New driving licence: check. Authorised access to a car: check. All the pieces were in place, so it was bound to happen sooner or later. The first accident, I mean.
Mine was “sooner”: the very first time I was allowed to drive by myself, most of three decades ago, I got in my folks’ two-year-old red VW Jetta GL Wolfsburg, carefully buckled in and checked my mirrors and seat adjustment, and carefully drove the easy, straightforward 7.8 miles to Cherry Creek Shopping Center to put in a job application at Brookstone (why yes, for the matter of that, I did grow up in the suburbs…what makes you ask?). I carefully pulled into the parkade, carefully angle-parked nose-in between the lines of a legitimate parking space, carefully locked the car, went and gave in the application.
Then I got back in the car, buckled in, carefully checked all round again, started the engine, released the handbrake, and carefully reversed out of the spot while carefully steering the wrong direction. Krunch, etc.
Instantly the parkade was full of people who hadn’t been there before, and of course they were all looking in my car—even the ones I couldn’t see. I put the car back in Park, set the brake, shut it off and unbuckled with a shaky right hand, and walked round to look: I had hit a concrete post with the right front corner of the car, which now looked much like the left front corner of the car in the pic above (which I grabbed just now off the internet): front bumper off its mount, side marker light smashed. Other bent-looking parts, but no crumpled metal or leaking fluids or dragging pieces. Completely driveable, but I was completely mortified: see this what I’ve done! The first, the very first time out, and see this what I’ve done!
Adjectives don’t exist to describe the degree and depth of shame and failure and dread I felt. I just sat there for awhile, but eventually had to get going—mostly so I wouldn’t be gone so long as to ignite parental worry by exceeding the “flight plan”, in those wired-phone days—so I hyper-carefully, slowly drove home.
First exchange when I walked in the front door, I had to say “I kinda had an accident with the car”. Anybody hurt? No. Crash with another car? No. I explained what had happened, we all went outside to look, my folks spoke with me about what had gone wrong, we all agreed it was a matter of pure inexperience, the car got fixed—it wasn’t anywhere near so awful as I’d felt, and we were fortunate enough to be well-insured and situated such that an unexpected car repair didn’t endanger our wellbeing—and life went on. You bet I am, to this day, extra-conservative in parking manœuvres! (I’m also not much damn good at ’em unless in a car with unusually good sightlines and a tight turning radius, but I don’t have a RWD Volvo any more, so I recently added a front-and-rear Bosch Park Pilot to my ’07 Accord. It helps more than I hoped, and I sweat less.)
The silver lining—retrospectively, mostly, kindasorta, I think maybe—to the cloud of a substantially friendless childhood was exemption from peer pressure to do stupid things; I didn’t drink, smoke, take drugs or bets or dares or joyrides or things that didn’t belong to me—none of that. This parkade krunch could’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse in any of many ways: It could’ve been a traffic crash, I could’ve hit a pedestrian or a bicyclist, I could’ve been in my dad’s ’62 Dodge instead of the ’90 Jetta.
My folks and I did everything we could to avoid the krunch: they decided with me when they’d watched me drive long enough to be reasonably confident in my abilities, they decided with me where I’d go, and within what approximate timeframe. Me, I did all the pre-trip checks systematically and carefully, I observed all the rules and laws and regulations, and I paid attention to what I was doing. I just didn’t have the muscle memory, gainable only by experience, that would have warned me the wheels were turned the wrong way relative to where I was looking/going, nor the task experience to automatically devote a portion of my attention to keeping track of where the wheels are pointed. No matter how many or few hours of driver training, there are aspects of operator performance (i.e., driver behaviour) that improve only with accrued experience.
And the folks reacted to the krunch in a thoughtful, reasonable manner: they didn’t freak out or exaggerate its seriousness—a courtesy I wasn’t expecting; it hadn’t been extended a year and a half previously when my sister spuriously accused me of breaking into that same Jetta in the high school car park. This time, though, we discussed in detail what happened, and why, and how variants of the same situation could result in much worse outcomes, and how to avoid that kind of lapse in future. We decided together when it was time for another try. I don’t recall there being much of a delay on that; this was not really the sort of lesson that could be meaningfully enhanced with punitive or arbitrary discipline.
Awright, your turn: tell about your first accident, incident, crash, or crackup.
A few minor dings involving lack of visibility….
At age 14 or 15 backing my father’s F-150 with dirt covered camper shell, in the dark, into a freshly pruned cedar tree after being told to unload the firewood it contained. Mild, mild abrasion to the tailgate. I was lectured about being irresponsible; I countered with being set-up for failure – inexperienced driver, blocked vision, in the dark, no offer of help in spotting. The conversation deteriorated rapidly.
A few things minor scrapes when backing up various Ford vans due to lack of visibility. Is it any wonder I have a distinct intolerance for vans?
The first one of any consequence happened about 18 to 20 months ago at age 45. It involved an employer owned 2016 Impala and a rather large doe. Unlike the doe, the Impala lived to fight another day.
I was with my sister, and I was driving us to work. I was at a red light, looking to turn right. I glanced down the road and saw that a car was coming, but it looked to be a while off. I made my turn, accidentally going into both lanes at once. Suddenly, there was a bang before l could correct myself, and l had hit the car that looked so far off. It was a black 2010 Chevrolet Cruze. I had my license about six months at that point.
My first was in 1989 at the tender age of 15. My parents had allowed me to drive them and my sisters to my Grandparents farmhouse a few kilometres away. The driveway to their front door curved past garden, shrubs and trees, including a luxuriant holly bush. As we left, I failed to appreciate the curve of the drive vis-a-vis the degree of steering required vis-a-vis where the wheels were actually pointing, and long story short, reversed neatly into, and partially through, the holly. Cue wounded pride and much laughter from siblings, parents and grandparents. The holly was unscathed, the car (a 1986 Ford Sierra wagon) a bit scratched but it all buffed out. Even now, nearly 30 years later, references to the infamous Holly Incident are frequently made at my expense…
16 years old, had gotten my permanent license only weeks before. Dad had sold his ‘52 Ford 8N so we drove out to the farm to meet the buyer and he let me drive. Heading home in the ‘71 Vega, it was raining a bit. As I rounded a bend, Dad shouted, “Look out!” I swerved just enough to miss a head-on with an out-of-control car spinning into our side of the two-lane. He hit in the middle of my door, which spun us 180* and back across the highway into the ditch where the car rolled onto its side.
Dad tried to roll the window down, but it was jammed, so he covered his hands with his jacket and broke the window out so we could climb out. Several guys ran out from a nearby convenience store and helped push the car on its wheels. Dad bent the rear fender out to clear the tire, and the car fired right up.
The police arrived and arrested the drunk driver that hit us, saying he had had several previous DUIs.
Dad drive us home and put the car in our Voc Ed auto shop program, where they reskinned the drivers side and repainted the car. It would become my own the next year when I was a senior in high school.
May 5, 1993. I was 20 years old, and driving a Saab turbo I had recently purchased used on I-40 near Burlington, NC. I was driving in the left lane, when I suddenly noticed a spare tire lying in the middle of my lane. I noticed it — and reacted — too late.
