Years ago my brother and I were camping on Assateague Island. We decided to go looking for the beach. We got in the car, drove down the road and saw a sign; “To The Beach”. So I turned and followed the sign and… ended up on the beach. Literally on the beach, stuck in the sand. :smack:
We walked to the campground office and they called a tow truck to get us out. The woman said it happened all the time. To this day I’m not sure if that was the truth or she was just being nice to the idiot kid who drove into the sand.
I’ve also considered the possibility that it was a setup to make money for the towing service.
When I was in high school, my father let me drive the Fiat on days it wasn’t his turn for the car pool.
Coming home from school, I saw all my friends who were having to walk, because they didn’t have a car. “Suckers!” as I waved to them. Except there was a car stopped right in the street waiting for the car ahead of it to make a left in the middle of the block. I hit the car hard enough to send it into the front car. :smack:
Then all my friends got to walk by and laugh at the real sucker.
Just the other day, I was driving through a DC neighborhood, every block was a four way stop. Drive, stop briefly, go; etc. etc. And then I got to a block that was a two way stop, I assumed the traffic coming along the cross street had a stop sign and I stopped briefly at my sign and then pulled out into the intersection and everyone’s day got a little more interesting for a few seconds.
During my driving test, I made a left turn from the straight lane instead of the left turn lane. This was an automatic failure.
One dark night I was trying to get to a friend’s house in Philly, and instead of being in the left turn lane I ended up a lane further to the left - in front of oncoming traffic with my blinker on. I realized it before their light turned green, because someone politely honked and then let me back into the left turn lane.
It sort of happened again another time in Philly. It was a confusing intersection - two oncoming lanes of traffic, a divider, then another oncoming lane of traffic on the other side of the divider, then two lanes going the opposite direction. I thought I was in the left turn lane, but I was really in front of oncoming traffic on the other side of the divider. The driver who had right of way was rightfully pissed, but I swear to Og they designed Philly roads to cause as many accidents as humanly possible.
Then another fun one - I’d just gotten my new car, a 2009 Honda Fit, and was driving home to Michigan excited to show it off. We stopped for gas and when I left the parking spot, I had to back up to get out. I ended up backing right into a concrete post that was juuuust short enough to be invisible from my rearview. Caused $500 worth of damage to my brand new car…
The reason I drive so defensively is because I know there are other people like me out there.
I was on the last stretch of a 2-lane road with about 1 mile left to my house after my grueling 1.5 hour commute when I saw another car approaching very fast behind me. As I watched, it became increasing clear that he was well over the speed limit, probably in a huge hurry, and would “catch up” to me at around the spot where I’d need to turn left into my driveway. Worried that he would attempt to pass me at the time I needed to turn, I thought I would be polite and get over into the left lane since I would be turning left into my driveway, thus allowing him to continue in his lane without having to brake to allow my turn. As I watched his approach in my mirror, I eased over into the left lane and put on my turn signal. When he was almost about to pass me on the right, I saw for the first time a motorcyclist heading directly towards me in the opposite direction, now that I was in the wrong lane. Since the vehicle behind was now going around me on the right, I could no longer move back into the right lane, so I ran off into the left shoulder directly in front of my house while the poor motorcyclist was obviously slamming on his brakes, swerving, desperately trying to avoid a head-on collision.
I made it safely into my driveway before any collision, and while I was relieved but pissed at my own inattention and idiocy, I knew I probably made the other two drivers very angry indeed… For days, all I could think was, THEY KNOW WHERE I LIVE!
I’d had my first-ever brand-new car about two weeks before I finally cleared all the crap out of my garage so I could store my pride and joy in there rather than on the driveway. I’d measured the garage door and knew it would be tight, but I’m good at parking, right? I even backed into the garage to make it easier, so I could use the mirrors to line up with the doorway.
