This is for those times where you somehow managed to avoid Almost Certain Death (or dismemberment at least) but managed to escape with nary a scratch somehow. In any event read as having the incident in question turn out to be several orders of magnitude better than you thought it would be. And as an added bonus tell us if it seemed like time slowed down during it.
Me, I had just taken out my new sporty Civic SI for a spin up I-95 (a sort of shakedown cruise). My gas was getting low, but I found myself in the left lane when I noticed an exit with a station coming up. I managed to accelerate in front of the guy to my right, but was going far too fast to take the upcoming cloverleaf. I remembered from my computer simming experience that stomping on the brakes will just use up all my cornering grip, so I downshifted and lightly depressed the brake. Somehow I managed to stay in the cloverleaf, still in full control of the car, even tho I would have sworn entering it that I was going to be catapulted out of it.
I have a couple of different routes I take on the first part of my commute (to get to the interstate) – one is a two lane parkway surrounded by woods. Many days I describe it as being more like deer hunting (or avoiding deer hunting) than driving, especially when it is dark. I’ve never hit one but had a few close calls.
Otherwise I have been very lucky – 17 years of driving with no accidents or tickets.
Just this morning on his way to work, Mr. Matata managed to avoid three deer in the middle of the highway. Unfortunately, there were four in the group. Smashed the heck out of a headlight, and crumpled the fender quite nicely, and the deer wasn’t feeling very frisky afterwards, but no other injuries, the deer died cleanly*, and Tony happened to be driving the spare K9 car, because he’d dropped his off for an oil change and new tires yesterday. And the guy traveling behind had a pickup and a freezer at home, so he took home a nice bit of venison.
*A clean kill is not to be discounted. When we moved this summer, I hit a deer on the same stretch of highway. I was really glad the guy behind me witnessed the hit and offered to shoot the animal. I would have done it myself, to avoid having it suffer, but I really, really didn’t want to.
Told this one before I think. I was in the front passenger seat of a car running up 80 from the SF Bay Area to the Sierra Nevadas. Right around the town of Davis the median strip is ( or was ) planted with tall oleander bushes in what must be a gravel base. We were in the far left lane moving a little above the speed limit ourselves, when a pick-up towing a small trailer and moving like bat out of hell passed us on the right and decided to cut in front of us. I’m not sure he ever even bothered to glance before doing so as he began cutting over at high speed just in front of us and his goddamn trailer started cutting in on the nose of our car.
The driver of our car slid left to avoid the trailer and hit the loose gravel/edge of the oleanders and lost control. We went spinning out across the lanes ( I want to say there were five at that point, but it was at least three ) in a complete 360, at one point pointing backwards as cars were hurtling towards us and all around us. Miraculously we ended up stopped on the opposite shoulder, pointed the right way, completely unscratched. But a wee bit shaken.
ETA: Also was in a car that did a 360 on an icy road when I was a young lad living in Michigan. I believe it was actually on a freeway overpass or similar sructure, as I think the curve on the slippery road is what set up the slide. Also miraculously unharmed on that one. In fact my mother’s boyfriend at the time kept right on driving.
In 1991, I was commuting on a 6-lane highway with a concrete divider. I was in the inside lane, and took a little too long gawping at the very long, stopped, exit line in the outside lane. When I put eyes-forward, going about 65mph, there was a white panel van stopped in front of me. Probably less than 100 feet to stop. It was close.
Lucky for me, my mom wouldn’t have let me get my license without learning to skid and do donuts. I hit the brakes and yanked the wheel left toward the inside shoulder, did a 180, and ended up facing traffic from the shoulder, with the concrete barrier a foot away. It was that or spin into traffic, or hit the panel van going pretty fast. I’m not sure who was more startled; me, who reacted more quickly than I could think it out, or the guy who was behind me and saw the whole thing! I gave him a sheepish wave, and he gave me plenty of space to make a u-turn.
About 30 years ago, on the Long Island Expressway. I was in the left lane in moderately heavy traffic (at least it was moving). Cars ahead of me were acting weird, then I discovered why: a car was coming straight toward me. Fast. And there’s a cop over on the shoulder, lights flashing. I had about half a second to find a space in the next lane and quickly pull into it. I think the car behind me made it over too, but not the car behind him.
Another time, on the island of Guadeloupe. Big national park with volcanoes. I approached the Visitor Center to use the restroom, but the entrance was blocked by two buses. I figure I’ll just pull over onto the shoulder (weeds and low bushes) and walk in. Then I discovered that the shoulder wasn’t as level as I had assumed. It curved down, then a drop god-knows-how-far-down. As I crept along, the car’s rolling to the right, about to go over the cliff. I finally stopped as the car was literally teetering. I figured, if I’m going over, no one will come looking for me, so I’ve gotta make sure someone sees what’s happening. So I lay on the horn. All of a sudden, all these French guys appear, from out of the buses. They steady the car, help me get out, hail a truck that towed the car back onto the road.
I was a 14 year old paperboy on a bike riding on the shoulder of a highway in the winter when it was snowy and icy. My bike slid out from under me and as my head was about to hit the pavement I saw the wheels of a bus go by just inches away from my face.
