How many car accidents have you been in, and what was the worst?

Probably two “real” accidents and several fender benders. Nothing horrible for me—a sore neck was the worst of it. Knock on wood.

A few ;)
The worst was getting hit by a train.No,I wasn’t driving. XD

@lucillelucillelucille are you serious!?

While I was in control of the vehicle, none as of yet….knock on wood, taps side of head.
I was knocked over when I was around 19, two drunken pricks mounted the pavement resulting in the back of my head meeting with their windscreen/shield. Shattered glass everywhere, several stitches in my bonce. We’re made of strong stuff up north pet!

Eight while driving, once while walking. In my defense three weren’t my fault. Worse one left my back in miserable shape for eighteen months. I think the car did two revolutions and a flip and a half in the air. My friend behind me said he saw the lights come around twice. I missed all of it. I had on a seatbelt and shoulder belt.

I was in the car when my mom was very mildly rear-ended by a teenage driver at a hotel parking lot in Portland, Oregon. It caused a crack in one of the lights and that was it. I’m proud to say I have not been in any others and none while I was driving :)

Two, the worst one was when my future wife was driving, she missed a turn and hit a bridge abutment. It totaled here nice new Buick. My knees ended up inside the golve compartment remains and she knocked two front teeth out.

One, as a passenger, and it was a very minor one. A car came out of a side road without looking and hit us broadside. It turned out that the other driver had “borrowed” his dad’s car without permission and was driving without a licence or insurance. The damage to our car was superficial and no-one was hurt (except maybe the kid, later, when his dad found out).

2 fender benders, both my fault lol. I wasn’t paying attention both times and knicked a bumper from behind.

Two.

One. I was in the army and used my father’s car to drive to and back from the base.
In a lunch break I went to the village with a fellow soldier sitting next to me in the car.
A truck came my way in a one way street and with him being bigger I felt I had to reverse.
To impress my mate I pretended that I was a very good reverse driver and sped backwards.
A road to the left came up, I decided to go into that street so I swung my wheel to the left (still with relatively high speed) but it should been a swing to the right.
The combination of rearview mirror and reverse driving made me choose the wrong side to turn the steer, and so I parked my father’s car in a classic Ford Mustang.
I left a note under the wiper and fortunately my father’s all-risk insurance covered the damages (although he had to pay higher premium the next year).

Two. Another accident.

Three. The worst one by far was when I was a pedestrian in a school cross walk going to drivers ed.
The other two were minor bumps and hits.

Easily 10 mostly fender benders and only 3 my fault. The worst was a head on collision that luckily happened in the winter as we kind slid on the road during impact. Both cars were totaled and the girls in the other car (who lost control and came at me in my lane) went through their windshield and were pretty messed up while my buddy and the 2 hitchikers I just picked up a block earlier were shaken up but fine.

@ANef_is_Enuf -Yes.We were coming back from a Halloween party and were all dressed in costumes too.He drove through a flashing light and it clipped the back end of his car.It was smashed up to the rear window.My mother didn’t believe me until she saw the car driving away.XD
ID-ing the bodies would have been quite the adventure had it had a bad outcome.

@lucillelucillelucille that is crazy!

@ANef_is_Enuf—I still can’t believe that one happened.Another time,I ended up upside down in a ditch.He broke his collarbone and I was fine.

@lucillelucillelucille You make a lousy passenger. Remind me to never get in a car with you.

I have been involved in 3 collisions. I was 25% responsible for one in which nobody was more than a bit bruised. I was 0% responsible for the other two.

The worst one:

The car in which I was a passenger has rear-ended at 75 mph while it was stopped. One minute later the same car backed up more than 100 feet and then wildly accelerated to hit us again at about 45 miles per hour while we we trying to unbuckle our seat belts so we could escape the car. The court rules it was all part of a single incident! I have been disabled as a result of that crash since April 4, 2004.

