I feel like an idiot. Failure to yield ticket. And I should know better, because I’ve had bad luck with left turns before.
It had been a long ass day at work–10.5 hours in the office. I just hope I’m not that unaware again. Pretty scary. At least nobody was hurt…
About two weeks after I got my license when I was 16, I was driving home after stopping at McDonald’s. (Oh, sweet freedom, I could go to McDonald’s whenever I wanted!) I was fiddling around in the passenger seat trying to get my burger out of the bag, and I let the car drift too far to the right. Looked up just in time to jerk the wheel back to the left, but still clipped someone’s mailbox with my passenger-side mirror. The mailbox was fine, but I knocked all the glass out of the mirror.
I of course lied to my parents and told them I must have been hit in a parking lot. And I never made the mistake of looking away from the road while I’m driving again. (Well, not for longer than a second or so to change the radio station. But during this incident I bet my eyes were off the road for a good five seconds at least.)
Almost 3 years ago, I hit someone that was going straight while I was turning left. I still can’t believe that I blanked like that and just followed the car in front of me. Why would I do that?? I blame it on conversation with my kid and now we don’t talk in the car. And I’ll be so glad come August when my insurance rates finally go back down.
Shortly after I got my license, I was driving my dad’s four door, 8 ft bed Dodge truck. I tried to pull into the parking spot at home next to the little hatchback spitfire? (small car). For some reason the truck was stuck. I gunned the gas. Still stuck. I backed up, pulled in again and got stuck again. My dad is standing in the yard watching. I pulled back again… then notice that someone has dented my dad’s car.
My dad walked up and he was too flabber gasted to speak. All he said was “Let me park it”
I got out, expecting to be dead within minutes.
He got out of the truck and walked into the house without looking at me.
I saw fit to ‘go for a walk’ until after he’d gone to work.
Years later, I asked him about that day. He said he was totally dumbfounded and was trying real hard to not break out laughing because he knew I was mortified at what I’d done.
I’ve heard of 2 instances where people “thought the person ahead had gone” and almost hit a stationary vehicle ahead of them. In one instance they actually did.
Another time someone reversed into a parked car. That was in line with theirs. Both cars were in a driveway and the inner car was trying to get out.
I had had my new car about three months when I stuck my head up my ass and rear-ended the car in front of me. I described it that way to the cop investigating the accident and he let me off with no ticket for being truthful about it.
I had my first ever very-near-miss a couple weeks ago. My mom was in the passenger seat, jawing about something pissily (as is her wont). At the antepenultimate second before an off-ramp (very close to, but not quite at, the point of no return), she said, “Why aren’t you in the right lane!?” Well, because I’ve never driven this way before, and you got offended when I suggested plugging in my GPS at the outset of this journey! Not that I said that, but I was thinking it loudly. So anyway, I got flustered. And in that critical moment, I failed to turn my head before switching lanes. I glanced at my rear and right mirrors really quick, then signaled and started changing lanes so we wouldn’t miss the ramp.
WELP! Apparently a guy was sitting in my right rear blindspot. He gunned it when he saw me signal, and I saw his car out of the corner of my eye in time to swerve back left. I came very close to swiping him… but fortunately, no cigar. If I’d hit him, it would have been a same-direction sideswipe (so *probably *not major damage), but we were both traveling around 65 on the highway. So who knows what could have happened.
Lessons learned: Watch my blindspots more carefully in case they’re being camped out in. Always turn my head before changing lanes, even if it means missing a crucial off-ramp on an expensive toll road (a double toll is still cheaper than an accident!). Don’t ever linger in the blindspots of others. And most importantly, use my GPS forevermore instead of relying on passengers for ad hoc directions. Because even while I was changing lanes before I saw the guy, I knew I should have looked. I knew that not-looking was stupid. When I’m alone in the car, I *always *look. I just didn’t look because my mom got all pissy that I didn’t read her mind, and I allowed myself to get distracted and flustered. Quoth the Rachel: nevermoar! If I’d hit that guy, it would have totally been my fault. I’m so glad I didn’t! :eek: 
:eek:
I was amply punished by being accused of trying to kill my mom and her boyfriend for the next half-hour, though. Maybe I should trade-in for a single-seater car. Those exist, right? Then I would have a great excuse for declining to give rides to everybody.