I was driving across the US in an MG. I had picked up a buddy in Michigan and we were headed down to Iowa to drop in on some friends. On the freeway, I was driving directly into the setting sun and moved into the passing lane to get around a big rig that was tooling along at about 70 mph. I went a little too wide and did not know that there was no interior shoulder, but a six-inch dropoff. My front wheel went off, caught in the drop, and the car was whipped sideways. The rear quarter panel of the car impacted the rear tires of the big rig, which picked the car up and spat it into the center divider. The divider was about 60 yards wide at this point, studded with trees, and I steered furiously trying to avoid them as we bounced through the underbrush. Happily, we missed them all and after 15 minutes of regaining our composure, we continued to Iowa.
When I was much younger, I tried passing on a two lane highway ad timed it poorly. I got back into my proper lane going 70+ mph just in time to feel my car shake from the truck going 70+ in the other direction about an inch to my left.
I also fell asleep once driving down I-65 to Indianapolis. Luckily, the rumble strip along the shoulder woke me up in time but I’m not sure how far I went before waking up.
After working swing shift, I was driving home after midnight in my yugo-sized economy car. As I was driving down a stretch of four-lane rural highway, there was no traffic at all. I saw a car ahead parked off my side of the road without its lights on. I was going about 55-60 MPH, and the car suddenly pulled out right in front of me. About a split-second later, the driver saw me coming and quickly stopped but in my lane, the far right lane, directly in front of me.
I quickly yanked the steering wheel left to avoid impact, which would have been into the driver’s door. My car surprisingly cleared the other car around the front (left) end, but went into a spin, and since there was some moisture on the road, my car slid while spinning at least 50 yards down the highway.
When my car stopped spinning, the other driver took off the other way, and I went home. The moisture probably reduced the road friction enough so my car didn’t go into a roll. If I had made contact with the other car, my car was light enough to flip or go into a roll, so I was very lucky. And I was lucky there was no other traffic.
Driving home from work on US1 going from West Palm Beach (Florida) to Stuart, 1987. Slightly hilly on this section. I see the cars in front of me splitting of to the left and right and brake lights everywhere. Before I can even make much of a move a GIGANTIC Cadillac crest the small hill going the wrong way straddling the center line of the North Bound lanes. He was traveling at least 90 to 100mph. I pulled slightly to the right and he missed my car by inches.
I remember not being the least bit scared during the event, but a few seconds after it was over I was shaking. If that Caddy had hit my little Toyota MR2 they would have had to cut me out of the car.
On the German autobahn, while it was raining, I blew my tire while accelerating and lost control. A few seconds later I was hit by a bus right in the driver’s side. I had to exit the car through the passenger side and, except for some aches a day later, I was fine. When I went to get my stuff from the car a day later, it was clear that the interior space of the driver’s side was diminished by half (just enough room for my legs between the center console and the ‘new position’ of the door. Mostly felt lucky I was driving a big (for European standards) Americun car at the time; I don’t really want to think what would have happened in VW polo…
This was many years ago, but I remember the moment quite well.
My immediate family and I had traveled to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area for a reunion of our general family (my father, his sisters, their spouses and children, etc.)
One day early in the visit, we climbed into a car one of my aunts was driving for a trip of several miles along one of the area’s highways. I quickly realized this aunt was probably the most aggressive driver I’d ever known (at least up until that time.) Which I never would have expected of her.
At one moment during that drive, she missed colliding with another car by perhaps two inches (if that).
For the rest of that reunion, I actively avoided getting into vehicles being driven by that aunt!
I was 17 and riding in a car with a 16 year old friend who’d just started driving maybe a month before. We were going down a 2 lane rural highway when he asked me to change the music. I’m looking through the CDs and, unknown to me, so was he. I look over and he’s just watching me flip through his CD case. Something feels off all of a sudden and we both look up and we are driving through tall grass instead of on the road. He freaks, slams the brakes and steers hard left to get back on the road. The car does a perfect j-turn. Perfect. We wind up centered in the opposite lane facing dead center in the opposite direction.
I quietly say, “That was cool.” (It wasn’t cool, I was freaked, I don’t even know why I said that) He just kinda nods, does a u-turn, and we go on our way. Less than a week later he backs into a car at the Taco Bell parking lot. I stopped riding with him.
I was driving north when a southbound car suddenly jumped the divider and came at me head on. I managed to almost make a lane change but the passenger side of my father’s new 1955 Chevy hit the passenger side of the other car very nearly head on. The entire thing was witnessed by an off duty policeman who made a point of telling all concerned that it was my driving ability that prevented disaster----I was sixteen at the time.
Road engineers say that those typical lane dividers that they use (and not always in construction zones anymore)-you know, the ones which are thicker at the base-make it easier for vehicles to hop into the oncoming lane.
Not me, but I saw something similar to Terraplane’s story on I-10 near Tallahassee a few years ago-I crested a hill and saw a car out in the middle of the (long unmowed) median, a flattened stretch of grass denoting its path, and a black guy just getting out of said vehicle with a severely befuddled look on his face.
Just remembered this one … When I was about 17, I was driving my dad’s Ford Econoline conversion van down Illinois 25 in Oswego during a light rain. I was driving too fast for conditions and started to skid on a right curve. I overcorrected, skidded onto the right shoulder, then spun out across the road and off the left side, where I ended up wrapped around a tree.
The tree was the lucky bit; if I hadn’t been stopped by it, I would have inevitably slid on into the Fox River, which was just on the other side. I’m pretty sure that van was not equipped for amphibious operations.