The other driver was not drug or alcohol impaired. She got a small ticket and her insurance paid the maximum (which was less than one year’s income for me). It took 4 years to be dealt with in court. My lawyer kept about 36% including expenses. My medical expenses are still almost $2,000 per month and I am permanently unable to work.

By the way more crashes are not accidents! They are the result of such things as inattention, distraction, neglected vehicle maintenance or excessive speed.

I carry $5,000.000 public liability insurance. The other driver carried $100,000, the lowest amount permitted by law in her State. If she had any home or other assets, she could have been sued for everything she had!

My auto insurance costs me only about $600 per year.

3 fender benders my fault.
1 drive off the road into a ditch requiring wheel and alignment work.
1 total the car hitting a eucalyptus tree at relatively high speed (25 to 30 mph) at 2:30 a.m. while very drunk as an undergrad. Lucky I didn’t die.

Two hit by others with minor damage, one t-boned by a red light runner that did extensive damage.

I have been driving for forty years.

@Adirondackwannabe I didn’t even scream.I just watched it happen in slo-mo.

@lucillelucillelucille Did you hear anything? I can’t recall ever hearing a sound.

@Adirondackwannabe the sound is all that I really remember from the one accident that I was in. I just remember this incredibly loud, deafening noise before being hurled into the windshield.

I’ve been in three fender benders. One was my fault. I backed up into a truck hours after getting my new (to me) car. The steering wasn’t as responsive as other cars I’d driven. The other two were other people smacking into me.

My sister wins for car accidents. She was travelling down a country highway on Whidbey Island when a car ran a stop sign in front of her and ended up stopped in her lane. She swerved and missed her but ended up in a head on collision with a laden pick up truck. She was extricated with the jaws of life and spend the next 7 months in a coma. Messed her up quite a bit.

Two. One when I was 16. If I had been wearing a seat belt, the police said I’d have died. (really). Then one decades later. I was NOT wearing a seat belt and hit a telephone pole. I was injured. (Surprise, @snowberry)!

Decades later I have a spotless driving record, and I don’t intend to lose it. In my new state everywhere I go drive the speed limit. Everyone drives faster than I do, and I am routinely tailgated. John65Pennington suggested I put on my emergency blinkers when they did, So far it’s working, and I don’t have to pull off the road every 2 minutes.

@tranquilsea if that’s “winning,” I’d stick to the losing side. How awful.
@snowberry same story with mine. Seatbelt saved my life, and now I wear it religiously. I was just saying to someone else that I drive by the book now. I’m scared. lol.
I relate, though, to the tailgating. I do the speed limit and you’d think I was pushing my car down the freeway by foot, the way that people react.

@ANef_is_Enuf know that I say “winning” in the context of being really sad for what happened to her. As a family we have to find something to laugh about or we would just cry.

@Adirondackwannabe I heard the sound and train whistle right before it hit us

13 in my police career. None, were my fault.

@@ANef_is_Enuf I think you misunderstood me. In the first accident I was broadsided in the driver’s seat. It was a bucket seat and the impact of the other car shoved the door half way over the seat. I was thrown across the console into the passenger seat during the collision. The police said if I had been wearing a seat belt I would most likely been killed. It was a fluke accident, I know.

@snowberry ohh, I did misunderstand. Sorry.

At:

16, crunched my new boyfriends Camero into a bridge wall late at night. Not partying, luckily! Nobody was hurt, but ruined his car. I felt so guilty, he still wanted to date me and was very forgiving, but, I couldn’t face him. :-(

18, Other boyfriend rolls his van It was the 70’s, and yes, this time we were partying
Nobody hurt, van creamed. lol

19–40 a big, fat, ZERO.

40–42 Had some personal issues with my own gate, my garage wall and a stubborn tree that always got in my way. These were ongoing occurences in my own driveway. lol

42, Backed over my pet goose Maybelline in my driveway. Very sad.
She was napping along the side of the garage and I never even saw her. Waaaah! Awful!:-(

44, Teenage girls comes flying off her freeway exit and careens into 3 cars, including me, sitting at a light. She was zig zagging across the road and sideswiped me and then hit two other cars. Nobody hurt. More body work on my cars rear wheel well area. :-/

46, Rear ended some tourists who braked suddenly while sight seeing. My fault, undoubtedly, and, most of the damage was to my car. haha Replaced a headlight and fixed a small dent. Nobody hurt.

