wow. I mean wow guys. You know, the thing is... after all that. Doesn't it shake you up a little. I mean, ok, some of the accidents here happened out of no where. A sort of "out of the blue" coincidence. But getting into accidents while racing or spirited driving. Really kills your confidence and ego.

 

Hit by a kid who had his lisence for 2 weeks. Was 5'6" ... driving a lifted Dodge Ram 1500 ...

Rand a 4 way stop, sidelined me going 25. Minor whiplash.

 

I've had nothing serious.

Many close calls.

One time, drinking and driving in my youth I convinced myself that I needed to go buy food from the gas station after we had been drinking at a party at my friend's house. Driving back to his house I was not paying attention and launched my old Dodge Daytona off of a slope where his street makes a 90 degree turn to the right. I went directly between two trees when I left his street and landed between two houses on a neighboring street where I stopped. Just sheer luck that I hit nothing. I came to my senses, drove down the curb in to the road and back around the block to his street and parked my car. Not a shred of evidence on it except for grass caught up in the underbody in a few places and some tiny cracks on the bottom of the "ground effects" package under the front bumper.

I never told anyone about it there, or anywhere else till today. Since then I have never had more than 2 or 3 drinks in a night and driven. Last summer 2 people I'd known for 6 months or less totaled their cars (by hitting inanimate objects) because of drinking and driving. I'll never make the mistake again.


Was at a 4 way stop advancing through the intersection. To my right there were 2 lanes of traffic intending to proceed to my left. Apparently there was a line of cars in one of the lanes closest to me, but to the right of them there were no cars. So one van pulled out of the line up to go around everyone and blew through the stop, plowing into the back right corner of my mom's Pontiac Montana (I was 16 and my car was in the shop). Sent us fishtailing but I stopped and my friend and I got out of the van, to look at the damages. His van was completely crumpled on the front and was later found to be totaled. My van had a 4 inch crack in the right rear corner of the bumper near the wheel well.

He attempted to blame me for the accident, despite him having watched the entire length of my van pass before hitting the last corner of it, and regardless of the fact that he proceeded without stopping or looking. Ridiculous. Being 16 the insurance company found me 50% responsible but decided to be the nice guys and not apply any rate increases unless I decided to leave them ever. It was clearly a tactic they employ to try and lock in their business. If I were really a risk and they thought I was at fault, why try to keep me (being the risk they obvious implied I was) around with them held liable? Whaaaaatever.

 

1973. Mt. Clemens, Michigan. My wife and I were headed to work in our Opal GT. The street we were on was three lanes wide, with the left most lane being a left turn lane; We were stopped at a light, in the left turn lane, waiting for the light to change. Behind us there was a guy in a Road Runner, along with his girl friend, and they were being chased by his wife. The guy saw the red light, and the cars stopped in front of him, but he couldn't see the little Opal in the turn lane, so he decided to run the redlight by swerving into the turn lane (to get around the other stopped cars). He hit us before he even realized we were there, and our first clue that there was a probem was the noise of the impact. I heard the impact, felt the acceleration, and looked at the rearview mirror to see what had hit us, but all I could see in the rear view mirror was the metal that use to be the back of my car. Next I glanced at the side view mirror, but was distracted when I noticed that we were travling along at a fair distance above the ground. The shrubs that were planted in the streets divider were BELOW us. We were airborne, and it seemed as if we were flying through the air for minutes rather than seconds, and I don't even remember feeling the car impact the ground. I don't recall how far we actaully flew, but both seatbacks broke from the impact, and both of the headrests were within an inch of the cars back bumper.

Thankfully neither of us was hurt, and we weren't even sore the next day, but if the guy had been carrying a few more miles per hour I suspect we'd have been seriously injured, if not killed. The police report simply stated that the speed at the point of impact was "in excess of 100 MPH."

 

Wow, sounds like he wouldn't have even had enough reaction time to hit the brakes. Amazing that the two of you were uninjured. I believe you actually have a few more stories that we've heard, and some we haven't heard!

Share some more, Red :-)

 

I hope it's OK to do more than one of these.

1980 (or thereabouts). Macon, Georgia. I was riding a Yamaha 550 SECA. Four lanes, divided, but not limited access. I was stopped at a light, in the right hand lane, behind a pickup truck that was making a right turn. There was a lady in a T-bird in the left lane, next to the truck. When the light changed, the lady in the T-bird accelerated away, and the truck proceeded to execute his turn. I had to wait for the truck to get far enough around the turn so I could go straight, so by the time I got going, the lady in the T-bird was a couple hundred feet ahead. As I started to accelerate away from the stop, her brake lights came on, she started to show, and she turned on her turn signal, indicating that she was about to turn left, into a driveway she was approaching. By the time I got to where she was, she had slowed to a crawl, and I'd probably accelerated to 40-45 MPH (the speed limit was 45). Then, to my surprise, just as I was passing her front bumper, the bitch yanked her steering wheel to the right, and slammed her front bumper into the engine of my bike, missing my leg by no more than an inch or two.

She made an illegal left hand turn, from the wrong lane, and basically assaulted me with her car, and then tried to tell the cops, "I didn't see him." Anyway, the impact ...

When the car impacted my engine, it knocked the bike over, and sent it spinning down the road on its side, presumably at close to 45 MPH. When I went down, my helmet hit the pavement hard enough to make a nice gash, completely through the helmet, but somehow I managed to keep my left leg from getting caught under the bike, and ended up laying on the side of the, uninjured, as it went spinning down the road in a shower of sparks. In an effort to stay off the hot exhaust and engine, I then got on my hands and knees, so then I was riding the spinning bike on all fours, and praying that the bike wouldn't hit anything, or start flipping. Now I don't know if it was due to the impact when the helmet hit the ground, or whether it was from spinning around and getting dizzy, but I somehow got disoriented, and thought the bike had stopped, so I stood up, and stepped off the bike onto the road. At that moment, I was thinking how lucky I'd been. But dang it, as soon as my foot touched the road I reazlized that I'd made a mistake, becaue the road instantly grabbed my foot and yanked me off the bike. That's what it felt like, but of course the real problem was that the bike was still sliding down the road and spinning. If I'd been a little slower to stand up and step off the bike, I'd have gotten away uninjured, but I ended up with some nasty pavement rash, and to this day I still get little bits of asphault out of my skin from time to time.

I wish someone had gotten a video, because it had to look totally insane. Bike goes down in a spin, rider gets on top of the bike, stands up, and then steps off the bike, while it's still spinning and sliding down the road. Two witnesses actually came up and asked me why I stepped of the bike when I did.

I think stepping off that bike may well have been the biggest motor vehicle related mistake I've ever made.

 

[QUOTE=MikeyCB,Mar 6 2008, 06:14 PM]Wow, sounds like he wouldn't have even had enough reaction time to hit the brakes.

 

Was driving to downtown indy, was nice and sunny out had the windows down and all of a sudden i was spinning around on a 1 way street and when i finally stopped moving i saw a big ol suburban with a smashed front end and realized he ran a stop sign and hit my drivers side going about 30 mph. Crawled out the passenger door and called the cops, walked away from this without a scratch

 

You win!

I've had friends who've had injuries that were this bad, but have somehow managed to avoid such things myself. Did you make a full recovery?

 

Rain + Hydroplane + 10ft Ditch + Trees > S2000
Just got back from an S.C.C.A. event.
I have been autocrossing for 8 years now. It can happen to anyone. Please be careful guys.