You almost die in a car wreck:Whoo what a rush or OMG that's F'd up?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let me start off by saying I well aware of the irony in this story:

My friends and I are on our way home from a ball game. We have a designated driver (DD) as the rest of us are pretty much three sheets to the wind.

On the way home, our DD almost misses our exit off the highway. He jerks the car hard right. We made the exit but in doing so, the driver misses a cement partition by a very narrow margin. Enough to make us all nearly shit our pants.

Granted, this was a stupid move, but I’m giving my friend a pass as I’ve known him for two decades and I also happen to know he is not in the habit of making such stupid moves.

Plus, the other three of us were being your typical obnoxious drunks which I know has to be both annoying and distracting to the sober driver.

When we all got back to my place (For additional drinking) one of my friends could NOT shut up about it. “OMG we almost died” “WTF were you thinking?!” My other friend and I were basically like “Whoo! What a rush!”

I’m curious as to what the personality divide is with my fellow Dopers.

What would your reaction be to the above situation?

2

“OMG! I almost died! What a rush!”

3

Other. "Goddammit all to hell. There will be bills and bills and threats of bills and appointment and lawyers and insurance companies an depositions and I am old and dieing anyway.** Why the hell could I have not coded under the morphine. shit!**

4

The closest I’ve ever been to a wreck was a gnarly spin-out on a sandy road. I was a passenger; the driver oversteered, and we went whipping about like a toy top on ice. It happened too fast for me to be scared, and, in addition, I was totally helpless to do anything about it. At the time, it felt a lot like a roller-coaster ride.

I’m guessing that level of abstraction stops the moment serious physical pain begins.

5

In the OP, the passengers were drunk - I have a feeling I might have thought it was a rush if I was drunk, but if I was sober, I’d be losing my shit.

6

Yeah, good point.

That said, I don’t think I would have been harping on it for the next two hours or so like my friend did.

7

OMG I almost died. But only for a moment. I tend not to dwell on such things. I didn’t die. Thats good enough for me.

8

Getting broadsided by a guy driving about 50 in a 30 in the middle of the night, my Mazda pickup spinning multiple times watching the telephone pole keep flashing by was not in any way ‘a rush’. I sat there expecting to die or be very seriously injured. When it was over, it was more upset about my 3 month old truck being damn near totalled by an uninsured kid from out of state who claimed that I had been the one to run the red light.

Getting rammed from behind by a woman going 45 and doing her makeup in her rearview mirror while I was stopped waiting to turn left and there was a cement truck in the oncoming lane doing 45mph was not a rush either. After the fact it was worry (about myself, my truck, the other driver who hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt and was bloodily and bodily smashed into (thankfully not through) her windshield and anger over the fact that because it happened on the border of two feuding communities, the police refused to come out despite the injuries until I screamed and swore on the phone and threatened to sue the fuck out of them for refusing to respond to a report of multiple injuries. (St.Louis Park and Hopkins, for you MN dopers)
By the time the anger wore off, the pain kicked in.

9

I went through a bit of a semi-intentional bad driving phase and had a few (relatively) near-misses. The result: I now drive like a granny. So I guess I’m in the OMG department.

10

There’ve been several times where I lost control of the car, completely helpless to stop whatever was going to happen. Never once did I think “what a rush!”

In fact, if there were any actual words running through my head at the moment, they were “oh, shit.”

11

The OP was not in a car wreck and did not “almost” die.

How do you feel about this little yarn?

You have a near head-on when a teenaged girl talking on her cellphone turns left in front of your motorcycle. The closing speed is estimated to be around 60.

You impact the car just aft of the front wheel, and sail down the road, narrowly missing the roof of the car. You land around 160 feet from the impact.

The last thing you remember is the paramedic shouting at you to not go to sleep. “Don’t do it man! Stay with me! Don’t go to sleep goddammit!”

You wake up alone in a hospital. No family or friends, just some guy on the other side of the curtain firing up a joint at 3 am.

You have to call someone from the office of the apartment building you live in to come get you, as the only thing you have posession of are the ripped up boxer shorts you are wearing and the motorcycle gloves you were wearing at the time of the crash. Nothing else.

