My car was recently hit in the parking lot. I had to file a police report and report the incident to my insurance company. The guy who hit my car was a complete jerk about it and was yelling at me. First time that has ever happened to me. I cried so much that day... π
Only very minor ones. Worst one I ever had to deal with was when I blew a tire when hitting a curb at 40-ish miles an hour (I forgot to make the turn and was distracted). I had no idea tires were that loud when they popped. I also bumped into someone in a parking lot, because I was backing out of my space, was paying too much attention to the right, and forgot about the couple that was stopped on my left, waiting to get out of the parking lot. I also scraped a woman's car when looking for an escaped dog. And I backed into another student's car at one of my colleges, though there was no damage other than a light dent.
Honestly, I can't compete with other members of my family, though. A number of them have much more interesting car crash stories to tell.
Let's see....a week after my grandparents got married, grandpa drove the car up a telephone pole because he was distracted by a woman in tight shorts. Only reason we know this is because grandma (his new bride at the time!) was in the front passenger seat! :O
Years ago, when my mom's older sister was in her early 20s, she crashed her brand new car into a pole in the parking lot, and part of the pole fell on her car.
I have a cousin on my dad's side of the family who drank waaayyyy too much energy drinks years back, and crashed two different cars due to the seizures that resulted from over-indulging in such drinks. I'll have to ask my brother how many it was again, but I assure you, it was an astronomical amount. I'm amazed his heart didn't explode from the amount he was drinking during those times.
My grandma (mom's side) had her last driving trip cut short when she accidentally backed into the garage of a neighbor, and not only damaged the garage door, but damaged his super-expensive car too. After that my aunt and uncle (who were her primary caretakers) forbid her from ever driving again, since she couldn't be trusted out on the road.
Just a few years ago, my dad got hit by some dumbass that was high on drugs, and he'd even tried to avoid her, and yet she still hit him, and tried to tell the cops my dad had "come out of nowhere." The cops could tell that she was high, and dad was the more trustworthy one to tell the truth as to what happened.
My mom used to have a huge red Ford we called "The Beast," and she turned away for one second to talk to a friend of hers, and ended up hitting a pole on the side of the highway so hard that it broke the front axle of the car. The repair job was so expensive the car had to be totaled.
Mom was also in a bad accident when she was a teenager in the 60s (and keep in mind, this was before seatbelts and airbags were standard in cars). She told us she was out riding with her friends on a hot summer's day, and she was in the front passenger seat. She was leaning down to put her sandals back on, and at that very moment, her friend (who was driving) and another car collided, and the impact caused her neck to be broken and jammed into her shoulders. She was lucky to have survived that crash. That, and she had a concussion and couldn't do algebra after that.
However, I'm pleased to report none of my family members ever got into an accident so catastrophic that their lives hung in the balance on the way to the hospital. Nobody has a story like that, though mom did once try to help a man who had been in an accident that bad.
Oh wow! Those are some crazy stories. I hope you and all your family members were okay in the aftermath. Thank you so much for sharing this with me. π
> I'm pleased to report none of my family members ever got into an accident so catastrophic that their lives hung in the balance on the way to the hospital.
I'm glad to hear it. My grandmother was killed in an accident where the driver of the other car was DUI. My grandfather died a year later, pretty much from a broken heart.
On a side note, how did you post something of this length? I copied your post and tried to post it as a reply over in The Sandbox, but the length restrictions cut me off at "my dad got hit by some dumbass that was high on drugs."
I've had that issue on here before too. What I do is, I post when I run out of characters to type, and then use the edit feature to finish my thoughts.
I was a passanger in one, we rear-ended a van. The other car was a company car, so the driver was very cool about the accident. Our vehicle had to be scrapped, but no-one was seriously injured.
My cousin died in a car accident at 23. He slid off the road at high speed, and hit a tree on the driver side.
I chose not to drive, people turn into jerks on the road, and it's dangerous.
Surprisingly with 45 years on the road averaging around 30k+ miles per year, I have only been in a couple of accidents and nothing serious.