I know this is the topic of much debate in some quarters, but if your mirrors are adjusted properly you shouldn’t need to check your blind spot because you shouldn’t have one. See here: How To Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots
Admittedly, it’s a little bit trickier to get the mirrors in adjustment than the way most people do it (i.e. with the back corner of your own car in view), but if you’re the only person who drives your car it’s not too difficult to set it up and just leave it that way. Here’s another good how-to page: Avoiding The Blind Spot | Car Talk
Thanks for those links. I’m getting more and more concerned about blind spots; I think it’s more my eyes than my mirrors, though.
Interesting reads! I’ll have to try that. I normally have very good spatial awareness on the highway and my blind spots aren’t a problem. I constantly maintain a general awareness of where all cars are around me before I need to make a maneuver, and I only prepare to switch lanes after a car passes me and I am 100% certain there wasn’t another behind it. But, even merely listening passively to a live conversation takes up enough brainpower that I can’t effectively live-monitor the road at the same time.
Very few people know this. When I was 23 or so I got my G2 (Ontario Graduated Licensing - means I could drive by myself.) I was NOT confident at all, due to constant put-downs and snide remarks from my then-boyfriend and his friends (“Juicy’s driving? Better stay off the sidewalks! Har har har.”) One day I was driving my then-boyfriend’s-friend’s Intrepid (big wide car) and I was going up a narrow street. A city bus turned onto the street, and I was kind of trapped between this oncoming bus and a row of parked cars. I had no idea what to do. I tried to squeeze over so the bus could get by…and hit a parked car. OMG I was mortified. I knew about some “accident reporting centre” at the cop shop so instead of staying at the scene (again, didn’t know what to do!) I tried to drive there, but I couldn’t control the car all of a sudden (bent tie-rod) and pulled over and went to a payphone (olden days) and called my then-BF at work in hysterical tears. Thank God he was a mechanic, the owner of the car was his manager and also an auxilliary police officer. He told my then-BF to “Just fix it.” and asked his cop-buddy to tear up the ticket he gave me for “Careless Driving.”
It took until I was about 36 (two years ago) before I had the courage to try driving again, and only because my now-wonderful-husband made me learn. I cried and fought but eventually DID learn (with the help of SUPPORTIVE people around me) and now I drive my Jeep with skill and confidence. Sure I still make minor errors in judgement sometimes like everybody does but I see them as “learning experiences.”
I was parked in a parking lot that was adjacent to another, vacant, parking lot. When I was getting ready to leave, there were several other cars in my lot waiting to exit, so I decided it would be easier to just drive forward into the other lot, and exit from there. I didn’t notice that there was a low concrete barrier separating the two lots. Yup, I got my car stuck on top of the barrier. It took AAA 45 minutes to come and tow me. Meanwhile, everyone driving by (this was at a major intersection) got a good look at the idiot with his car stuck on top of the barrier.
I was changing lanes from left to right not too far before an intersection, and thought I saw something in my blind spot - it was dark out, etc. After I double-checked and spent too long doing it, I looked forward again just in time to see the light was red. I slammed on the brakes (was going maybe 15-20), and just barely went into the intersection, but that was far enough for the car turning left from the one-way street coming from the right to get into a fender-bender with me. No airbag deployment or anything. Even the police officer said the timing on that light was weird.
I got a failure to yield for a signal ticket, and the other driver went through a series of lawyers, stringing out threats to sue over the course of 3 years. They finally served me in front of a waiting room full of patients. :rolleyes: My insurance company’s lawyer got it dismissed essentially for failing to be prompt in pursuing the case.
I’m ultra-paranoid about both red-light timing and changing lanes too near an intersection now. Years later, I even feel my heart start to race if a light changes and I have to brake somewhat hard.
Not to continue hijacking, but I’ve been using this method since shortly after I started driving my own cars, around 1988. It just seemed to make sense, because I already know where the ass end of my own car is - I’m sitting in it. It’s the other guy I’m worried about. One day I was fooling with the mirrors and then was like, “hey, why not keep them here, and here? The blind spots are gone that way.” And I’ve positioned them like that ever since.
Though I’ve managed to pull boners with my own side mirrors on two different cars, usually in drive-throughs with the brightly painted concrete poles. That I should have seen. That I should have known were there anyway. Luckily, they were break-away mirrors on springs, so they just ended up scraped a bit and no real damage.