I swerved into the left-hand shoulder but lost control, and the car started spinning. At highway speed, on a crowded Interstate. Words cannot describe that feeling. Time slowed down to a crawl and a thousand ridiculous thoughts entered my mind: Like “I wish I didn’t just spend $20 on gas if the car’s going to be wrecked.” The car spun rapidly towards the concrete barrier in the middle of the highway, and I hit it going backwards, still spinning.
The damage didn’t look nearly as dramatic as the accident sounds. But the whole rear end of the car was shifted to the left (the driver’s side rear quarter panel was rippled, for instance). Both front and rear suspensions suffered major damage — my front wheels were turned fully when I hit the wall, so the front right tire bore the brunt of the impact.
I was knocked senseless for a few moments, but then managed to move the (wobbly) car to the right-hand shoulder, where I walked (alone and scared out of my mind) to the nearest exit where I called the state police. Later, I managed to hold a camera steady enough to take this picture.
Surprisingly, the body shop repaired the car, though they shouldn’t have. If I had been older and wiser, I would have pleaded with them to total the car. After I got the Saab back, it had endless problems… the trunk would randomly pop open, there were leaks, and a few years later it developed stress fractures in the body panels. I eventually sold the car to a Saab mechanic.
Live and learn: I was tired that day, which is why I reacted late and poorly to an obstruction in the road. From then on, I learned to do anything to avoid driving tired.
Eric703,
Being in a Saab may have saved your life! I drink extra coffee if I have to drive tired. Having the jitters is a price worth paying to avoid injuring others or yourself.
As a DOT Compliance manager, I strongly suggest that you never do this. There is no substitute for sleep. Any stimulant will only make matters worse. Nobody wants a jittery driver on the road. Pull over, take a nap and save a life
Totally agree with Tom C. All caffeine does is make you think you’re okeh to drive awhile. That’s not more safe, it’s less.
Daniel,
Obviously, sleep is best. I did swing shift for almost twenty years, and never fell asleep at the wheel unlike most of my coworkers who did at least once, the difference being I drank coffee and they did not. I meant if you HAVE to drive. Home. To watch the kids. Or take care of a sick wife. Can’t always take a nap on the I80/94 interchange during rush hour. I wasnt talking about doing it out of greed or cockiness. I think the DOT compliance manager is correct, but that is so general it is like saying “Being healthy is better than being sick. You should always choose being healthy because it is better. Also, choose to have enough money.” I drank the coffee to insure safer driving on my part for other people’s safety. If I had to, in the world some of us live in, when necessary. Caffeine can improve responses, and keep you from falling asleep. It is not an all-or nothing equation. Binary thinking on this issue aside, I am still a fan of your writing.😁
I was 16 and driving a carload of underage drunk teens back from a party when we got rear ended while sitting at a red light. The guy didn’t want me to call the cops, neither did my passengers.
The guy promised me he’d get the car fixed (the faithful Matador) but of course he did not.
Not a happy memory at all.
I was a junior in high school and always backed into the same parking spot under a big oak tree at school for some shade. For whatever reason, I pulled out that day turning the wheels too early, managing to rub the corner of the rear bumper and break the tail light of the new Nissan Sentra next to me.
I looked at my friend, mouth agape, and he said, “what did you do”? My heart just sank as I was told by my parents that if I got into an accident or had a speeding ticket, they would take my license away. My friend told me to take off, but I knew the big tan colored dent in the side of my black Ranger would be very obvious to my parents.
I hung around and the owner of the car came out 5 minutes later and didn’t even notice the damage. I talked to her parents and they came to the conclusion that if I bought them a new tail light they would ignore the damaged bumper corner. I did just that, and my parents never took my license away, even after I ended up nearly totaling my Ranger a year later by rear ending a minivan.
Needless to say, I rarely ever park nose out in any parking space!
Got my driver’s licence in 1991 when I was 27 yrs old. Never had an accident in all those years and only one speeding ticket. My BIL, however, had three accidents in the first year of driving (also the same time as me) and totalled one car in a bad t-bone accident crossing a lane blind, was a wonder he and my sister weren’t killed. He remains, to this day, a terrible driver.
I sat in the left-turn lane, I had a red light, then I woke up in the hospital hours later pumped full of pain relievers. That’s all I remeber from a terrible rear-end hit I took at age 22, in 1996. Guy fiddling with the stereo in his band new Dodge Ram had drifted out of his lane and hit my Colt’s right rear at about 45 mph. Colt was crushed into a shape like a banana, and apparently the medics found me lying with my upper body on the hood, covered in broken glass… yikes.
Only good thing was that it happened in 1996, when I had really good insurance through my employer, that paid for the arduous physical rehabilitation.
Yikes. That kind of crash is a big part of why I don’t drive old cars any more (and that kind of insurance roulette is why I’m giving up on the States).
Daniel,
I agree on the insurance racket. What do mean by giving up on the States? Don’t leave me here alone with these people! Just kidding, but are you moving to Canada or something?
I’m a dual national—born in the States, and also with Canadian citizenship for a little over a decade now. I still own the family home in the States, a magical midmod on a double corner lot on a hill with a panoramic view and a great big garden—My grandparents put it up, and my father grew up there. But it is too much to keep up with if it’s not a one-and-only residence, and the recent and foreseeable trajectory of events makes Canada the wiser choice, so the dream of that home is over. I’m sad and bitter, but that’s how it is.
Stern,
I’m sorry that happened to you. I can’t imagine how hard your recovery was. I hope your future has much less pain in it.
I could have sworn I told this story somewhere in here, but since I couldn’t locate it I will tell it again. It is a long one. Grab some popcorn or coffee or hydrocodone to get through it.
I was sort of a natural driver. I aced driver’s education without picking up a book or trying. I used to do stunts in my first car all the time, never with any consequences. Never a hit curb, never a fender bender, never a rookie mistake. So of course I became cocky. I took bigger risks, went sideways everywhere in the winter on balding tires from constant reverse 180s. Never a mistake. Never a regret. I use the moniker TheMann on here ironically, because history has shown the opposite to be true. And it was my save name on PlayStation. But with driving I really felt like the man. No regular person could do what I could in a car. I made the car dance. I was fearless and addicted to adrenaline. So naturally being young and dumb, hubris set in.
In October 1990 I had just turned 19. I had an ’85 Corolla SR5. (The U.S. version of the AE86, though it was designated AE87 or something here) My friend Dave and I were taking one of our many long cruises to find whatever adventure we could. We ended up driving some gravel farm roads about 40 miles south of Chicago. We didn’t normally wear seatbelts, but it was foggy and hilly, and since visibility was limited, I thought it a good idea to buckle up. I was going about 40 MPH when I got to the top of a small hill, and the road suddenly ended, at a “T” intersection. I made an attempt to turn, got the car going in the left direction, but forward inertia was too much and we went past the edge of the intersecting road. It was late October and getting cold early, and the edge of the road had a groove (presumably from a tractor tire) formed in mud that had dried and hardened. As we went across it sideways, the tires got caught in the groove, and the car rolled over. It wasn’t a fast roll, but it was enough. Dave’s passenger window shattered and he had glass in his arm. For a second I stared at the dash, seeing the car idling happily upside-down at 600-whatever RPMs. I had enough time as I turned off the motor to be impressed with Toyota. Dave and I looked at each other, the light from one of the pop-up headlights shining in a weird direction, as it had broken on the pivot points and was 3/4 of the way backwards, but still on. So in this disorientation Dave clicked his seatbelt button and from my perspective appeared to fall “up”. We crawled out and stared at the car. We tried rocking it back and forth, as it was on a slight incline, but we were unable to roll it.