I got the mirrors past the entrance, which is the hard part, because the mirrors are the widest part of the car, right? Unfortunately I then took my eye off the ball and scraped the wheel arch right along the sharp metal edge of the garage doorway. :smack:
I’ve never hit another car, apart from the odd tiny nudge while parking. The nearest I’ve come to a full-speed blunder was hitting a kerb where the road narrowed on a bend. That was also in the brand-new car, and took a nice chunk out of the alloy wheel.
I noticed the right side mirror was damaged on our car a few years ago (I suspect someone hit it in a parking lot), and ended up replacing it. About a week later I was backing out of the garage and wiped the brand new mirror off on the edge of the door. :smack:
I rear-ended someone in this manner on a Beltway off ramp in November. No merge area, so you had to stop and wait for a gap. There was a big gap, so the car in front of me started to go and I turned back, checked briefly to make sure the gap was still big enough for me to fit in, and accelerated with my head still turned. WHAM!
You guessed it. Car ahead of me had stopped again. To this day, I don’t know why. There was plenty of space for both of us. But it was 100% my fault for not looking back.
Fortunately, I was only doing 5mph, so aside from a good jolt, there was no damage to either car. We pulled off to exchange info (the other driver was very nice about it since it was immediately obvious that no one was hurt and the cars were fine) and went on our ways. Nothing ever came of it.
I also learned that one should not store anything with a long handle (like a snow brush) in the front passenger seat because if you slam on the brakes, it may slide forward, catch on the shifter, and slip the car into neutral. Oops.
In May of 1997, I was driving down a large street in Pasadena when I noticed I was coming up on a police trap. Not much of a trap, since it was really obvious and meant to be seen. There were a couple of cop cars and a couple of their motorcycles sitting at the side of the road just on the far side of a large crosswalk. I noted this to my then-wife as we were driving up to it. And then I watched as a crossing guard crossed the street. I slowed down. As she got beyond the halfway mark, she took her sign down and kept walking, so I cruised right on through. Right in front of the cops. Who were not amused that I didn’t know that she needed to be completely clear of the intersection before proceeding. sigh
The other involved being at my former mother-in-law’s house and going out to move my car so that someone else could get into her driveway later on. The driveway is a fairly narrow one that curves down a steep slope. As I started backing down, I realized that I was too close to the wall on my passenger side. So I put it in drive to move back uphill and start over. Except I had stopped on a portion of the driveway that was covered in wet leaves. I kept trying to accelerate back uphill, but with no success. So I backed further down, very slowly, making contact with the wall with my mirror, hoping I could find a spot with some traction. No luck. Back up a little further, scrape the mirror more, still no traction. I kept this up for several minutes, not having the sense to go inside and ask for help. I could hear the mirror starting to groan from the pressure, and sure enough, eventually, it popped. On the plus side, once I’d managed to break the mirror, I no longer had any qualms about backing down the rest of the way. It was fairly embarrasing, though, to have to explain to my wife why we had a side-view mirror on the way there, but not going home.
This last one doesn’t really count as a driving mistake so much as poor decision-making that involved a car. Not long after my marriage ended and I was setting up my new bachelor pad, I was very excited about getting a new TV, so I ran off to Costco to buy one I’d researched. I did not, however, manage to factor into that decision how I was going to fit a large flat-screen TV in my compact vehicle. It took me quite some time to get ahold of a friend with a minivan who could come rescue me, and in the hour interim, I got a number of laughs and funny looks from people in the parking lot who had observed me trying to defy physics in order to make the damn thing fit.
This was back before they had the remote key fobs (or if they did exist they weren’t available to plebeians like me).
I parked my new (to me) car in a shopping center parking lot which had a slight downhill slope. I don’t know where my mind was, but somehow I unknowingly managed to leave it in neutral with the parking brake off. I got out of the car, shut the door, and locked it. I then turned and began walking away from it.
For some reason I glanced back at the car. It was slowly rolling downhill and picking up speed!
I ran back and, while running alongside it, managed to fish my keys out of my pocket, stick the key in the lock, open the door, jump in and hit the brake pedal.
A couple that was walking across the lot saw the whole thing and said that I was white as a sheet.
