Ever been in a car accident?

[Imp]

No, thank goodness, and more because I quit driving before I did than my "skillz."

Might be forced into driving in the next year... I love it, the liability thing and other drivers just piss me off. Not a safety concern, though I should, it's that statistics will catch up to me and I realized long ago that I'm average.

 

[Muse]

Probably half a dozen times now. I'm like a magnet for people hitting me...parking lots, highways, stoplights, you name it! Had one dude slam into me at an intersection full-tilt because he wasn't paying attention to traffic to the light. Another dude hit me on the highway & drove off (chased him down, but that's another story!).

I'm all for self-driving cars.

There are a lot of people who shouldn't be allowed to drive. Half the people who hit me really should not have had a license at all...one guy was like 90 years old with horrible eyesight.

Two different things. Yes, self driving cars will revolutionize the roads, utterly. Think of all those speed bumps! When I was a kid there weren't any, but they weren't particularly necessary. Nowadays there are so many immature people around it's just sick. Not only do they have to make driving illegal, they have to take the guns off the street. Any guy who can't handle a car without being a douche should have no way to get his hands on a gun.

Now about people who shouldn't be allowed to drive given today's conditions (i.e. self driving cars are still a ways down the road), couldn't agree more. People think it's their God given right to drive a car. Not! The judges should have the laws and the attitude to yank the keys away from people who won't learn a lesson, repeating DUIs, people who drive without a valid license. People who are dangerous in their cars, relatively speaking. 😎

I have never been in a wreck that i could have prevented by taking evasive action.

I guess it's partly ideas like this that keep me driving less than 1500 miles/year. Why tempt fate?

My 1997 Mazda coupe (which literally weighs 2 tons), has less than 30,000 miles on it. I think there's a pretty fair chance that my next car will be self-driving. I am a really great driver, but I will gladly stop driving when my car can do it completely safely.

Sometimes I'll start pumping my brakes to flash my brake lights at someone who doesn't seem to be slowing down enough to keep me comfortable.

I do that sometimes. I hate tailgaters. A lot of people don't have much imagination. Tailgating is a sure sign of that. I'll pump my brakes a few times to get a vehicle to back off me. I often have a little voice in my head that says something like "don't get closer to that thing ahead of you than X feet" in a specific situation, and I always listen to that voice.

I try hard to stay out of any situation on the roads that even makes me a little nervous. That serves me well in a car, on a bicycle or on my roller skates. That's a little tough on skates on the streets sometimes because the pavement is often really poor and I have to not only navigate traffic but the whack conditions of the streets around here, and they can be unbelievably bad. The street in front of my house (I was noticing today) is so rough that I feel a lot of vibration when driving my car. I hate it on my bike and it's impossible to skate on it, I stay on the sidewalk on my block when skating.

 

[IGemini]

A couple. The most recent was just after noon about 3 years ago when I was on my way to work. As I turned off my road I saw a car mount the curb on the incoming, going way too fast. I stopped, thinking they would pass, but he overcorrected and went stright into the front quarter of my 2000 Impala, probably doing 55 in a 30. The impact was jarring and scraped my arm resting on the door. The front of the guy's Focus basically crumpled in half.

Driver admitted fault from the get-go, having a sob story about his wife wanting a divorce and was on the phone with her (according to the police report). Watched the police do a sobriety test, which he seemed to do okay on. They told me they suspected (prescription) drugs but not alcohol. Took him in for a blood test (which he was resistant to do), where he ended up with a 0.2 BAC. I'm all for getting plastered...hell, I got drunk myself that night, but who the fuck decides to drive during midday after drinking that much? His insurance was about as giving as they were allowed to be, the guy ended up with a 3-6mo jail sentence with rehab & probation. Asshole got off way easier than he deserved.

 

[John Connor]

I'm all for self-driving cars.

Me too!

But I think people should have to go through an obstacle course every time they get the DL renewed. I did this when I got my DL in Utah. I aced the written test due in part of the mass studying of going over all the questions over and over again in class. But I failed the obstacle course the first time around. It ain't easy having to imagine there is traffic there.

