Saturday, I was driving north on the Taconic and my steering just vanished. I swerved a few times and plowed right into the center dividing rail , probably around 50 MPH at this point, I was trying to slow down w/o skidding, but I finally went into a skid, and when my car came to a halt, I was nearly perpendicular, both airbags had popped, and my car was a wreck.) I extricated myself–and amazingly my car was totalled and I was totally fine. A few bruises and scratches from the airbag, otherwise nothing.
Other drivers were great–from the opposite direction, into which I very nearly crashed, but for the center divider, people called 911, and called out offers to call for an ambulance (which I waved off) and from my direction, the people who had stopped (instead of plowing into me) and were now slowly getting around my car in half-lane open to them, were also calling out all sorts of encouragement, like “It’s only a car” and asking if I was OK–a few said “God bless you,” and for once I didn’t even resent the intrusion of religion into a secular matter. No one cursed at me for slowing down their trip or inconveniencing them, which was surprising, considering that these were a few dozen NYers, most on vacation.
I’m going to get a few thousand bucks, I learned today, for my car from the insurance company, more than I expected, so I’m going to look for a new car, starting tomorrow, though I’m a little shaken up. (I continued my trip in a car I borrowed, and am now completing it on Amtrak.) If I had crashed through the guardrail, I doubt I would be writing this today, a thought that gives me pause: I still have a lot I want to accomplish. This had to be one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had, and it’s taken me a few days to calm down even as much as I have.
1995 Camry–It’s now in a body shop awaiting the junk man, but I asked a mechanic if he could tell what the hell went wrong with the steering. He either didn’t get why I was asking (which was my own curiosity) or didn’t want to look at the steering, because he kept answering me “You won’t be able to sue anyone, anyway, so why look?–the car was old, so just forget about it.”
That’s the scary part-- that the steering could just go, on a regularly-maintain car like that. or maybe scarier is that the steering didn’t do, and I just crashed in to a guardrail on a sunny day, while driving attentively, in no real rush. Some answers would be nice.
Sorry that you had that experience. On the other hand, you get to buy a new car, which is more fun in theory than practice. Any idea what you’re going to get? Brand-new or just new to you?
Not entirely sure. The whole thing took under five seconds, I think. I was crusing along and I noticed I was near the left edge of the right hand lane, a normal occurance, so I just tried correcting to the center of the right hand lane and the car steered WAY over to the right, so (I still wasn’t very concerned, just thought that I had somehow overcorrected) I tried steering a little bit left, and it went WAY left. I thought “Now, that IS weird,” and hit (pretty gently) the brakes, thinking that I’d better try to slow down at least, and the car skidded to the left and slammed into the center divider. I don’t know what the hell happened.
[QUOTE=Dewey Finn]
On the other hand, you get to buy a new car, which is more fun in theory than practice. Any idea what you’re going to get? Brand-new or just new to you?
[/QUOTE]
Not sure yet. I just read the thread on new cars not costing much more than lightly-used. so I’m on the fence, leaning towards the lightly used.
Is one of the front tires low or flat? This is how a car with a flat can react.
glad you are OK, sheet metal is replaceable, good dopers are much harder to replace.
I’m glad you weren’t hurt! Those conditions (swerving drastically at high speed) often result in a rollover, which would have been really REALLY scary–and might have hurt you a lot more than a few abrasions. You dodged a bullet, there.
Tell your insurance company about the steering issue. If the body shop guy won’t look at it, take it somewhere else that will. It’s not about suing and getting money, it’s about your peace of mind (and could be the difference between an at-fault claim vs a mechanical defect claim on your record). It’s a slim chance, but it’s still worth looking into for your peace of mind, if nothing else. That said, you will probably never know exactly why what happened happened. Maybe you hit a couple of very unfortunately-placed oily patches… maybe you overreacted and turned the wheel harder than you thought… maybe your tire went flat or became just a hair too bald to handle normal road conditions at that speed… it likely won’t be determined. Don’t beat yourself up over it, though. There are more than 10 million car accidents reported every year in the US alone, and I’m sure many very minor ones that go unreported on top of that.