We walked for a couple of miles to the nearest lights we could see, a farmhouse. The big man who answered the door was friendly. He was a young guy, and he had a very attractive wife. So much so that I had to force myself not to stare. I didn’t want to be rude, and also didn’t want to be killed in the middle of nowhere. And we needed his help. Dave was not as good at pretending not to notice the gorgeous woman, and I had to give him the evil eye to stop his jaw from dropping. We were 18 after all. It was almost worth flipping the car to be this close to her. Almost.
The nice man with the hot wife also had a 70s-something Toronado. Brown. Black steel rims. Torn-up interior. He drove very fast. Iron Maiden’s “Out In The Cold” was playing on the stereo. Dave thought that funny considering the night’s events. He drove us quickly to the rolled Corolla. The CoROLLa! I just thought of that…So the three of us were able to rock the car back on to it’s wheels, barely, and because of the angle. We said lots of thank-yous and Dave and I began to drive away. The windshield was down at eye level, and all spiderwebbed, but not falling out. I had to drive with my head out the side window.
To mess with Dave, the first thing I did was a sideways peelout on the gravel. Dave gave me a quick punch to the arm. I deserved one to the face.
Hmm, too soon, I thought.
We had almost made it to the highway when a policeman saw us and pulled us over. He was like that cop in Planes, Trains & Automobiles when John Candy and Steve Martin were in the burned-up car. “Do you consider this vehicle to be safe for hghway travel?” he said, or something like that. We had to park the car at the truck stop and call for a ride.
Very humiliating for me because all of my self-esteem was in my driving and independence. I had lost both at once. I had gotten my friend injured, and lost some of his respect.
I had one more bad accident in 1992, not my fault, but after that I finally got my act together. It’s almost 2019, and nothing since. No tickets, no accidents. Knock on wood. I only once scraped a curb a couple of years ago. I think it was my first time. My wife doesn’t believe me. But I am a much more careful driver now.
I like to say I don’t make small mistakes. I make giant ones or none at all. Go big or go home. I’m starting to say that too much. But with driving it really was the case. I got a pretty penny for the Corolla even all smashed up. It was rebuilt with a donor car’s roof, and sold to someone in California. I miss that car. My first kiss was in it. My first more-than-kiss was in it.
I almost killed my friend in it.
Now I just want to come home in one piece. Or at least all the pieces glued together with the maturity that some of us have learned the hard way.
Happy New Year!
This story deserves to be an article all on its own. What a great read, from the hooning to the hot wife to the old Toro!
+1
Wanted to correct a minor typo that has annoyed me since I posted this.
“We were 18 after all” should be “We were 19 after all”
But that’s not the reason I came back here.
I was thinking about the old days today and I thought of an odd event that happened a couple of days before the events if this post.
Dave and I were doing our cruising through that area for the first time. We found an old wooden bridge that had two thick wooden planks to drive over the bridge on. I had the bright idea to go over and over it again and again, faster each time.
We eventually were doing it at 75 mph. It took only about a second and a half at that speed to cross it. Quite exhilarating.
On the way home on a very dark, narrow, and surprisingly very smooth road we saw a figure walking along the side. No joke, this person had on a striped coat that looked like it belonged to Freddie Kreuger. As we approached, just as the headlights shined on this figure the hood turned and faced us.
I say the hood turned and faced us, because there appeared to be no head inside the hood. No face! As we passed, Dave and I looked at each other and said at the same time: “Did that guy have no head?”
We drove for a few secpnds more before I made a U-turn and went back to confirm our faceless/headless person. We just had to see for sure. We got to the part of the road where we had seen it and there was nobody there.
There was no cover, no trees or bushes or ditches. Just dead farm field and road.
We left a little confused by what we had seen.
There seemed to be nowhere to hide but the person was gone. Not even a minute had passed.
That night’s events were so fun/bizarre that we decided to go back to that area again, and that is when we had the rollover accident.
Over the years I meant to tell this story, but only now got around to it. Just to be clear, I wasn’t someone who went looking for supernatural stuff or had any real interest in it. But I have no explanation for the seemingly headless, vanishing man.
My first accident happened at age 24 in 1984. I was driving in the fast lane at a slowish speed while the slow lane was gridlocked as everyone was trying to leave the beach late on a Sunday afternoon. I drunk driver pulled out through the gridlocked lane from a side street and I couldn’t stop in time and I skidded into his side door. The damage was minimal, ABS would have avoided the situation all together. What come to mind is how I’ve changed, how my instinct of avoiding trouble has developed. My 20’s were a blur of losing sunglasses, misplacing clothing and generally living in a sense of wonderful chaos. These days a speed differential between the fast and slow lanes immediately makes me slow down, and I bought my current sunglasses in… 2005!
1993 or so, I was around 24 in my ’86 GTI. Heading onto 101N from Broadway Ave in Burlingame in the rain at about 35mph getting ready to accelerate hard onto the freeway. It’s a flyover ramp where the regular East/West street becomes the onramp itself which is fine except that the exiting Northbound freeway traffic has to make a 180 degree hairpin coming off the freeway to then take the flyover to the regular street.
A Lincoln TownCar was coming the other way and overcooked it on the hairpin causing the car to get sideways and cross into my lane fully sideways. It needed much more than just a dab of oppo to get out of that. Nowhere to go, nowhere to stop, I ran straight into his passenger side rear tire area. It stopped the GTI dead and caused him to then spin the other way until he came to rest on the embankment.
It was an open and shut case, their insurance company didn’t quibble and that’s how I ended up going from an ’86 GTI to an ’88 LeSabre T-Type; while the GTI did fine protecting us in the crash I decided to go a bit bigger for the next one…
Almost the same damage as on my ’77 Rabbit which happened when a ’63 Dodge pickup ran a stop sign and I T boned the truck in the passenger side, crushing the cab to the frame on that side. No injuries except for a little seat belt burn and sore back, the pickup drove home after the wreck, the Rabbit was dragged onto a flatbed tow truck.
Here’s the picture.