It pisses me off every time I see people think they own the road and drive like an actual fuck all the time. You are in charge of a 2 ton beast! You are supposed to drive defensively. But people drive like that just don't give a damn if the wreck that family's life or not.

I live in a relatively small town of 50,000. I am a police scanner enthusiast. Been into this hobby for 16+ years now. I can't tell you how many MVAs I hear everyday. People just can't drive for shit. And you wonder why car insurance is so high.

 

[John Connor]

I was maybe 8 or 9, in the mid 70s. I was with my sister in our family car, a '72 Pontiac Bonneville. We were sitting eastbound in the turn lane of a 5 lane road, about 6 cars in front of us. An westbound ambulance on a run with lights and siren was approaching. My sister looked in the rear view mirror and told me we were going to get hit. I turned to my left and said, "Wha..?" BAM! An Ohio Bell Telephone van hit us full speed (35mph speed limit, not exactly sure of his speed). Seat belts? Did anyone wear seat belts in the early 70s? My sister hit the steering wheel hard enough that her front lower teeth cut completely through under her lower lip. My head hit the dash hard enough to split what little padding was there. Totaled the Bonneville. I remember thinking the hood looked like the Concorde (with the bent nose).
Hit us hard enough that there was damage to 4 cars in front of us.
I bought a Schwinn Mag Scrambler with my part of the settlement.

As they say in North Dakota and I guess Minnesota. Uff Da!

 

[John Connor]

Two totals and several minor fender benders in only a few years after I started driving.

Total #1:
Stopped at a red light then went when it turned green. Got about half way across the intersection when a guy with hand controls graped the gas instead of the brake and ran the red light and hit the passenger side of my S10 just before the back wheel. It spun the truck around and flipped it up on the drivers side. It happened in slow motion. I remember adding up the damage in my head as it happened and watching the driver side mirror fold in as it tipped on over. Thinking now I got to get the drivers side fixed to. I wasn't hurt at all. My brother in the passenger sit wasn't hurt, but did have a concussion from the initial impact.

Total #2:
Roommate and I were driving back home from college. I don't remember much of any of it, but a tractor trailer ran off the right hand side of the road then came back across the center line. It was pretty much a head on crash with the speed limit on that road set at 45mph, but most went faster as it was long and empty. We crashed into the cab and the car behind us swerved and crashed into the trailer. I was trapped in the car for 6 hours. They didn't didn't even know I was in there until they got the driver out. My first memory was seeing someone in white. I told them to check on my roommate (driver), but then I looked over and saw him and the door gone. I tried to get up, but passed out. Next thing I new I was being treated on a helicopter. Then again in a hospital. I had broken my right collar bone from the seat belt holding me in the car, large lacerations on my right forearm and left wrist which left me with only one artery in that wrist, and my left femur was snapped in half and sticking out of the skin. My roommate also broke his femur, but it was his right, and he had a head injury. His car was needless to say totaled. With out anything hitting the rear of the car the entire car had crushed forward like it had been sandwiched. His sub box in the back was shattered to pieces. The impact even broke the transmission lose from the engine. Fulled recovered and normal except for the missing artery, S-shaped collar bone, titanium rode in my femur, and various scars. Oh and some minor nerve damage on my thigh where the femur tore through. Certain spots feel like they are asleep if I touch it. OK, maybe not normal, but alive.

I never had any fears of driving or being in a car after that. I am sure my parents hated seeing me get in a car and leave though. In total I was in a wreak once a year for the first 5-6 years after I started driving. Had two more minor ones about 13 years ago, neither were my fault. Been wreak free since then until a few months back when a guy stopped short at a light and rear ended me. No damage accept cracking the paint on the bumper when it collapsed in.

You won the lotto dude!

 

[Jaskalas]

Yeah.... I have bad luck but in every instance I was unharmed.

I suspect that's actually good luck.

 

[Muse]

I suspect that's actually good luck.

Better luck is not having accidents to begin with, and that's not all luck! 😎