What is the scariest situation you’ve ever been in while you’ve been on the road? You could have been driving or you could’ve just been a passenger.
Personally for me, was on the motorway in England going to Heathrow, sometime during that trip, someone in a small Peugot hatchback decided to cut infront of a lorry on the opposite side of the motorway, the Peugot was taken out by the lorry and the lorry tore through the crash barrier and ended up on its side on our side of the motorway, we were literally inches from the lorry after it had gotten onto our side o-o
Boy that IS scary, like the stuff of Russian dash cams. I have heaps of scary moments due to a heap of idiot drivers (many of the situations which I contributed to myself, in younger days). But the top three:
[ul]]Thunderstorm, pelting rain. Visibility close to zero. In my shitty Citroen Xsara with no ABS. On the highway, chauffering three of my friends heading East from Ballarat to Melbourne doing 100km/h, approaching the Bacchus Marsh exit. Suddenly notice a heap of tail lights approaching fast, so pump the brakes and narrowly avoid rear-ending the car in front. Turns out some fuckwit decided he didn’t want to drive towards Melbourne, so was REVERSING up the highway, causing everybody to brake and swerve to avoid him, nearly causing a pileup in the process. Many confused looks are exchanged. As I drive away, in my rear mirror I can see the culprit cutting across the massive nature strip between the carriageways./:m] ]Midnight, on the highway from Beechworth to Wodonga (deep country). Drove into a segment with no street lamps so it’s pitch black. Turn on the high beams, and lo and behold, a six foot tall kangaroo deciding (as they always do), that the best time to cross the road is directly in front of a car travelling at highway speeds. The last time that happened to me I hit the poor bugger (but that was only a small rock wallaby). This time, I’m driving my (then) brand new car, and a six foot roo + highway speeds = totalled (having seen several other examples in my subsequent travels over the next few months). The thing to do when you see wildlife up in your grille is brake, not swerve, I know, but no way, I’m not having that shit. So I swerve. Passenger next to me is impressed by my skill at not driving into the forest and crashing into a tree. Passenger in the back seat is unimpressed that I didn’t just hit the brakes and plow into the roo. Come on!/:m] ]Country road with unrestricted speed limits does not mean one should tear around a blind corner at 160km/h. I learnt this when, coming the other direction, were a few cars… and one who thought it would be a good idea to attempt to OVERTAKE coming around said blind corner. Meaning it appeared in my lane with about half a second to react. Naturally I swerve onto the dirt shoulder, and subsequently have a bit of a Higgins moment. Manage to save it, which was good, otherwise I would have a) died b) had the THIRD crash in that car in as many years. After that, I didn’t drive the car much. Statistics indicate trends and that trend seemed dangerous./:m][/ul]
My sister used to ride horses at this place where you had to drive by this long, narrow gravel road surrounded mostly by forest and the occasional farm. I was taking her and our cousin home from there. I had driven that road only once earlier and it was summer then. This time it was early winter, no snow on the ground yet but the days were rainy and consequently at night everything was covered in ice. And it was dark, darkest time of the year made even worse by the lack of snow so the ground looked pitch black. So here I was driving very slowly when suddenly there was a downhill corner that I didn’t remember. I was still an inexperienced driver back then, so it came to me as a surprise when the car just wouldn’t turn. It plowed straight off the road and into a ditch, leaning on the other side of the ditch in such a way that you couldn’t get out through the right side doors and so my sister and our cousin had to climb to the left side. Nobody got hurt, but after that I’ve been very scared of driving in places like that. The road surface which had during the day been just wet gravel, was now like an ice skating track. I knew this, and tried to go very slowly and carefully, but apparently that wasn’t slowly and carefully enough. We had to walk to the nearest farm and ask for someone to tow the car out. Luckily the car only got a few scratches and right side wheel wells full of mud.
Well, about a year ago I had an elderly driver coming at me head-on the wrong way down a divided two-way road. I swerved away from her pretty easily, and when the road allowed, flipped around, and got her info to report her to the police. (My report wasn’t so much as “Guess what this crazy ancient B just did, go hunt her down and arrest her” and more of a “Someone might want to make contact with her/her family and let them know that they should re-consider whether or not it’s wise to let her have the keys anymore.”)