My last one was about 5 years ago and I was turning left into the post office. A huge SVU crossed a double yellow line and slammed into the driver's side. I had no idea why someone would do that so I never even got out of my car and immediately called the police. Fortunately they didn't do a hit and run but I didn't know if they were drunk or high and I stayed inside my car until the police arrived.
I was blasted with phone calls from ambulance chasers for at least a month afterwards. They drove me crazy!!!!
I got hit by a drunk driver two weeks ago in a hit and run accident. He swerved into my lane and when I steered right to avoid him he plowed into the left side of my car. I had a sore neck and shoulder but that was it. The police found him several minutes later and he was arrested on DUI charges. He fled the scene because he had a warrant out for his arrest and four previous DUI arrests.
I was once in an accident. I was pulling out of a parking spot in front of a elementary school and caught another car in the wheel well which pulled the side panel off the car. When the police arrived, she was screaming at them to give me a ticket. The cop said no and called it no fault. When she asked why, he responded: "You left 75 feet of skid marks from impact. That puts your speed at around 60 mph" He walked over to the building and put his hand on it. "This is a school. The speed limit here is 25 miles per hour. Do you really want me to start writing tickets?"
Wow! That woman was crazy to drive that fast in a school zone. She could have easily hit a child if the child ran out in the street. Iβm sorry that happened to you and how dare she try to blame you for the situation. Same thing happened to me: the guy tried to blame me when he hit my car. People are dishonest and they completely suck too!!!
Recently an elementary school in my area installed a raised crosswalk - essentially a big speed bump - in front of the building because people routinely drove excessively fast down the straight and wide road.
No one cares that it's an elementary school.
This is an area that has it's share of problems. Kind of a hillbilly haven. If people say this, they can be considered snobs, but it seems like there is more meth addiction and general rebelliousness that it's not an unfair characterization. Sad because the majority of people are good and trying to live affordably, but this specter of bad social behavior hangs over it.
My Uncle believed that the cop was trying to cut me a break. Since I caught her on the side technically I hit her. But if I got a ticket then she could tell her insurance it was my fault. Also my insurance would have skyrocketed for having an at fault accident.
I've been rear-ended twice. Once was while I was stopped at a crosswalk, and I almost ended up hitting the pedestrian. Thank goodness he was paying attention and saw the car.
The other time was just winter driving. Although weirdly it wasn't the person directly behind me who hit me. Very minor damage with that one.
I saw a near miss one time where me and another driver (the driver in front of me) were driving straight ahead within the speed limit on a straight road with plenty of green light (I know we were both within the speed limit because this particular road is full of traffic cameras so if you went over the speed limit at all you would get a ticket in the mail), and a cyclist on the cross road flew through his red light and turned left onto our road, right in front of the driver that was in front of me. That driver had to brake hard to avoid hitting the cyclist. The driver just about had a heart attack and pulled over to the right and stopped. The cyclist then flipped him the bird (and kept going), even though the cyclist was totally at fault. It was infuriating. I thought the cyclist was completely insane, not only did he get into our lane unsafely, but if there were traffic in the lane that he illegally crossed, he could have been sideswiped and killed. The light wasn't even close, there is no way he didn't know he was breaking a red light in a way dangerous to himself.
A while back I noticed an accident where some car must have smashed full throttle into the back of a city bus.
The only thing I could think was the person was playing on their phone and didn't notice they were behind a stopped bus at a bus stop. A head-on collision for the driver of the car that was behind the bus, no other reason for it.
"Are you paying attention or not?"
Four accidents, I've never been seriously injured, but there was one fatality.
One was when I was 25. It was in evening rush hour traffic. I was approaching an intersection and was in the leftmost lane that went straight. To my left was a huge truck in the left turn only lane blocking my view. As I came up to the green light that truck slammed on its brakes. Only then did I see that a car was coming from the left, running its red light. I tried to brake but my foot didn't make it to the pedal, and I slammed into the car at about 40 mph.
The other car was driven by a fiftyish man. His wife was in the front passenger seat, and her parents were in the back seat. When my car hit them the driver's mother-in-law's head slammed into the car's window hard enough to do grave damage. She was still alive when the cop and ambulance arrived but later died.
