I just got into my first accident today. Im 21, been driving since I was 16. Rear ended someone who had their lights off early morning and I didn't see them. I'm pretty upset because I always thought I was a pretty decent driver, and being a car enthusiast I always try to drive my best. But this just came out of nowhere. I'm bummed out. Anyone else been in an accident before?
Two weeks after I started my job that has a commute (vs a 5 minute drive to work) I rear ended someone in stop and go traffic. Not really sure how it happened. Pretty low speed. Somehow it didn't even leave a scrape on his car, but mine had some damage. Nothing I couldn't keep driving with, the airbags didn't even go off. I was still bummed. Same deal, I feel like I'm a decent driver, and stuff like this makes you question yourself. It will pass. Just get back up and get back on the road. It happens to the best of us, you just gotta shake it off and learn from it.
Hope that helps, and I hope you and anyone else involved are ok!
You haven't lived until you've been in a motorcycle accident. The only greater level than that is airplane accident. As a pilot, this could happen to me.
I wrecked my car once back in 1992 or 93. It was the first day above freezing in months and the packed snow on the roads was finally melting. After driving very carefully and slowly all winter (small Idaho town that did not believe in salt or plowing except for the main roads, so residential streets were just packed snow...great for cross country skiing.) Anyway, the roads were a little wet, but I could see the actual roadway instead of packed snow, so I was driving more of a normal speed. It all went wrong when I approached a tee intersection with a busier street and trees shaded the road for the last 50-70 feet or so. I ended up sliding into a tree to avoid sliding out into the intersection with the busier road. Felt bad about it because it was avoidable and 100% my fault.
Appleseed said:You haven't lived until you've been in a motorcycle accident. The only greater level than that is airplane accident. As a pilot, this could happen to me.
Yep.
Had two of those myself. Post-concussion syndrome is fun!
tboned another young driver in a parking lot when he didn't stop at a cross aisle. no stop sign, private parking lot, no fault assigned.
right on red, highway under construction in carlisle, no merge area, driving a pristine (used) mercedes wagon my uncle just bought through an auction. he was in his chevy truck in front of me. I thought he went, drove right into the back of him with his own car. I was 17.
hit a deer at 60mph.
most recently, rear ended someone at a stop light. right on red, I thought they had gone. Since that incident with my uncle I am usually ridiculously careful in this situation but a lot going on at work and I was just super stressed out. my mind was in another place I guess. Only my car was damaged, the other guy was worried I was going to call the police and didnt want to get involved with insurance. I dont think he had any. So I just have a banged up hood on my car now.
IDK. Accidents happen. There is also something relieving about driving a car that you don't care if it has dings or scratches here or there.
We have an insurance expert on here somewhere, hopefully they will chime in.
Get ready to learn all about at-fault parties, deductibles, and everyone's favorite: subrogation.
I've learned that in the world of car insurance it is always your fault somehow.
At 57, I missed seeing a guy that WASN'T in the right turn late that has to yield to me, and turned left into his left front tire. Foggy windshield is the best excuse I have, but it was totally my fault- First time at fault, started driving in the fields at 7... Hit a deer in 1976, got hit gently in 1983 sitting still at a stop sign, and made the mistake last year of stopping for a red light when the other two lanes didn't, and I got drilled and shoved through the intersection.
If you drive long enough, it's bound to happen. Sometimes your fault, sometimes not. If it happens a lot it's time to re-examine your driving habits.
When I was...I dunno, 18?..I stuck my first car in a ditch screwing around on a dirt road. My girlfriend at the time, now wife, looked at me as we stood beside it in the ditch and said "it's still running. How bad could it be?" She was right but I was heartbroken. Took me so long to finally get my license and then a car and I bashed it being stupid. Lesson learned.
Bought my first new car in '05. Silver Mustang GT - still have it, still love the car. Two weeks from purchase I pulled out of my neighborhood when I really couldn't see around a minivan. There was a Tacoma right there running 55mph. He threaded the needle between me and a dumptruck and his rear bumper wrinkled my front fender. We were pulled over checking the surprising lack of damage and had just decided to go our own ways when the cop pulled in. I got a ticket for failure to yield or some such, all rightly deserved. I still had the dealer tag on it. When I got to work my entire small office was standing outside to applaud when I got out.
Two weeks later I got charged by a 6 point buck at 65mph. He hit the same fender and bounced down the side.
A couple years after that a tree fell on the car. Did $7k worth of damage, but it was all cosmetic. I drove it 3 hours home after the hit.
A couple years after that I got bumped from behind at a stop sign. New bumper cover.