Turned 16 in December, 1967 (yesterday was my birthday in fact), received my driver’s license in April, 1968 (at that time in the Commonwealth of Kentucky one didn’t have to do much more than drive around the block and parallel park to get a license), and had my first wreck in June, 1968. School had just gotten out for the summer a couple of week’s previously and I was on my way to work as a dishwasher at a Howard Johnson’s on a fine Saturday afternoon. I remember that Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” was blasting on the AM radio as I headed north on the major street through town. My green light started to change to yellow just before I entered the busiest intersection in the downtown area, naturally instead of stopping I gave the mighty 223 I6 more gas. There were two vehicles headed west on the cross street, a semi-truck waiting to turn and head south and a fairly new Grand Prix going straight in the other lane. I suppose that the Grand Prix’s driver was screened by the truck and didn’t see me coming through the intersection, in any case he took off and center-punched my 1960 Ford in the passenger’s side B pillar. I remember that my car spun some 270 degrees before coming to rest in the southbound lanes; fortunately there wasn’t much traffic and there were no secondary collisions. Both cars had to leave on the hook; the Grand Prix had a busted radiator and the Ford was undriveable, it ended up being totaled. No one was hurt in the accident but I was without wheels for the remainder of the summer, until I was able to purchase a 1961 Ford and get the motor and transmission from the wrecked car swapped. That remains the only MVA that was my fault, I have had a couple of minor fender benders in the 50 years since then but they involved people running into my car. At that time my father and I were in a period where we had trouble communicating and getting along (entirely my fault, looking back I’m amazed that no one didn’t take me out and shoot me for being a total jackass); surprisingly he didn’t really say much about the wreck other than I needed to be more careful.
This brought back memories. My dad had this exact same Jetta in the same color when I was kid back in the early 90’s. I still remember being at the VW dealership when it was purchased, how it smelled on the inside, that weird chime it would make when you opened the door with the key in the ignition, and that manual sunroof with the handle lol. My stepmother totaled it after about two years though. When I got my license in the late 90’s my first car was a ’91 VW Golf 4 door. Same color, same wheels, manual sunroof and everything. I wrecked it going to school one morning. I was turning out of the neighborhood that we lived in onto the main road when one of my contact lenses slipped, causing me to rear end an older model (late 70’s maybe) Ford F150. No one was hurt thankfully, but my car sure was. I was crushed, and in trouble lol. I thought that my dad was going to murder me for sure, but the gentlemen in the F150 didnt seem to care much because the damage to his rear bumper was minimal. Nice article.
Thanks kindly. Yeah, that three-note electronic key chime, eh? The first three notes of “a-hunting we will go”, over and over and over until the key was removed or the door was closed. That’s among the many memorable details, quirks, and gritchments I’ll write about when I take my turn in the COAL mines about it.
That noise still haunts me in my sleep, the GTI had it as well. By the way, it is the EXACT same three notes both in pitch and duration as the “fries are done” chime at the french fry station at the McDonald’s I worked at when I was 15. Very strange coincidence.
Maybe a coincidence…or maybe a common part from a common supplier!
You know what…you’re right!!! I heard that noise a few weeks ago when I was in McDonald’s and I couldn’t figure out why it sounded so familiar to me until now. Thanks for sharing!!!
Driving onto a wet roundabout in my ’97 Astra when I was 19 or so, I went on and too high a speed. I slid and spun on the wet pavement and turned 180 degrees, ending up just metres from a fence. All I could do was laugh hysterically and I remember a passing motorist looking at me like I was insane.
I can be an aggressive driver but I think I’m ultimately pretty responsible so I’ve managed to avoid ever being in another accident or even near-miss, touch wood.
Touch wood, never had a “traffic accident”, although I had a couple of 5 mph crunches when working for Avis.
When I was 18 though, and had had my licence for a few months, I set off late for a dental appointment, and the route to the town was down a winding country ‘B’ road with a 60mph limit.
It was probably a foot wider than one lane of I35, with a grass verge and hedge on one side, and a 3 foot sidewalk and a stone wall on the other. I knew the road well, and was prepared for the unusual camber on the fateful bend which always lifted the right rear of my Fiat Punto, which had bald tyres and dodgy rear suspension bushes. I was doing 65, when I typically approached it at probably 50. The road was greasy, and as I exited the bend, I suddenly felt like the car was floating. It flicked one way, I overcorrected, and it pirouetted down the road.
When I lost control, I fully expected to end up upside down in the field, or in the wall. The front wheels went through the verge, caking the front of the car in mud, but otherwise I didn’t hit anything, which seemed a minor miracle. I stopped, facing the wrong way and shaking. The middle aged guy who was behind me asked if I was ok and said “Take it easy son, eh?”. When I got to the dentist I caught a look at myself in the mirror and was white as a corpse. I drove home via the car wash to destroy the evidence.
1987. I’m in my ’77 LeSabre, stopped in the right hand lane behind a city bus. In watching the mirror for a break in traffic in the left lane when I realize that the guy in the Cavilier coming up behind me is looking sideways and isn’t going to stop.
There was enough impact to knock things of the seat, but I really didn’t feel it. Damage to my Buick, left side of the bumper bent up an inch or two, and a crack in that taillight. The entire front end of the Cavilier was bent in odd directions. Coolant dripping out, and a bit of a crack in the windshield where his head hit.
A week later on the freeway during rush hour the car in front suddenly stopped. I managed to stop in time but the guy behind me didn’t. His bumper went under mine, destroying the grill and lights on his late model Cadillac. I now had a slightly bigger crack in the left taillight.
I’m the last 30 years, there have been a few incidents that were my fault, but fortunately nothing we didn’t all drive away from.
Still have a lot of respect for those RWD B bodies. 🙂
My first accident was also my only at-fault (so far…) It was the Winter of ’78-’79 in northwestern Ohio, the first big snow of the year. I had a newly minted driver’s license and had driven Dad’s Buick Estate Wagon in light snow a few times and was confident in my ability to steer through a skid. There were a few inches of fresh snow on the roads and the side streets had yet to be plowed. I begged permission to take my grandmother’s ’75 Buick Regal V6 sedan to a friend’s house. That car had a tall rear axle and a high idle speed of 25-30 mph in high gear until the choke kicked all the way off. It had radials but they were hardly new. I broke through the plow wall at the end of our driveway and turned out onto the major street we lived on. Traffic was very light.
All went well until I turned into my friend’s subdivision. I had to go straight for 2-3 blocks them turn right when the road teed onto another. I accelerated to around 20 mph and took my foot off the gas. The car continued to accelerate, so I tried the brakes. Both front wheels immediately locked – there was ice under that snow. I took my foot off the brake and slipped it into neutral to stop the acceleration. The fronts did not seem to unlock, as I regained only minimal steering control. Perhaps the treads were packed by then. I could influence our trajectory a little and calculated my angles to bounce off curbs and make the turn at the end. I figured I would scrub off enough speed to stop before the next corner (no hills).
I was about a block from the end of the street when a woman in a ’73 Pontiac colonnade station wagon (LeMans?) arrived in the intersection. She took one look at me careening off of the curbs, panicked and slammed on her brakes and stopped in the middle of the intersection. I eventually saw her wheels spin as she tried to move out of the way, but It was too late. I managed to point the Buick at the back of her car. The impact spun the Pontiac a bit and ruptured its gas tank. Pretty much demolished it’s rear quarter panel, too. The Buick survived this Clash of Colonnades with a scratched bumper and a crack in the fiberglass panel above the grill. Nobody was seriously injured, but my pride sure was! So was my license. I took the Regal to Montgomery Wards and had some new tires fitted as soon as I got up the nerve to drive it that far again.