Your poll doesn’t have enough options.

12

Poll needs more options. To me mixed emotions implies not strong one way or the other, kind of in the middle. However, when I pirouetted across multiple lanes of an interstate, I had both extremes & nothing in the middle. While spinning, it was what a rush. Once I stopped & got out & took a look it was OMG, I almost died.

13

After blowing a tyre as I entered the factory and managing to avoid a headlong collision with a concrete pillar but leaving several long dents on the side of my car and a lot of grey lines on a whitewashed wall:
BLOODY HELL! MY LEG MY ARM MY SIDE!

…

I am whole?

I didn’t break anything?

BLOODY HELL!
In the OP’s case, I would have been the DD and I have been known to stop the car and inform rowdy passengers that “this fucking car isn’t going no bloody hell where until you shitholes shut your goddamned traps!”

14

Yeah I had the great luck of hitting a patch of oil on the road, going 60 with cruise control on. In my panic as I spun out, I didn’t hit the brakes right away. I had a 50/50 chance of hitting railing on the side of the road and going down a steep embankment, or going UP a steep embankment of muddy earth. Luckily, by the time everything was over, I was facing up and not down. Scared the living shit out of me and it was NOT a rush. It didn’t help that the police wouldn’t come out since it was non-injury and I had to find some way to get my car down myself and get home.

15

I think it’s very different being a passenger versus being the driver in this scenario (especially as a drunk passenger). I also think it depends on whether you think “thrill rides” like rollercoasters are “whooo, this is great!” or “why the hell is this supposed to be fun?!” (I’m in the latter camp.)

If you are in an out of control car as a passenger, well, you were never in control of the car in the first place. You’re aware of being in DANGER, yes, which is a adrenaline producing crisis to be sure, but when you’re the driver of an out-of-control vehicle there’s the added fear of repeating whatever it is that led to the situation. In the case of the OP’s friend, he knew what he did wrong (“I should have just missed my exit instead of jerking the wheel over at the last minute at 40 MPH”), but if it’s a case of equipment failure or an unexpected environment, it’s confidence shattering.

I’ve been a passenger in cars that spun out of control. As a passenger, once was due to black ice on the road and once was due to a blown tire at highway speeds. I was actually asleep as a child in the back seat for the latter incident, but in the front passenger seat for the black ice. I have also been the driver of a car that spun out of control twice: once by hydroplaning into rails on a highway exit ramp at about 35 MPH, and once when I spun off the road due to hitting some kind of slickness in a curve in the road and apparently turning the steering wheel the wrong way in a panic.

As a passenger, time seemed to slow down and I had a moment of fatalism: “What the --? OMG. Is this… You know… Gonna be IT?” When “it” was not to be (i.e., when the car stopped moving and we hadn’t gone over some precipice or been struck by another car), it was more a feeling of relief than anything, and I felt like I was able to “snap back into it” relatively quickly.

As the driver, it was very disconcerting because I had no feedback from the car telling me what had gone wrong, nor any idea how to correct it. I was a pretty inexperienced driver in both cases (within the first 3 years of driving), which may have been a factor, but it was like the steering wheel and brakes all just stopped working at all to control the car in the hydroplaning case (light rain, possibly worn tires I got on with a new-to-me used car), and I ricocheted off both left and right side guard rails before my tires gripped again and my brakes worked to stop the car.

In the second case, I was in the middle of three lanes of traffic going around a curve in the road when I just started spinning out for no apparent reason at all. I turned my wheel the other way to try to correct the spin (my car was spinning counterclockwise, if looked at from above, and I instinctively turned my steering wheel as hard I could as if making a right turn), and apparently one is supposed to “steer into the spin-out” in such a scenario (which I guess means to steer as if I wanted to turn in the direction I was spinning?).

Again it could have been a case of worn tires. In both cases I bought low-mileage used cars of 4-6 years vintage, they may have had the original stock tires on them and the rubber could have been bad even if the treads looked OK.

Either way, I was literally trembling when the car came to a stop (fortunately out of the way of traffic in both cases) and it took me almost 10 minutes to gather myself enough to start driving again, and even then I was very, very fearful.