49, Backed into boulder on fountain at a restaurant. Minor scrape on my bumper. Humiliated.

50, Scraped white post at gas station, minor, buffed out. Whew! lol

51, Bumped into fence backing out of my garge, minor, no issues. It is a wire field fence so, it just sort of stretched. Stretching fences are good.

Notice that my accident rates has gone up in the 40–50 zone. Midlife dementia is coming. haha

@Coloma awww, poor Maybelline, and poor you! How traumatic. :(

@Coloma Say it ain’t so…..sobs…

Car accidents, 2, but I’m not including the three times I’ve done stupid things getting out of our garage. Or the one time pulling into my parents’ garage.

Accident 1, senior year of college, driving myself and 4 friends to a graduation party. I was coming down a hill to an intersection with a two-way stop. (I was on the stopping side.) I had been braking appropriately, but at the bottom of the hill was a lot of unexpected loose gravel. We went through the intersection and a van hit the back, right side of the car. (Behind the where the wheel is. It was an ‘85 Mercury Grand Marquis, so there was still a lot to hit!) We did a 180. The only physical damage to anyone was that I hit my knee. Everyone else was seat-belted in and had no problems.

Accident 2, I was at an intersection with a traffic light, and I had a green light. I pulled out and got hit by a high school kid. I got out of the car and I said, “Let’s go over there to that parking lot and exchange insurance information. He said okay and then took off. I was working in the school system that he was from and I should have called the high school to find him. I have no idea why I wimped out, but I didn’t do it and didn’t claim the accident on my insurance. Luckily, there wasn’t a lot of damage to my car.

I’ve never been in an accident. All my crashes are intentional.

@tedibear ahh, yes. I forgot about the time that I wrecked my dad’s tractor into the steel door frame of the workshop. I tore that puppy right out of the wall.

I’ve never been into any car accidents but in bicycle-car [ I was the one on the bike]. And I had plenty of these. The wort one was when I was paying attention not to scratch a car that was really close to me when all of a sudden the truck in front of us stopped and the guy from the right side opened the door. I didn’t had any time to react and I slammed the door almost breaking it. The driver was stunned when he saw I got up and left. But there was a police car there and when I looked back they started questioning him even though it wasn’t his fault but the passenger’s fault.

I do not want to be in a car-car accident because I won’t be able to react from inside the car. From the bike if I see the danger I can jump and end up with only some scratches.

Interesting coincidence of this question cropping up. Just yesterday, I watched the documentary, There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, and it had me thinking of how lucky most of us are when it comes to car accidents.

I’ve been in five. Two were as passengers and the other three as the driver. The worst was about 10 years ago when I plowed into a car that made an illegal left turn when I had a green light. I was driving an SUV and hit the passenger side of the other vehicle. It was pre-cell phones, so after checking on the driver, I went and banged on the door of the closest house to ask them to call for an ambulance. The officer that took the report, including talking to witnesses, said that I wasn’t at fault. Despite that, it went to court. It could have been an episode out of Judge Judy. One of the witnesses claimed that his car was hit, and it caused whiplash, preventing him from doing his ministry duties. The judge basically told him to get lost. The woman who was hit was just hilarious on the stand, but her medical records didn’t hold up. My insurance company won.

The most embarrassing was backing out of my garage and hitting a car parked in my driveway. The housemate went away for the weekend, and his buddy had left her car behind without telling me. It was humiliating.

@Pied_Pfeffer wow, that documentary looks really interesting. I remember hearing about that story when it happened.