Get back to driving ASAP. When you can do it impartially, analyze the incident. Could you have done something differently to prevent it? Is there something you can learn or change to prevent it happening in the same way in the future? If so, do it. If not, forget about it.
Yes, sometimes, no matter how careful you are, they are hard to avoid. One reason why driving older cars can be a bit scary.
I got t-boned (just behind the drivers door thankfully) in my 65 Corvair a number of years ago. I had no stop sign, the guy ran the stop sign (said his brakes failed... when does that ever happen?). Fortunately I saw him at that last second and dove for the passenger seat. Nice side whiplash, but no major injury. The reason I have a six point cage (and harnesses) in my car now.
I also got rear-ended while waiting to make a left turn in a 64 Karmann Ghia by a 70's full size truck... driven by a guy with (and I am not exaggerating here) OVER a .4 blood alcolol level. Not .04.... .40 (.45 is generally considered deadly).
It happens. Learn what you can from it, but don’t let it paralyze you with fear.
Knock on wood, I've never hit anyone other than in my own driveway while moving cars. I have been backed into though, and pretty much everyone in my family has been in at least one accident. I'm waiting for mine to come, and I'm sure it will. Living in Chicagoland, it almost has to happen.
My wife rolled a car when she was 16-she's not sure how. She rear ended someone at 26, totaled the car (but only because I had the body shop find every possible thing, we could have zip-tied the bumper up and kept driving it for years but I hated that damn car). Got rear ended a year later. That had almost no damage.
Just to point out stupidity in drivers though, my wife also rear ended someone at about 24 years old. It was a straight road, no body around but the car my wife hit, and herself. There was snow on the ground, enough that they were both driving very slowly. Well, there was an area in front of a driveway that had been plowed--the only part of the road that had (meaning the plow for the driveway also plowed out into the road, but the road wasn't plowed). Lady my wife was following slammed on the brakes in that plowed section, because she missed the turn into that driveway. My wife slammed on the brakes too, but not being in the plowed section, kept sliding until she hit the person. Wife was technically at fault, but what a dumbass driver ahead of her. Also, what a silly coincidence that it could possibly happen. Was my wife following too close? I suppose yes, but there was literally no reason for her to expect the person to slow down.
After 35 years of driving, much of driving 70k-100k a year. So far, I haven't had a at fault wreck.
I did broadside a E350 box truck that ran a stop sign. He came out from behind a building and there was no chance to stop. I tagged him at about 35. Luckily I was driving a E250 so it wasn't painful but it did total my van.
I have also been rear ended twice by people playing on their phones. Both at very low speeds while sitting at a light. Both times while towing one of my smaller utility trailers.
I went from age 16 to 23.5 without incident, then had three in the past 4.5 years, all of which I was 100% not at fault.
First one, driving home from work on a Friday afternoon, one of the first nice-ish days of spring in late March, and I decide I'm going to blast some of my favorite back roads on the way. Slowing down to make a right turn onto said back road, off of a 55mph state highway, I catch a momentary glimpse of red in the rearview mirror just as I am initiating the turn and next thing I know I'm sitting in someone's front yard. Pretty much everything aft of the C-pillar in my e36 destroyed, and the front end of the Tacoma was pretty mangled as well, but miraculously we both walked away. Guy must have been hauling ass and totally spaced out, because he wasn't anywhere close to me when I started slowing down for the turn and barely left any skid marks before the point of contact, when there is a good quarter mile or more of clear visibility leading up to the intersection.
Second one, also driving home from work, this time on a Thursday evening around dusk in early November, on the same 55mph state highway as before. There's a brief section where it opens up to 4 lanes at the intersection with a divided highway, and I'm traveling in the right lane with no one immediately beside or behind me. There's a guy in a Ford Transit Connect sitting at the off ramp waiting to make a left turn across my path of travel who decides he's going to go for it when I'm <100 ft out. I had two options: 1) brake and stay in the right lane, trying to slide behind him as he shot out across the road or 2) brake and swerve into the left lane, hoping that either I could make it out and around in time or he would panic, hit the brakes, and come to a dead stop in the right lane. I chose* the latter because traffic was stacked up behind him on the off ramp and I feared the first option risked collateral damage. Unfortunately, I chose wrong and hit him hard enough in the driver's door to put the Transit Connect on its side and total my Camaro. Took a good bump to the head myself and went to get checked for a concussion, but fortunately the other driver walked away unscathed.
