Ok, well today my brother went outside to turn the AC on in the car. (Its a manual BTW) He turned the key, not knowing that the car was still in gear and the car goes flying forward into the front of the garage and into my bike. Now there’s a nice hole in the wall and my bike’s wheel is trashed.
This got me to thinking, who else has done something really stupid with their car?
I spun off the road into a field. Thats not the stupid part though. I thought I’d just drive back onto the road. It was dark and I didn’t notice the huge ditch between me and the road. I ended up stuck with my front wheels on the road, and my back wheels hanging uselessly into the ditch as the rear end was supported by the bank. I had to have it pulled out. No repair-requiring damage was done.
At my old house, there was a gate in front of the garage, and the gate wasn’t automatic, so you had to pull in on the sidewalk with the rear end poking out in the street, run out to open the gate and the garage door, and then run back to the car to pull into the garage.
So of course, one night coming home at 2AM I rush out of the car to open the gate and the garage door, come back to the car and realize that I locked the keys inside. Since the garage is separate from the house, I can’t get in the house either. My car is halfway into the street with the engine running. Oy!
Same car, a few years later: have just purchased a new one, but since I wanted a stick shift I have to wait until a stick shift shows up at the dealership since everyone is buying automatics these days.
Saturday morning the dealer calls and says “your new car’s in”. I rush out to my old car which is parked in the driveway, realize I forgot something in the house, and run back to the house leaving the driver’s door open. Unfortunately, my driveway is on an incline and I forgot to set the handbrake. So my car starts slowly rolling backwards until the front door hits a post and is bent backwards against the front wing. This happens the very same day I am trading the old car in! :mad:
I managed to push the door back and close it, but after that it can’t be budged, so I have to climb in the passenger side to get in the driver’s seat. When the dealer examines my car, he says “I can’t open the front door!” I answer “That’s strange, I was able to open it this morning.” I think the broken door negatively affected my car’s resale value.
[Edited by Arnold Winkelried on 05-16-2001 at 09:15 PM]
We had a huge ice storm this past December. There was almost an inch of ice covering my car, and the weather reports said another inch was on the way that night. After chipping away at the ice on the trunk for half an hour with a stick, I managed to access the lock and get the damn thing open to get my ice scraper.
Fast forward an hour. I had the windows and windshields mostly clear, but the rest of the car was covered with huge sheets of ice. I feared driving with the car like that, because I thought the ice might come loose in traffic and endanger other drivers. So I used the handle of the ice scraper to bang on the ice until it broke and came off.
In my defense, I thought the ice was too thick for the handle to damage the car. Wrong. The back quarter panel and trunk lid are covered with nice little circular dents. The car is now just over a year old, and it looks like it’s been through the hailstorm to end all hailstorms. Actually, I’m just an idiot.
In the years before my eyeballs went south and I was okay to drive. Being sixteen, and therefore stupid and immortal, at the time of the incident.
The curve was marked at 35mph. Now, I’d gotten quite used to taking it at 50. Had done so dozens of times, had it down to a science. That corner was no match for me! I’m a highway star!
Swung into the turn, only this time the right tires touched gravel from the shoulder on the outside of the curve. Instantly, the car began to spin, described a neat 180 as it slid off the road to the left, tipped over and came to rest on its left side, me dangling firmly in seatbelt. Extricated myself, climbed up out of the drivers side window and dropped down to the ground, no longer feeling much like a highway star.
Left side was a bit banged up, but no real damage.
A few summers ago, I engaged the parking brake one day when I parked on a hill at work. I drove the long way home that night (about 15-20 minutes worth of driving), and when I pulled into the driveway my brother sniffed the air and said,
“Hey, what’s that burning smell?”
STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!
Very similar to Drastic’s experience. I was 17 and driving through a national park on a long windy road. See a corner that says 25kph. I decided to take it at 60 or so. Bad decision. The only reason I’m here today is a flimsy guard rail before a steep drop down the side of a rocky mountain.
I drive much more carefully now.
My mother drove from Raleigh, NC to Richmond, VA with the parking brake engaged on her Aerostar van.:rolleyes: Needless to say, the brake wasn’t very functional upon arrival.
In the Air Force, while drinking a beer on the front deck of our barracks, I once witnessed a guy drilling into his car door from the inside. Perhaps it was to mount a speaker, I’m not sure. But I noticed the guy was spending a long time at it, like he was meeting a lot of resistance.
About the same time he punched through whatever was providing the resistance and he broke into a satisfied smile, I noticed the door’s window was all the way down.
My brother, who is an electronic technician like me, once hooked his battery charger up to his truck battery backwards. Destroyed the entire electrical system.
I once had a typical teenage tantrum and punched the nearest thing…which happened to be my 89 Prelude. I put a fairly good sized dent in it but my hand was fine.
Well, I didn’t do this to my car, but I was certainly guilty of persuading a friend to do this to his…
I had a couple of friends, who, no sooner did they get cars, decided that they liked drag racing. One of them found out that if you put the car in mountain gear, it’ll accelerate from a dead stop faster, or some such.
My thought, which I related to an equally stupid friend was "Well, Chris, how about putting the parking brake on at your next red light, flooring the gas pedal, and throwing throwing the parking brake down as soon as the light turns green.
I thought the transmission was going to fall out of the bottom of the car. :eek:
But hey, it wasn’t my car. 
What DID involve my car was when my friend drove it to an Oakland A’s game (We weren’t locals, being from So. Cal). We were running late and decided to gas up after the game.
Except we forgot. Until the “nearly empty” light came on. With us stuck in a HORRIFIC traffic jam in the middle of the bay bridge. Man, I was scared shitless that we’d run out of gas and make the traffic jam worse. (“I wonder if Treasure Island has a gas station”)
We made it, but not by much. How much, I don’t even WANT to know.