All these years later, I still remember it vividly. Could have been a lot worse, though.
In the early 80’s, I was in two different totaled wrecks about a year apart from each other, and walked away from both of them.
In the 1st crash, I was a passenger in a friends ‘82 Datsun regular cab 4×4 pickup. It was dark out and he missed an S curve in the road we were on and hit a large pole head on at 40-45 mph. When I climbed out and ran around to pull my friend out, he was already getting out. A witness to the accident said we needed wings if we were going to drive like that, and that we were airborne when we hit the pole. There litterally wasn’t a straight piece of sheet metal left on his truck. And we were both sore like-a-heck the next morning.
The 2nd wreck was in my ‘71 Olds Cutlass coupe while I was on my way to work early in the morning, It was dark and raining and I hydroplaned off the road sideways into steel light pole. The car ricocheted off the pole and spun back out into the road in the direction I was originally going. The impact point was at the right front corner, just ahead of the front wheel and resulted in a bent frame and everything shifted over to the left. The right front fender and inner fender was slammed up against the engine, and the left fender was shoved out about a foot or so, immediately rendering the car undrivable. A passerby helped me push the battered Cutlass on to the shoulder, and I called a wrecker to get it home. My forman at work drove the same route to work and he stopped when he saw my car on the side of the road, and helped me out from there as well.
Within a matter of a couple days, I wound up buying a friends ‘73 Olds 442 that had a burned up engine for $100 and I pulled the 350 rocket out of my wreck as it wasn’t damaged, and I dropped it in the 442 and scrapped the rest.
1974, I’d had my license for about 18 months and thought I was a pretty good driver. I didn’t own a car yet, but was driving my parents’ Volvo 122S wagon. Made a left turn from a major 4 lane arterial into a narrow side street. A turn I’d probably made a few dozen times in a car, maybe a few dozen more times on my bicycle since childhood. Halfway through the turn I heard the screech of tires and saw a green Dart heading straight at me. Crash!! I must have been looking ahead (to the left) at the street I was turning into and never saw the oncoming car.
Police came, I was cited for an unsafe turn, the Volvo was pretty bent but drivable, but the Dodge’s radiator didn’t look too watertight any more. I tried to apologize to the other driver but he was pretty pissed off and the cop kept us apart. As a minor, I had to go to court but the cop didn’t show up and the citation was dropped. My parents were pretty reasonable, but we didn’t have collision insurance so the repair cost came out of my pocket and we used a budget body shop and I painted it myself. It never looked right and the doors didn’t close or fit too well. I heard a lot about that from my Mom over the next 12 years she kept the car, but she was pretty cool on the day it happened.
I’ve never had an at-fault accident in the subsequent 45 years. Well, except for the time I backed into my wife’s car in the driveway. Twice, with different pairs of cars.
You backed into your wife’s car….in the driveway… twice…with two sets of cars…and you’re
A) still married
B) still alive
I think you just won the prize for best guardian Angel!😇
She’s pretty special.
It was 1980, it was a wet road, I had my license for maybe a couple of months.
I was driving my 1969 Valiant Hardtop, (Aussie Dodge Dart) with a 318.
It was a bit of sweeping bend, My mate was behind me in his Valiant, we were going too fast, it was in town, so the limit would have been 60 kmh, all of a sudden the Valiant did a slow 180 and I hit the dirt embankment on the other side of the road facing the other way.
The damage was minimal, just the corner of the front bumper pushed into the guard (fender).
So total inexperience, I had no idea about how to steer into a skid, it was a scary car to drive even on a dry road, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think the previous owner had set the car up incorrectly when he installed an anti roll bar on the rear, I’ve never driven any car since that would send the tail out so willingly as that Valiant.
In the fall of 1990, I’d had my license for about 4 months. Was driving to work in my ’67 Rustang. I was in the left lane on a 4-lane road, coming down a hill to a traffic light. About 50-100 feet after the light was another intersection with a lightly used road. The traffic light turned yellow just as I came down to it, and I must have looked up to judge whether I could make it through in time. A car stopped in my lane to turn left at the lightly used intersection and the two cars behind also stopped short. I didn’t stop in time, and bumped into the back of an early ’80s Nissan Sentra. No damage to either car, except that the Sentra’s prominent license plate lights were the perfect height to put matching dings in the chrome strip on the front edge of my hood. My bumper was also a bit scratched from going under the Sentra’s black rubber bumper, but I’d already been planning to replace the front bumper anyway (ahem, Rustang). I exchanged info with the Sentra’s driver and drove on to work, badly shaken. While I was at work, the Sentra’s driver called my home just to let me know they were sure there was no damage to the Sentra. So that was how my parents found out. When I got home, my mother had draped the garage door with black crepe paper. I failed to see the humor at the time.
I had a ’59 Rambler that used more oil than gas. One day, Mrs Genovy slammed on her brakes in what was considered heavy traffic at the time. I rear ended her. Severely damaged her ’69 Caprice at 30mph by pushnig the rear fenders into the roofline. My Rambler suffered about $50 damage, but the hood opened easily, something that took some effort before the accident.
I was 16 and had only had my license for about 2 weeks. I was taking my older sister’s soon to be ex fiancee’s little brother, who was about a year younger than me, home. It was just about sundown, still light out, with a really potent sunset in front of us. I was at Holland Sylvania and Angola Rds, I think it’s the border between Toledo and Holland, OH. Anyway, there was no stoplight there back then, and it was one of those “bad intersections” with a lot of spectacular wrecks, about one every 2-3 weeks, with a lot of minor ones in between. I was driving what was “officially” my sister’s Viking Blue Iridescent ’71 Cutlass “S”, westbound on Angola. The traffic was always heavy there, and we sat for a while waiting for an opening. Finally, it looked like there was no northbound traffic, and only one old turd brown Ford coming in the southbound side. I waited for him and glanced to my left, and saw nothing, so as the Ford passed, I took off. Suddenly, Tom says, “Oh shit, there’s a Volkswagen!” and instantly, as I turned to look, it hit really hard. KA BLAM, I saw the windshield disappear and the center of the dash pop out, and felt something grab my face. We then slowly crept into the telephone pole on the NW side of the intersection and stopped. My left leg had been caught in between the door and the power seat buttons and the little knob was stuck in my leg. I finally got loose from it. It hurt a little, but my left knee hurt a lot. My glasses were gone, we looked in the car and couldn’t find them. About 30 feet away, the turd brown ’62 VW continued to run, with a flattened trunk lid, and the guy driving got out without a scratch. Tom was OK too, but i was already sore as hell. The woman riding in the VW was a sobbing mess, most of her teeth had been removed when her face hit the dash when he hit my car at “between 60 and 70 MPH” according to the OSP guys. Her seat belt was laying unbuckled on the seat, while she was on her knees with a bloody face that looked even worse than it was, and that was pretty bad. The VW driver was trying to console his wife while we waited for the cops, and she kept on wailing. We ended up with Toledo, the Lucas County Sheriff, and OSP all involved. At least 2 witnesses said the VW was airborne over the railroad crossing, and the driver admitted he had been “hauling ass to get home to watch ___________”, I don’t remember what it was anymore, but it was about 7:45pm when the wreck happened.