It’s not uncommon for people to develop road anxiety after having a bad crash. See a counselor if it’s helpful, but don’t let yourself make excuses to avoid driving.
I surprised myself by finding religion for a few months in college after surviving a *very *painful, nearly-fatal accident between my sled and an enormous tree at high speed in the dark. I still believe I would have died (or at least sustained severe life-altering brain-damage) that night, if not for a combination of luck and quick thinking. Eventually it subsided and I became atheist again, but I was left *much *more understanding of the way born-agains can find religion in adulthood. Don’t be surprised if you feel vulnerable to such things in the next little while… having experienced it myself, I think it’s a natural (if not necessarily long-term) reaction to a near-miss-fatality experience.
I lost the ??? arm on my truck and I bet if I’d been at speed, it could have done a similar thing. It is a metal arm that goes from the axel/steering to the tire and physically keeps the tire straight or turns it. When the connection (ball joint?) went, the tire was free to go what ever direction it wanted to.
So imagine that your front tire is suddenly a 90 degree angle to the road w/the weight of the car on it… it could drag you off pretty quickly.
Wanted to add… usually these arm / ball joint things are looked at by the people who change your tires. But if you take your rims in or go to a crappy cheap place to buy tires, it is possible that no one noticed that they were wearing. In my area, they are definitely replaced before 100k miles because we have some rough roads. But even a single good bang against something could damage them (that’s how I lost mine).
If you jack up a front tire so there is no weight on it, then grab the tire with a hand on the front and back edges, the tire should not be wiggly at all. You should have a hard time forcing it to ‘steer’ to the left or right because you’re having to force the other tire as well. If you can wiggle the tire AT ALL, you need to have it check out. You also need to check both the left and right front tires by jacking each one up separately. So, if your driver side is tight, you still need to check the passenger side.
Since you didn’t mention rain, I assume that it was a ball joint or tire failure. I’ve had both happen (as well as a steering disconnect) and it can be very scary. There’s often nothing that you can do except go along for the ride, glad you weren’t hurt and that it didn’t result in a multi-car accident.
I’ve had ball joints break that were less than two months old. Sometimes you just can’t predict.
Scary stuff. Glad you got out unscathed. From your description of the incident I too was wondering if it could have been a tyre blowout?
I’m not sure what the regulations are in other countries - does your area have annual mechanical/roadworthiness inspections like the MoT certificate in the UK? I naively hope that the annual test will pick up anything that’s likely to fail catastrophically, but now I feel like I should be jacking my car up and kicking the tyres before every trip! :eek:
Not only does NY State mandate an annual inspection, but I just passed mine. It was with my own mechanic, too, a great and diligent specialist in Toyotas, who’s about as thorough a mechanic as I’ve met. I’m just about to walk to his garage, in fact, to let him know what happened, and to ask if he knows of any good cars for sale (he usually has one or two cars on his premises that people are looking to sell off.)
I don’t know about your car but I broke a tie-rod once and the steering locked in place and nothing worked to get us to make a turn. About walking away unharmed, that’s what is supposed to happen when the airbags work.
Flat: I’ve never had a blowout, but I’ve had tires go flat pretty quickly. The result is that the car pulls strongly in the direction of the flat, but steering can be maintained with brute force.
Steering box: In one car I found I couldn’t turn left. Right was just fine. I was able to force it enough to get to a safe place, but it wasn’t easy. Something in the steering box, a device about the size of a softball, failed.
Axle: On another car the right-front axle broke. The result was similar to a flat tire (or perhaps a blowout).
I’ve never had a tie rod fail (yet), but if the car was tracking more-or-less straight until you turned the wheel to correct the drift and then went wild, a broken tie rod is what I’d hypothesize.
This is a good point to raise, it’s very common and I have experienced it myself. I was avoiding getting back behind the wheel and I needed someone in the car with me the first couple of times I drove. You’ll also be hypervigilant whilst driving, this is normal too, and it does go away.