Shortly after getting my license and and still driving my mom’s '78 Cutlass, I bumped a woman at a stoplight. No damage to either car at all (probably 2mph, tops), but she was pissed because she had a McDonald’s Coke between her legs and it spilled all over her lap. She got out and walked back (still in line at the light that was green now), started yelling at me while I apologized, and stopped abruptly when I asked her why the toddler in the front seat wasn’t wearing a safety belt.
Driving a rental 4WD in the US and heading back to Houston from NASA I had a little incident at the on-ramp.
Rather too late I realised that I was about to end up going down a road (access lane?) that paralleled the motorway and tried to change lanes with insufficient warning. I (barely) managed to not side-swipe the driver on my left in this ill considered manoeuvre but then corrected into the curb, at which point my right rear tire blew out. :eek:
I pulled the vehicle onto the verge (and then after seeing the speed of the traffic going past) down into the area between the motorway and the side road, and changed the tire. (Had to find it first – unfamiliar vehicle and it turned out the spare was located up underneath the body and had to be winched down). The 110 degree heat added to the overall experience. 
When I was a new driver, we lived on an unpaved road. Red Georgia clay. There were two ways to drive to civilization: turn right from the driveway, and drive up a fairly steep hill, at the top of which the road was hemmed in by seven-foot-high banks of clay, at the center of a curve. Or turn left from the drive to ascend a much less steep hill, with a normal ditch on one side, and an eight-foot-deep drainage ditch on the other. No problem, until the rainy season, when the road was rutted and mired and slippery as hell. I hit the embankment once when my car started slipping and sliding, and went in the shallow ditch a lot, because I was so afraid of the big ditch. The neighbors were kind, and owned big tractors, so the worst I suffered was muddy feet from slogging up the hill to get Paul or Wade to come tow me out again.
More recently, I backed into a vehicle at the dry cleaner’s. A lady in a small pickup pulled up to the drive through while I was buckling up, and between the slight hill I was parked on, the dog box on the back of my truck, and the spot she was parked, I could not see her vehicle at all. It was a terrible lifetime of a few seconds while I threw it in park and got out of the seatbelt to see whether I’d hurt someone! (I changed dry cleaners after that! I also learned that husbands get very suspicious when you call to ask where the insurance card is.)
I passed the Esmeralda County Sheriff once while he was transporting a “perp” in the back of his car. He was going about 50 across the Nevada desert, south of Tonopah.
Well, after following him about 7 miles at this speed, watching him lecture the guy in the back seat, I picked it up to about 57 (limit was 55 back then) and took about 2 and a half minutes to sloooooowly creep past him (no traffic in sight) while eating a sandwich, and looking over and nodding to him as our windows got even.
Once I got clear, and over a small rise, I nailed it and opened up a gap, and kept doing that all the way into Tonapah, where the Nye County Sheriff was waitin’ for me (check a map, its hilarious!)
Got stopped, and made to wait for the Esmeralda cop. He pulls over, chews my ass up and down, assures me “Your ass is mine if I wasn’t so busy!” and other such hollow threats. He mounts up and drives off.
So, me and the Nye guy are standing there, and he tells me to slow down and be careful and all that, and then, just before driving off, admits that the “perp” in the back of the other cop’s car punked him for letting me pass him!
In retrospect, some of the best 15 minutes I’ve ever spent!
Nice thread timing. I just took off the driver’s side mirror on my father in law’s otherwise immaculate pickup. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: To be fair, I hadn’t driven it last, and the wheel was turned in such a way that backing up a mere foot out of park turned it just enough to hit the brace on the carport. But holy shit, I feel so fucking stupid.
Mm, just this Sunday. Was driving the car to my parent’s place after attending a sleepover-wedding, was tired as hell having dropped people off on the way. Long story short, I was pulling out into the street, checked my mirrors to make sure that the street was clear and as soon as I’m out some guy is hugging my rear bumper and honking his horn profusely. I managed to miss him entirely when I checked the mirror, and I’m very lucky I didn’t get rear-ended.
Driving along a 6 lane highway (3 eastbound - 3 westbound), with the left lane under construction, the speed limit 45 mph because of it being a construction zone, I going 55 in the right lane. A maniac zooms up on me and wants to pass. He flashes the brights and expects me to switch lanes. Hello?? The left lane is for passing. The moron finally swings around to left, then back in front of me and slams on his brakes - literally locks 'em up. I was ready for it and had already slowed down. My mistake was not having a gun to shoot the idiot.
Gun control is hitting your target.