I figured as the “kid”, I would get a ticket, but I assumed that the VW driver would get one too, for reckless ops or just speeding, but no, I was the only one who got a ticket. The VW survived the wreck very well, it seemed to have just a messed up front bumper and a trunk lid. The steering was fine and other than the bloody dash, there were no issues, one of the OSP officers was very impressed with what damage it dished out on my much larger and heavier car. The Cutlass was bent like a boomerang, all the windows were broken, and the transmission was broken in two. There was a huge puddle of ATF under the car, and OSP had me try to move it, and, of course, that wasn’t going to happen. When the engine started, it sounded like a jet engine’s whine and transmission parts dropped out of it It would be totaled, I would get mom’s ’72 Cutlass in Matador Red, my sister got an awful bronze ’73 Cutlass that was never really running right, and mom got a kind of a frosty blue ’73 Cutlass Supreme that ran better and got better mileage than my sister’s sort of stripped car. Where did my glasses go? Folded up under the VW, at least 30 feet from my car, like someone put them there. No damage, just road dust. My dad was sure the woman would sue us, but we never heard anything about the accident again. I took my dad to get the stuff out of the car and he was impressed that all I had was a sore knee and even more impressed that a VW Bug did so much damage and came out pretty much intact. I lost the pics I had taken of the Cutlass in the back of the dealer’s lot, it looked like someone had died in it.
What an amazing story!
Sorry I missed this one when it posted.
Not the first accident but I just saw a jerk in a red Silverado hit a black amg mercadies in the downtown Charleston parking garage and leave. Got a pic of the truck but not the tag. The owner has Montana tags …..
Not pretty
It’s an AMG model from Montana. Long way from home here in Charleston
It’s probably not from Montana. It’s a disreputable tax-aviodance scheme sometimes used by people with expensive vehicles.
You incorporate a small business in Montana, and license your expensive car or RV in its name. You end up with Montana plates and avoid sales taxes and an annual inspection.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ebDF-C7GJec
I made it through my teenage years amazingly unscathed; maybe due to my ecological sensitivity and preference for small (slow) cars. Once I became a police officer, though, my danger factor went up. What did I learn? Don’t chase a Corvette in an LTD (I.e. Crown Vic); I went straight when the road took a 90 degree turn, I missed the cow but barbed wire is rough on a car’s paint…..
17, almost 18, in 2001. Graduation party. ’87 LTD Crown Victoria. I’d taken “Sandra” to the prom but didn’t have the nerve to seriously ask her out. Shy. Another guy asks Sandra out in earshot of me, at the party. She says “yes”. I know full well that Sandra liked me, but I didn’t follow through. I have failed. I did not have the guts. I am unmanned. Without comment, I stalk away from the party, everything is a blur. I am furious at my own weakness, furious at him, furious at her, furious at the feeling of powerlessness I now feel. I have not been drinking; this is a supervised party with parents present. It doesn’t matter. I am drunk with shame.
I roar out of the driveway and barely stop at the stop sign before gunning it into the intersection. The oncoming Accord nails the Crown Vic between the doors at 38 mph (I later find out). I get out. In the moment my feeling is not that I have been reckless but that the other driver has wrecked my car. What a little jerk I was in that moment. But, I return to the party and have someone call the cops and ambulance. The driver is bleeding from where his sun visor slashed his forehead. The Accord’s airbag did not inflate.
My friend’s father, a local tradesman with seeming connections to the police, assures them that I am a “good kid”. I am issued a ticket for failure to grant right of way with a $100 fine. My father arrives, wordlessly bungee cords the loose doors of the Crown Vic closed, and drives it back to the house as it slowly bleeds brake fluid. My uncle shows up and drives me back to the house. I feel sick, but do not get sick.
Insurance pays for the Accord, the investigation finding the other driver partly at fault for speeding despite my own recklnessnes. I pay the local Ford body shop $2200, most of my job savings, to unbend the Crown Victoria’s frame and replace the two doors on the left side. I drive the car another 3 years. My family is proud of me for not getting emotional. I am still ashamed at losing Sandra like this and then practically having a car accident in front of her. I wonder if she connected the dots, and hope she didn’t.
Sandra dated him for maybe 2 months before all of us left for college. We remained friendly, but soon went our separate ways. So far over the next 17 years, all succeeding accidents have not been my fault. I cool off before taking the wheel if I’m upset now.
Similar to others. Turned 16, got license the same day, first accident the next day. Icy roads, trying to park in a tight space when late for an early-morning rehearsal. Mashed the fender of my ’59 Biscayne, didn’t scratch the other car.
Before I got my full license, I asked my parents if I could drive my friends out for the evening, in the family Peugeot 504. I got about 1 mile down the road on a country back road, driving too fast around a corner I hit mud left by a farmer. Over steered one way, then the other, and suddenly could just see hedgerow in front of me. I had a vivid instantaneous mental image of going through the hedge and being stuck in a ploughed field and being highly embarrassed, but not so lucky. A wheel caught in the ditch, the lights went out and we were rolling. Ended up upside-down, facing back the way we had came.
Thankfully no injuries, despite my friend Neil being in the back without a seatbelt. The 504 was relatively uninjured, but so low in value that it was written off. My parents were incredibly understanding, and I learned many lessons.
That was 32 years ago, and I haven’t crashed a car since. I’ve fallen off a motorbike, but that’s a different story…
My first accident? How fitting, as it occurred exactly 39 years ago. December 29th, 1979. I had just gotten off work at 9:30 pm at the discount department store, “Pic’ N Save”, I was sixteen and had just bought my first (drivable) car a month earlier, a ‘71 Buick Skylark 4 door sedan, for $900. Being a minor, however necessitated it being titled and registered in my mom’s name. Me and my co-worker Scott and another guy (who I can’t recall his name) were heading out to “par-tee” as it was a Saturday night and it was the final weekend of Christmas vacation before school restarted. It had been raining; so the roads were wet. In addition, all four of the tires on my car were mismatched and slightly different sizes; a G78-14 on the left rear, a F78-14 on the right rear, an E78-14 on the left front, and a C78-14 rounding it out on the right front. How I remember this detail, I can’t explain other than it was my first car. While I think the correct size tire for this model was E78-14, all the mismatched tires did have halfway decent tread.