16

Other.

Exactly.

Yes–my immediate thoughts after getting hit.

17

the day the first shuttle exploded, I was departing a convention in Charlotte, NC.

NC was one of the first states (I lived in the MW) that rolled out a seat belt law. Its night time. I am speeding along US74 (non -interstate, 6 lane divided hwy), on my way to spend the weekend at Carolina Beach. I notice a female cop in a patrol car, parked under a bill board reminding people “buckle up - its the law in NC”…so I did something I rarely did back then - I put on my belt…

another mile or 2 down 74, cruising about 70 mph in the middle lane, I come up on a big truck doing 50 or so. I go to pass it on the far left passing lane, and suddenly there is a car going even slower…so I calculate that I can still quickly swerve over to the far right lane, and pass the truck there. made it to the right lane, only to find a guy in a new Honda Prelude, who had pulled out of a seafood place called Sand Piper, with one hand on the wheel, the other holding a tuna salad sandwich.

His lane was closed a short distance ahead, and there was a portable sign with yellow flashing arrow, on wheels, with its own diesel generator, on the right shoulder. He was slowling to wait for the truck to pass to move over into the middle lane.

I impacted him at close to 60 mph - little time to slow down. Our cars were friction welded together, and traveled down the road for quite a distance, drifting into the shoulder lane, and into that huge yellow warning sign. We continued like that, with the yellow arrow lights half way into in car via the moon roof, then came to a halt. At the moment of impact, I saw his head and left arm fly backwards, then I saw what looked like grey matter splatter the inside of the Prelude’s rear window.

I was convinced it was his brain, and that I just committed VM - a felony…the same female cop arrived ASAP.

I walked up to his car, and saw him sitting there in absolute shock, with the generator still powering the yellow arrow lights that were in partially in the car with him thru the sun roof. He told me it was the tuna sandwich that impacted the rear window…not his grey matter.

turns out he had no injuries.

he saw my MidWest plates, as did the cop, and being that both cars were destroyed, they asked what I was planning to do, since rental car firms were by now closed. So this guy - his name was Stephen King - invites me to stay at his place, and his gorgeous gf would take me to get a car in the morning after he left for work. I remember thinking, “I just about killed this guy, totaled his new Prelude, and he wants to extend a welcome to me to stay at his place & leave me alone with his gf, and have her take me to get a rental car the next day…Southern Hospitality at its best…seems impossible to piss those folks off”

What I remember most, is that I put my seatbelt on just 2 miles back, when I saw the cop sitting under the seat belt law billboard reminder…The front bench seat on my Chevy Caprice actually pulled up and loose on the drivers side, and I had heavy bruising on my shoulder where the belt kept me from going thru the windshield. My only real car wreck, and what are the odds - with the seat belt sign & cop?
PS I now put my seat belt on even on short trips.

18

No, but in this case “almost die in a car wreck” means “narrowly avoid a car wreck that could have been fatal.”

19

Put me in the “What a rush!” category. I rolled a car at highway speed after a truck ran me off the road, and I walked away almost uninjured. I felt invulnerable afterward.

20

I’ve never actually been IN a car wreck where ( (or anyone else) almost died.

But I’ve sure had quite a few narrow misses - spinning out on ice, having people turn unexpectedly right into my path, that sort of thing. And I was a passenger in a car where the driver was going much too fast for snowy/icy conditions. Seconds after me pointing out that he ought to slow down, he sped around a corner and promptly lpowed right into the back of a stopped school bus. Luckily, we were all wearing seatbelts so although the vehicle was totalled, nobody was badly hurt beyond getting bruised. As I recall I was not exhilarated; I was pissed off and full of angry “I TOLD you…!”

I do not ever recall thinking it was a rush. Mostly in the aftermath I’m thinking that it was really bloody lucky nobody was hurt, and really bloody lucky that my vehicle didn’t get totalled (since more often than not I’ve owned vehicles that were too old to justify paying for comprehensive insurance. Meaning that regardless of fault, I’m out a vehicle if mine gets wasted.)

Data point: I also dislike roller coasters.
Although in many, many respects I enjoy taking risks or doing things others would consider risky.