The cop took one look at us and immediately made up his mind. I looked younger than my age and was dressed in ratty jeans and a tee shirt with some rock band's logo. The people in the other car had been going out to dinner and were dressed up. So of course! -- I was a wild, irresponsible kid who had caused the accident and brought woe to these respectable adults.
The first thing the cop did was gesture at me and say to the other driver, "OK, I get the picture. How fast would you say he was driving when he ran the red light?"
I said, "Whoa, wait a minute --"
"SHUT UP!" the cop yelled at me. "I'm not talking to you! I'm talking to him! When I want to talk to you I'll talk to you! Until then you stand there, you don't move, and you don't say a word!"
The other driver said, "Officer, you've got it wrong. I got distracted for a second and when I looked back I was already in the intersection and the light was red. It was my fault, not his."
The stupid, son of a bitch cop spend the rest of the encounter supremely pissed off at me. I guess he blamed me for making him look bad. I was pretty sure he'd arrest me for "contempt of cop" on the slightest pretext, so I was very polite and said only what was necessary.
Since then, I respect the police. I appreciate what the police do. I wish them every success. But I do not trust the police. And if it's ever necessary to talk to them I have my lawyer with me, and if that raises their eyebrows I tell them about this incident and say, "sorry fellas, that's the way it is."
Thank you. I felt awful about the woman's death, but I looked at it this way. I wasn't speeding or driving recklessly, just with the flow of rush hour traffic. The truck on my left made it impossible for me to see the other car until it was impossible for me to avoid the accident. I wasn't impaired in any way. I had even had a full night's sleep the night before, something of a rarity for a PhD student. I certainly wasn't legally at fault, but beyond that I wasn't even morally at fault. I've been in several near accidents which I avoided by driving carefully. For example, when I approach a green light I always shoot a quick glance left and right to see if any cars are approaching too fast (largely because of that incident). If I didn't do that, I'd have had a couple of other accidents over the years, ones where I was legally in the right but could have avoided the accident if I had driven more defensively. But that wasn't the case here. There was nothing I could have possibly done to prevent this accident from happening. I was no more responsible for the accident than a tree would have been if that driver had lost control of his car and ran into it.
It's odd to say, but I was very lucky. Suppose the other driver and his mother-in-law were the only two in the car, and he had been knocked unconscious momentarily and didn't remember what had happened, or if he did remember but lied? What could I have done? The other drivers around me had seen the accident, but who ever sticks around at an accident to offer his or her services as a witness? There would be the skid marks the big truck left, but the cop might have opined they had already been there. I might well have gone to prison for vehicular manslaughter.
I was furious about the cop's actions. I called the police department (Baltimore) and told them what had happened, and demanded to know what would be done about it. The only answer I ever got was, "We're handling it internally." I doubt anything happened to him.
I actually was rear-ended at a red traffic light once by a guy whose front window was broken (he was distracted by fixing the window). I was very pregnant. A pedestrian actually stopped and gave me his contact info since he had witnessed it. Luckily I was not at all hurt and everything was fine. Nice pedestrian!
I helped out an accident victim once. The two cars were pulled off to the roadside, and traffic was slowed near the accident as people rubbernecked, so cars were bumper to bumper and moving slowly up to the accident but the highway was clear beyond it. There weren't any police on the scene yet.
As I got close one of the accident cars suddenly moved and began to drive off. The other driver, standing beside his car, yelled, "Hey, you can't do that, get back here!" Now, don't ask me why I did what I did. I don't know why I did it. And if the same thing had happened again a half hour later I might not have thought to do it. But I immediately thought, get the car's license plate number. It was still close enough that I could read it.
I stopped my car, wrote it down, and yelled to the man who had been left standing there. "Hey, I got his tag number." When I handed my scrap of paper to him he said, "He told me he was going to get his insurance papers out of the glove compartment." I said "good luck" and drove off. I hope things worked out for him. Without me to testify to it, that piece of paper would be hearsay and inadmissible if the matter went to court. And I know that, but I intentionally did not give him my contact info. I have my limits. :)