I turned out of the parking lot into the left lane onto 4-lane Normandy Boulevard; as I approached the next intersection a half-mile away, I applied the brakes for the line of stopped cars about a half dozen deep. Scott remarked afterwards how he was surprised at how the wheels locked up so easily on the wet road. I tried to re-apply the brakes, but they locked up again; I was quickly closing in the ‘74 Pinto stopped in the lane ahead of me. In a panic, at the last moment before impact, I slung the wheel to the left. I assume because I had an undersize tire on the right front, coupled with my hard braking and quick left steer, the Buick’s right front end was in a severe “dive”. While the top right of the bumper did bend over upon contact with the bottom left of the Pinto’s rear bumper, my bumper essentially under-rode the chrome railroad tie on the back of the Pinto. My right side headlights and their backing core support as well as the right front fender were severely demolished. The way I hit the Pinto caused it to spin clockwise 90 degrees causing the front bumper guards to put a moderate crease about 6 feet long in the driver’s side of the ‘75 Grenada sedan in the right lane beside it. Somehow, the bumper on the Pinto wasn’t bent, and the left taillight only sustained a small crack. However, the owner said the driver’s door didn’t shut properly anymore, so the unibody’s left rear quarter may have been bent slightl or he was lying and the door hinge was already worn out on his 5 year old car. After I made contact with the Pinto and spun it around, I ricocheted across the center turn lane into oncoming traffic. I just barely missed the side of a passing city bus, crossed the lanes, jumped the curb; and came to a stop in a parking lot across the street. Fortunately, no one was hurt, though my Buick clearly took the brunt of the collision.
The funny thing was, the very night before, I was pulled over for the left front low-beam headlight being burned out. The very same cop showed up to investigate the accident. The first thing he said to me as he got out of his car? “Now your other headlight doesn’t work.”
I received a ticket for careless driving. My mom got sued by the Pinto driver for whiplash injury (they lost). I never repaired the Buick, but drove it for another glorious and memorable 9 months until it was up for the annual safety inspection; without right side headlights it was toast. I drove it to the junkyard, where I received $50. That car earned legendary status among my high school friends for the stunts and antics I pulled in it, one of which was leaving an epic burnout one night on the school’s tennis courts., not to mention the dozens of front yards I rutted out. It was a great car. I only have one picture of it, with me sitting on the hood before the accident. It’s too late tonight to be digging through a shoebox for it. I really should write a COAL about it one day.
Late 1977 at the age of 23. I was heading home from work. I was on the ramp to northbound US 1 from westbound State Road 528 in the Cape Canaveral area of Florida. I saw a late model Eldorado ahead of me but I hadn’t realized that the driver was a little old lady who had stopped at the beginning of the merge lane awaiting a gap in traffic on US 1 (the traffic wasn’t bad at all). I didn’t stop quite soon enough and ended up hitting the rear of the Eldo at a fairly slow speed. The Caddy suffered very little damage but my ’65 Mustang had a mangled front bumper and a bent hood front. Fortunately no-one was hurt. Yes, I should have been more attentive and the accident was my fault, but I think the Eldo driver was partly to blame for stopping at an inappropriate location.
Not my accident but an amusing if somewhat macabre story nonetheless. Where I grew up in east Central Florida in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we had a next-door neighbor who was a sweet-natured old lady from Georgia (or “Jaw-juh” as she called it). Mrs. Ford was an endless chatterbox who was also slightly batty. I mowed her lawn – she paid well ($10 per mow) but she’d talk me to death in the process.
Here’s the curious part. Mrs. Ford somehow managed to get a new husband and a new Chrysler every year. She would get into serious accidents that wouldn’t hurt her badly but would kill her husband either on the spot or indirectly due to injuries. My parents and I wondered if there was more than meets the eye. I think she finally had her license taken away after the fifth or sixth husband.
Tonyola,
That is a great story! Did she ever own the Chrysler Imperial Black Widow Edition?
My Dad always enjoyed telling this limerick:
There once was a duffer named Rog,
Who putted inside his garage.
Until one day of late,
When he met his sad fate,
As his wife ran him down with her Dodge.
My first was summer 83 in my new to me 79 Camaro Berlinetta. I was on 128 north in the left lane and preoccupied with getting into the right lane to exit. The traffic in front stopped and I swerved right just clipping the right rear of the Subaru in front of me. I swore as I went for the breakdown lane and glanced in the rear view to see all 4 wheels of the Subaru pointed skyward as the car was spinning on its roof. I immediately ran over but the driver was already sitting on the guardrail in shock. Later my mother called him as her biggest fear was to get sued and lose the family business; he was quite forgiving and understanding. I was 17 then and had 3 more hits in that car over the next 12 months, the last one killed it. I had that car probably 14 months, at least 2 of which were in the body shop.
My first car accident was back in 1989 I was 17 my father bought me a clean used 84 Volvo 240GL with 4 cylinder inline and had 5 speed manual. make long story short I was driving fast on highway and Not fault of mine 2 tires blew and I panicked applied brakes car lost control it rollovered outside road. I could Not beleive myself apart from the extreme state of shock I suffered Zero injuries!!! Yes I got out from a rollover accident with Not even a scratch. Those Volvos were Tanks!
I wrote about my first big crash in a VW bus at the beginning of the year. A few months after that one I was a passenger in another accident that could have been worse. I was sort-of dating a girl who drove a ’78 Pontiac Grand Prix like a NASCAR driver, and who lived on the other side of town. She was unfamiliar with the twisty back roads near my house, and took a climbing left turn a little too fast, not realizing that it cut back to the right on the other side of the hill. She overcorrected, losing all grip in the front wheels, and off into the trees we flew. The driver’s side dove for the ground and we slid on her door into a tree. We hung, suspended from our belts, for a few moments, and then I suggested we try to get out. For some reason my door was jammed shut, so after we got ourselves oriented I kicked the windshield out and we crawled up to the road to flag someone down. That Grand Prix was a mess when they winched it out of the woods, but it held together well and apart from a few scrapes and sore backs we were both OK.
In 1984, having my license for 6 months, I wrecked my mothers Opel Kadett City pretty bad, wanted to grab for something in the console, and turned the wheel by doing that. Oops. Hit a parked car, wrecking that even worse. Pulled the Opels frontclip apart and repaired it together with my dad. Managed to paint it red after that instead of the original mustard yellow. Red = fast, you know. Mother was not amused, either about the car and the new color.
4 weeks later I travelled to the US with a friend to visit his family in Oregon, and we drove up and down the west-coast roughly between Vancouver and SF, putting over 10.000 miles on his aunts Ford Fairmont Futura. Really learned to drive overthere.
Last year actually, I was helping my best friend help one of his friends move and we decided to get lunch afterwards. Well, I needed to get into the turn lane, and there was some woman in a Toyota Avalon blocking my path and refusing to slow down. When she did, I made the turn, and neglecting to look ahead first, plowed into the back of my friend’s Ford Focus, a Ford Focus by the way, he got just months after his first accident. I ended up breaking his rear axle and totaling the car, my car got away with a bent in quarter panel on the front and shattering the headlight assembly for the turn signal. My car was deemed a total loss too, but my dad wasn’t having it and got a body shop to repair it because he was still stubborn about the rebuilt engine coming in after the previous one popped a head gasket. Thankfully no one got hurt, but considering the chain of events that car accident triggered later, both that year and this year, I almost view it as a bad omen of what was to come, but that’s a story for another day and certainly not for this website.
JosephOfEldorado,
Well now I’m intrigued. Can you tell a sanitized version of the chain of events that followed?
Ha! Mine was in that exact car, an ‘88 Jetta.