OK, I live in a state that REQUIRES a full stop if anyone is in a designated crosswalk.
Today, I was turning left out of my condo complex, and a guy was about to step in front of me to walk across the driveway (NOT a designated crosswalk). He STOPPED, he waved me across, so I TURNED …
practically INTO a big pickup truck! Whoops! I saw the stopped pedestrian waving, and thought he was motioning ME to proceed.
OK, I live in a state that REQUIRES a full stop if anyone is in a designated crosswalk.
Today, I was turning left out of my condo complex, and a guy was about to step in front of me to walk across the driveway (NOT a designated crosswalk). He STOPPED, he waved me across, so I TURNED …
practically INTO a big pickup truck! Whoops! I saw the stopped pedestrian waving, and thought he was motioning ME to proceed.
I read about this on the SDMB a while ago and I tried it, and it does work for getting rid of blind spots. However, I ended up switching back to how I had the mirrors before (where you can just barely see the sides of the car in the mirrors), because I find it better for backing up (I need to back into a tight spot to park at home).
My story for the thread: One day I was parking in the parkade at my university that was under construction, so there were less spots available than usual. The spot I ended up finding was close to a big concrete pillar on the passenger side, and there was plenty of room on the drivers side when I parked the car. When I came back later in the day, some jackass had parked his giant truck over the line - I actually couldn’t get in the drivers’ side door and I had to climb in from the passenger side. I started to pull out, being very cautious to not scrape up against the truck on my drivers’ side, and then a bunch of construction workers walked behind my car so I had to stop and wait. I then proceeded, while trying to keep an eye on the truck and also look in the rearview mirror to avoid any more pedestrians. I forgot about the pillar on the passenger side, and in my efforts to avoid the truck I ended up backing up next to the pillar and almost completely shearing off my passenger-side mirror (it was dangling by wires). Luckily I had duct tape with me (and my car is almost the same color as duct tape - from a distance you couldn’t even see the “repair”!). Ended up costing over $200 to fix.
Long days mean we should make an extra effort while driving, as you’ve just learned. I learned this myself about 5 years ago when I had a near miss. We were really behind on a project, so not only was I working an extra 1.5 hours a day, I was also working every Saturday and some Sundays too. I didn’t realize how badly worn down I was until I had to make a turn at a little island with a turn lane, and failed to look left before turning. Thank god no one was coming, because I would have been broadsided if they were.
I’ve never seen another intersection like this and I’m not doing a good job describing it, so I drew you guys a picture. I was at the star when I abruptly turned left. All traffic is two-way, so if you needed to you could also turn right from where I was - never seen anyone do it, though.
I can definitely say I’m said ‘fool’ in the phrase “Gods look out for drunks, fools and children”, and here’s why:
A couple of decades ago, I was driving a rental car in Oregon, at night. Long highway, tree-lined, very dark, no traffic, no street lights. Couldn’t figure out how to turn on highbeams so I worked with lowbeams. I was trying very hard to keep the solid line to my left, but the road just seemed…weird. Very twisty, narrow road.
Yeah, not so narrow…FOR A BIKE LANE.
To this day I can’t believe I did that, and still occasionally give a nod to WhoEver was smart enough to get everybody off the road before I was on it. Just thinking about actually hitting a biker makes me shudder.
Last Sunday I was driving east on a local street with stop signs. The north-south cross streets do not have stop signs. I stopped at one sign. A car coming from the south was about to turn left into my street. He/she stopped and waited, I thought, for me. I started to go. Suddenly a driver from the north came whizzing from my left, and swore at me as I braked suddenly, swearing myself. Luckily, I narrowly escaped a collision. My mistake was not connecting the dots that the left-turning driver from the south was waiting, NOT FOR ME, but for the driver from the north, to pass. Otherwise, the left-turning driver, with the right of way, would not have yielded. My mistake was NOT MULTI-FOCUSING. What are the odds of this? Has this happened to anyone else in this forum?