But that wasn’t as scary as what the flipping State Patrol caused me to do when I was 19. Barely had my license more than 3 years. I was heading up I-5 (divided freeway, 4 lanes each way) in the carpool lane after having picked up my girlfriend (now wife). Going along minding my own business I see a trooper in one of the pulloffs on the left side, set as a speed trap. I look down for just a second to see how fast I was going (a little over, but nothing that they’d pull me over for). When I look up, the trooper is pulling into my lane with his lights on, going after someone else, and I don’t have time to stop. Either he didn’t see me or didn’t give a rat’s ass. So I start to pull into the lane next to me and there’s a car there, so I have to do a horrible combination of panic braking and steering. Well, one of the rear drums on my stupid Geo Storm (Isuzu Impulse for everyone else) decides to grab a hair late, sending me into a full on spin. I ended up letting it flip around and recovered it after slightly more than a 360 degree spin. I had dropped from 60-ish to about 20, and there was traffic bearing down on me fast, so I popped into to 2nd and threw the hammer down. 1.6 liters of SOHC Japanese fury screamed in pain, but managed… just barely… to pull me out of the way of the 3/4 ton truck behind me.
Oh yeah I remembered another one; A couple years ago I was going to school in the winter and the shortest route was by a very narrow road. Ahead of me was a tractor with a snow plow in front and a snow blower attachment in the rear. The tractor stopped and the road seemed too narrow to pass it so I stopped behind it. It had the snow blower attachment raised up. Suddenly it started reversing and I didn’t have time to react when the snow blower attachment crashed through my windshield. The tractor’s driver had not seen me. Again, I didn’t get hurt but the right half of the windscreen was now inside the car in tiny pieces, the bonnet had a large dent and the right A-pillar was bent. At least that Nissan Sunny was a piece of crap 4 gear 1.4 liter clunker that I paid only 350 euros for so no big loss, fixing it would’ve cost more than I paid for the car so I got a lot more fun Ford Escort for 500 euros.
Many of those patients get picked up by the police happily driving the wrong way down the driveway without a care in the world (or a clue). They usually end up at the hospital because they’re also confused as all hell. My favourite case was the sixty-two year old guy who was estranged from his family, had no friends we knew of, and spent weeks in the hospital with nobody really knowing what to do because there was nobody to corroborate the story with. Finally we discovered that eighteen months prior he had lost his job as a landscaper because one day he jumped on the lawnmower, rode off into the forest and never came back. Upon finally tracking down his sister from the other side of the country, her only comment was, “he didn’t seem like himself last Christmas”. What finally tipped us off was that this guy, after 3 weeks in the hospital, still a) didn’t know where he was b) didn’t care, and never asked c) but did ask a lot about whiskey.
He had an alcohol-related dementia so advanced he had the cognitive capacity of a coconut (a very pleasant, jovial coconut), so we transferred him to a nursing home where, as far as I know, he’s as happy as Larry and thankfully not driving the wrong way down the highway anymore.
Actually had one of my scariest just under a week ago. Driving home on the motorway, I was travelling at 130km/h on the left lane, with a lorry 200 meters infront of me, passing an on-ramp.
A car come on the on-ramp and got behind the lorry, as I came to overtake both the car and lorry. At first it looked like the car stayed behind the lorry, but right as I was almost beside him, he just came to the left. I smashed the brakes leaving rubber on the motorway and rammed on my horn. We missed eachother by just inches, because I also steared a bit left, fairly close to the guidance rail. Later when I overtook him, he apologised, but of course that wasnt going to help when something really happened. He shouldnt have been too lazy checking over his shoulder in the first place.
I’ve lived 1 year and 3 months in Abu Dhabi and I’ve managed to avoid car accidents. However the colleagues whom I’ve borrowed the rented car didn’t. 2 times I’ve borrowed it, 2 car accident. Guess who faced the police both times?
[quote=“WizzyThaMan”]Actually had one of my scariest just under a week ago. Driving home on the motorway, I was travelling at 130km/h on the left lane, with a lorry 200 meters infront of me, passing an on-ramp.
A car come on the on-ramp and got behind the lorry, as I came to overtake both the car and lorry. At first it looked like the car stayed behind the lorry, but right as I was almost beside him, he just came to the left. I smashed the brakes leaving rubber on the motorway and rammed on my horn. We missed eachother by just inches, because I also steared a bit left, fairly close to the guidance rail. Later when I overtook him, he apologised, but of course that wasnt going to help when something really happened. He shouldnt have been too lazy checking over his shoulder in the first place.[/quote]
I had a similar incident while driving the Miata. It was on the first leg of my big trip to Texas(about 20minutes from my house). A pickup didn’t check it’s blindspot, so he comes over on me. Luckily I had a wide shoulder to escape on, but it was my scariest moment.
Hope I never have to drive in that country.