My first accident with me behind the wheel was in my first car at age 16 in 2001, in my 1978 Toyota Landcruiser FJ40 ( which now resides with my dad) which has a GM power steering conversion. Whoever did the conversion before I owned it half-assed the installation of the steering shaft where it connects to the steering wheel, and it was not securely fastened.
I was driving to high school and the shaft suddenly disconnected and left me with inoperable steering. It took me a moment to realize that I had no steering as the truck drifted to the right and off the side of the road, but after running up over the curb, I smashed the brakes to the floor and hoped for the best.
The truck hit grass shortly thereafter, and began sliding sideways. I ended up crashing into a tree which is what stopped me, with only minor damage to the bumper. I was able to reconnect the steering shaft using a tool kit I kept under the seat, and decided to skip school that day and drove it very carefully to a shop to have the loose joints welded up.
I usually took the freeway to school, but that day I decided to take the scenic route and was on a back road instead if careening off the side of C470 at 65 mph. Not sure what would have happened if it had played out that way, as FJ40s probably don’t fare well with high speed roll overs.
Whee! C470 was usually a nightmare even with an intact steering system, and I last drove it about two decades ago; I hesitate to imagine it now.
I was 4 years old and sitting in the front seat of our 1966 Mercedes 250S while my mother was picking up another member of the preschool carpool when I got bored and knocked the gearshift out of park. the car rolled forward a few feet and hit a low wall doing a lot of superficial damage.
The next one was in 1984 when I was actually driving, hit some ice at low speed and ended up in a ditch, No damage to the car but needed a tow truck to get out.
About 6 months after I got my license (’72), I totaled my ’66 Beetle bought from my father, who owned it from new. I was working at a pizza and sandwich business after school and on weekends. We ran out of flour for making dough, so the owner had me drive over to another store and borrow a (fifty pound) bag of flour. On the way back, as I approached an intersection on a side street, at the last second I saw that a pickup with camper was parked just behind a stop sign, no way I could stop, got T boned on the drivers side by a ’71 Mercury Capri. The Bug spun around, jumped the curb neatly between a Dodge van and a fire hydrant and stopped on a front lawn, about 6 feet from the houses front door.
The bag of flour was on the back seat which was now shaped like a big u. It burst open, flour was everywhere, yard, street, car interior, me. I looked like a ghost. As I got out through the passenger door, the guy in the house opened his door as I stepped out of the car, coated in flour. The VW was caved in from the left door to the rear wheel, which was badly bent, the engine was almost touching ground on the left side.
In the intersection was the Capri with its front sheet metal flattened and almost torn off, three people were in the Capri, they went through the windshield and were a bloody mess. I was wearing a lap and shoulder belt I had recently installed, also had high back seats from a ’70 Beetle from a junkyard in my ’66. I was bruised on the left side, and my glasses had flown off and shattered, but I was OK.
Ambulance took away the Capri’s passengers. No one was seriously injured, but they did spend about a week in the hospital. I reported the accident to my insurance, as soon as they realized I was on company time and had not punched out, they transferred responsibility to the pizza joints insurance company. They were suing big time, I was fired by the owner who sent me to get the flour once he found out my insurance company dumped the claim on his company insurance.
This is a rather painful subject, but here goes. In 1972 I was living in Boulder, Colorado. It may or may not have been after my 23rd birthday, which was in June. I was working as a house painter with Bruce, one of my roommates. He didn’t have a car, so we went to job sites in my ’68 Saab 95 V4, my first car, which I’d had for about a year. For reasons that aren’t really pertinent here, I’d gotten my license for the first time only a few months before getting the car.
We were working for a painting contractor named Marshall, a middle-aged guy. His son Jack was also on the crew, and for some reason he took an extreme dislike to Bruce. One day we were about to head out, and Jack came over to my car and gave Bruce hell. He may well have threatened to beat Bruce up; if not, he at least gave the impression that he’d like to. At one point he pointed at me and said, “He’s OK, he keeps his mouth shut.” He finally stormed off. Marshall said that Jack was more or less hopeless, had a track record of getting in fights, and having been to jail a few times hadn’t made any impression on him.
I drove off, thoroughly shaken. I’d read that it was a bad idea to drive when you’re angry, but I hadn’t extrapolated to think that you shouldn’t drive when you’re seriously upset in any way. So a bit later, I pulled out onto an arterial, and suddenly the Saab went on its roof, accompanied by a loud bang. I’d been T-boned by a Plymouth Duster. I remember that it had West Virginia plates, so I wonder if the driver was a Univ. of Colorado student. Bruce and I were hanging from our 3-point belts, and we crawled out, not a scratch on us. Passive safety had been one of the major reasons I’d bought the Saab, and I knew I’d been vindicated on that score.
Of course both cars were totaled. Definitely an experience I’d rather have missed. I assume that if the Duster driver had been hurt, I would seen it on the spot or heard about it at some point.
The job more or less petered out because we on the crew could never be sure that Marshall would be sober enough to show up on a given day.
I ran over a street sign on Blake Ave in Lexington MA with an 81 dodge truck. It slightly bent the bumper. Later the Blake Ave sign was mysteriously replaced with a stop sign.
I had a collision on a roundabout in 1987 (i think), 7 years into my driving career. I stayed on the roundabout and the car on my inside tried to leave it, clipped my offside rear quarter and spun me around. No injuries, except to pride.
First actual damage was to my Dad’s Chrysler Alpine. I refuelled the car, flipped the fuel to close it, which it didn’t, and then walked to the cashier, taking the fuel flap off with my knee as I went. One not happy Father resulted.
Wow ;
Once again I’m way late to the party .
Great stories .
I wish I could remember my first collision, prolly when my middle brother insisted I move his 1964 Ford Fairlane ForDor in pop’s driveway in Rochester, N.Y. ~ I don;t recall if I’d ever driven at that time although I was working on old vehicles in the barn .
Anyway I ripped a few slats out the waist high picket fence and got yelled at by everybody, they fact that I’d said “I don’t want to do this” was ignored .
C’est La Vie .
I did several stupid teenage crashes and a few since then ~ everyone *thinks* I’m this super driver because I like to rally but I’m always worried I’ll have or cause, another pileup .
Yes, ‘falling off’ a Motocycle really hurts badly .
-Nate
Hi Nate.
Did you go to this post after the rental car one?
I figured someone might.
I’m curious about the falling off a motorcycle that you mentioned.
I rode for a few years in the early 90’s but the only time I fell was on a Honda scooter when I was 15.
A church parking lot had a steel cable dividing the parking spaces where the fronts of the cars meet.
Don’t know why.
One night I went to turn around using the parking lot and didnt see the cable until a split second before it flung me off the scooter and sprung me down hard onto the pavement. I was going maybe 10 mph and was knocked out for maybe 20 minutes.
Except for a serious neck scrape and a headache I was okay. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I started to get neck tightness and some pain.
I’m 50 now and still have the effects.
Fortunately I had/have a big head held up by a proportionally adequate neck.
If it happened now I might spin round and round on the cable by my neck like a cartoon.