Most recent one was this past February, exactly 18 days after I bought my FRS. On my way to Chik-Fil-A for lunch, sitting at a redlight in a busy, heavy retail section of the town where I work, in the left lane of a 4 lane divided road, about a car length back from where two turn lanes split off to my left. I look up from messing with my radio to see headlights coming down the wrong damn side of the road, up the turning lanes. I'm boxed in on 3 sides, but still do what I can to quickly scoot over to the right, but the Subaru still managed to clip my driver's side rear quarter panel before taking off up the road. I'm dumbfounded for a second before the light turns green and I whip a u-turn at the intersection to try and chase down the prick. Unfortunately, he/she was long gone in any of about 5 directions, so I gave up by the next intersection and pulled over to call the police. They were never caught, but hopefully karma gives the E36 M3head a hearty ass-raping with a dull, rusty, AIDS-infected dagger.
every car i've ever owned has been hit or I have hit someone with it..... Save a toyota truck. It happens.
Thanks everyone for your responses! These definitely make me feel better. We got a call from the body shop and they've started the disassembly so I guess we'll see how bad the damage really is. We were heading home today from visiting family, looks like we'll be here a couple days longer. I guess its just a part of life!
Yeah, been in a few. I don't recommend it.
I stopped counting at 53.
I don't reccomend them. At 37, ive got the body of an 80 year old man.
Been in a few. Funniest one ever.
My buddy and I are heading to work in his moms ‘76 Chevrolet station wagon that had a 454 engine used for towing the family camping trailer. We’re both 16 and I’m snacking on chips since I just got home from school.
He takes a left turn into the subdivision we worked at and he decides to go a little faster every day thus having us slide all over the vinyl bench seat as we crack up laughing at how crazy fast he took that corner.
One day he goes as fast as he can and the front end plows wide off the road and smashes into a concrete light pole knocking it way over and leaving a big U in the front end totaling the radiator, hood, bumper, grill and other parts.
Cops are called, they show up, bus of kids come by and cheer, and my chips are all over the car. His dad’s pissed and he shows up wanting to know what happened and as he questions us he is inside picking my chips out of the defroster vents.
In true 16 year old fashion I’m silent as I listen as my friend told his dad he looked down at the tape deck and when he looked up the pole was there. He didn’t tell his dad he was berkeleying around.
Came over a rise with a side street on my right in my beloved rat of a 300 hp awd mazdog protege. Oncoming traffic. I made eye contact with the guy as we got close, and he turned left anyhow... right into my left side headlight. Uninsured suspended license 23 yr old jerkwater in Grammy and Grampy's car. Who live right on that intersection. They tried real hard to convince the cops their boy was innocent to no avail, but that didnt stop them from warning me to get a good lawyer, so I did.
Concussions suck.
There are no accidents, only driver error. Sorry, but true. Hope you're okay.
When I was 16 3 blocks from school I got caught up in 5 car pile up followed by my brother calling me jackass even wasn’t my fault. Years later I was sitting at red light and got plowed into from behind, totaled out car I had 4 payments left on. And about 2 years ago I was driving 18 wheeler hydro planed in corner and ended up flipping it in ditch. Can accidents be prevented , maybe. Sometimes E36 M3 just happens. No matter what tho always get back behind the wheel with no fear. When I rode moto x anytime I crashed hard, I got back on and finished day on a good note.
Just after the ex and I separated I was on my way to meet friends for dinner. Dark, rain, etc and was waiting to turn left onto the entrance ramp to 275. It's like a 6 lane road, and I was watching what I thought was the last car to go past, I started to turn and at the last minute saw the headlights of a PT Cruiser heading for the passenger door very quickly.
I shut my eyes and thought "this is gonna hurt". I felt the S10 Blazer go up in the air, come down, bounce around. I opened my eyes as it was rolling about 2mph towards the curb and guardrail. I remember testing limbs to see if anything was broken, my next thought was immediately "berkeley now what? how do I get to work tomorrow? What will I drive? How do I get to a rental? I don't have time to car shop, etc" all before I even got out. (Only had the S10)
I remember the cop that arrived asking if I could drive it home, till he saw the collapsed passenger side and -30 degree camber front wheel. Turned out the PT Cruiser was driven by a foreigner visiting P&G and he had no idea what to do. To add insult to injury, the ex came and gave me a lift home. I couldn't take a deep breathe for 3-4 days.
Not going to bore you with the details but I crashed a milk truck into the back of a Camry when I was 16 and rolled a nice 1984 Celica GT into the ditch when I was 18. And, knock on wood, that was 31 years ago and I haven't had a crash since (and I still drive pretty aggressively)
To this day I'm just glad I wasn't still wearing a dress the first time I wrecked, as that would have been mighty awkward...It was after 'rent-a-senior' day in high school.
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