Creative crashes in the snow

[LordRaiden]

I'm sure anybody who's driven in the winter knows what it's like trying to drive through ice, snow and driving winds. You also know what it's like when you or another car spins out or looses control. Some are quick and some are rather intrecate. I hate to see it when people loose control and get hurt, but the majority I have seen don't get hurt. They just end up looking sheepish as they're crawling out of their $40k beamer or range rover to call for a tow.

Has anyone seen any accidents as they've happened or shortly after that were unique, funny, or just outright weird? I know of one that happened not too long ago not too far from a friend of mines. Poor lady had her Jeep just flying down the road a little too fast and got caught by a crosswind which immediately pointed her jeep towards the ditch. She flew off the road, down a hill, through the wire fence along side of the highway and into a cornfield where she came to a stop. The part that was funny was she was less than 100 feet from the entrance to the cornfield and a road and yet she stepped out of the jeep and called for a tow even though she could have dropped her vehicle into 4 wheel drive and just drove out of the field.

Anyone else got any funny stories about winter driving?

 

[d33pt]

I'm sure she didn't know how to put her jeep into 4wd...

 

[Bignate603]

I had a problem with my car and it not wanting to shift into drive without reving the engine pretty high... It turns out that I had a severe electrical short and if you shifted into drive the RPM dropped low enough that the alternator didn't make enough to keep a spark so it would stall. Anyways, ever try to rev a car up and dump it into drive when you're in snow? You end up fishtailing all over the place. I had to use two feet so i could hold the brake and give it gas to keep the RPM up the whole time I was driving home. I was skidding all over the place.

 

[Windogg]

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Suburu Legacy Outback Wagon on I-89 in Vermont planted nearly vertical on its tail in a snowbank on the side of the road. A state trooper already setup flares to warn people away and probably wait for a tow truck (or two). The funniest thing had to the fact the driver was still in the driver seat talking on his cell phone.

Windogg

 

[Vic]

Driving in an icestorm once, this idiot was riding my ass as I was coming around a long cloverleaf. As we came out the cloverleaf and onto the highway above, the impatient idiot guns it and flys by me only to smack right into the barrier. No one was hurt but his car got pretty mangled. Quite amusing.

 

[Phuz]

I drive on one of the highest fatality/km highways in Canada on a daily basis... i've seen a few.

 

[tm37]

Yesterday Morning I saw a late eighties monte carlo that had attacked a fence. Not an unusall site BUT it had cleared the didtch. It didn't go though the ditch it when OVER THE DITCH there was a big spot where it hit and tracks to the fence post it hit BUT NONE IN THE DITCH. I am guessing the driver might have been traveling a little to fast.

 

[Scootin159]

Yeah, once I was going down the road & saw some idiot who had crashed his Porsche into the guardrail in a snowstorm. What an idiot that thing should be in a garage, not out on the roads.

Oh wait, that was me, and it didn't start snowing until after I had hit the guardrail, but I'm sure that's what it looked like to everyone who was driving by.

Anyways, this one time I was following a pickup & he ended up going into a ditch right in front of me. The guy had 4wd, so I pulled off the road at a safe spot up ahead, and was going to help him get it out of the ditch (the truck would've done it), but while we were working on this, he got rear-ended by a saturn while he was still in the ditch. At this point we decided to leave things be till a cop showed up, but before I could even walk all the way over to my car a tahoe rear-ended the saturn in the ditch...so there was a 3-car pileup in the ditch. Kinda funny to think that the little rear-wheel drive sports car was the only one to make it though that turn out of the 4 that tried.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Phuz
I drive on one of the highest fatality/km highways in Canada on a daily basis... i've seen a few.

401?

My friend lives off of highway 74 and people are always driving too fast there. One day he came home late at night and saw a car crash into the ditch and hit his fence. He checked the driver and she was dead. He was very shook up about that. He wouldn't discuss it for almost 3 months.

 

[Scootin159]

Oh, you guys would also enjoy hearing about this one too:

This one day I came out of work to see one of the 17-year old guys who works there out in the snow-covered parking lot doing doughnuts in his new (to him) z28 Camaro (to be fair to him, he did pay for this thing all on his own, and it was a very nice car, but the guy was a jerk). Unfortunatly he forgot about the little curbs that are in the parking lot...on one of his spins the rear end caught a curb & the car rolled over, ruining the rear-end suspension/drivetrain and the chassis (totaling the car).

 

[Linflas]

First snowstorm we had here back in early December I was coming home from work in my 1990 Subaru Legacy (FWD only) and went in the left lane to pass a "flasher guy" in the left center lane with his flashers on doing 20 or so. I was doing around 40 and the right 3 lanes were just wet at this point but the left lane still had some snow and slush so I was being careful when I moved over. After passing the flasher guy I went to move back to the left center lane and I guess the slush ridge was deeper than it appeared because I felt the car start to fish tail as I went through it. After some scary fishtailing I managed to get the car straightened back out and by this time was probably doing about 30 and still slowing down but unfortunately while no longer fishtailing I was still sliding left while moving forward and slammed the jersey wall. It worked as advertised and threw me back out into the road and I was waiting to hear the tires flapping, fender rubbing etc but the car was still running and the tires were not flat.

Since the car was still tracking straight I just kept going rather than stop highly embarassed. When I got home it appeared that I had been really lucky and that all that had happened was losing the wheel covers on the left side along with the tire weights. I had noticed some vibration at a couple of speed points but the car tracked straight so I figured all I needed was to get the left tires rebalanced. Being lazy I put this off until the last minute and was coming home from a PC show with a couple friends following me. When we stopped for lunch they let me know that my back tire looked like it was coming off. It turned out that the wheel was actually bent so I had to get wheel from the junk yard but so far that seems to be the worst of it.