Several fender benders, and 2 major accidents.
Actually, one of the majors wasn’t so bad. I got sideswiped by a car on the bay bridge, and it resulted in an 11 car pile-up. My car still worked, though the rear passenger side was dented.
The bad one was when a woman was texting, and she crossed over the double yellow lines, and hit me head on. My back really was a mess afterwards.

When I was three (so it’s probably one of my first memories) I was in a car accident. A nun ran a stop sign. We were lucky no one was killed, I still have a scar on my cheek from a shard of glass :(

The worst was when I was with 2 other friends driving around drunk (I was shotgun and we were all 18 and really stupid) My buddy tries to do a burnout on some loose sand at an intersection so far out in the country we may have been there a couple days if not for our friends in the car ahead of us who noticed we were gone. The car goes out of control and hits a huge maple tree right in the middle. Boom. Nobody was hurt but the trauma of it all had me puking for 12 hours off and on. That was the worst of it all, that goddamned puking. My abs were sore for a week after that.

The most recent was 5 days ago coming back from Odessa last Sat. night. It was around 9:30 at night 5 or so miles south of Frederick and a doe ran out in front of the car and I launched her into the wheat field. There was no way to avoid her. The car’s front end was smashed up some with hair and shit splattered on the fender and mirror. So I take my 9 and go out in the field looking for her hoping it was over…and it was thank goodness. We had our son’s cat with us who likes to ride in the back window and he lands up front with us. My wife crams him back in the carrier. The car was still drivable so we limp into Frederick and stop at an Easy-Go where there is light enough to look over the car better. After quitting smoking over a year ago my wife goes inside the store and says” Do you have any of those e-cigs that are ready to go…now?” She was shook up some and the cashier gave her a free bbq sandwich with the e-cig. I thought that was nice. She gives it to me and I tell her“Maybe later.”

In 44 years of driving I’ve had 3 minor fender-benders. I accept half the fault for 2 of them but the last one was totally the fault the the other driver.

@Pied_Pfeffer

“There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane….”

What was the gist of that story? I.e., what was wrong with Diane?

A couple. The worst was when I was about 10 years-old. My Mom had parked the car on the side of the road to pick up me and my brother after school. As I was getting into the passenger side of the vehicle, a taxi cab that was barrelling down the road hit us from behind at a good speed. I got “shot” into the front window, hit my head really hard on the glass and suffered a temporary black-out. My Mom got propelled forward too. It was horrible. There was shattered glass everywhere and the trunk of our car was scrunched up. It could have been much worse. We were lucky.

When I was 24, I went through the window with my forehead. Lost my ability to read and retain information for 6–8 months,and permanently lost my photographic memory and some executive function skills and gained some issues with depression.
I was going through a just green light, while a guy flew through his just red light- hit my bumper and we spun—I was thrown from the driver’s seat into the passenger’s seat, then we t-boned a parked semi truck without the trailer and that’s when I went through the window, but it had to be the milli-of milliseconds later we hit a parking meter which catapulted us away from the truck. If we hadn’t hit the parking meter, we’d have gone under the truck and I’d have snapped my neck. When we were catapulted back into the street, I ended up back in my seat, face and mouth full of glass. One friend had a broken rib and the other a broken radius and ulna.
The other guy said he was going 5 mph. 5 mph doesn’t send a bumper over 50 feet away—he died from a heart attack before we could settle for anything much in court.
Other than that, I’ve been in a couple bumps.

@Pied_Pfeffer

I read the gist, and apparently there’s no explanation or conjecture about why she did it.

I am touching wood here as I don’t like to tempt fate, but so far the worst accident I have been in was when I first learned to drive and was rushing and backed into a concrete post. There was very little damage. Other than that, thankfully, no accidents.

Two. Thankfully I wasn’t injured in either just shocked. The first one was actually a crash between the bus I was travelling in and a parked car. The second was when I had only been driving for about a year and I lost control of my beloved little white metro and completely wrote her off.

@ucme Everytime you notherners refer to someone as “pet” I go back to the days when Cilla Black was still doing Blind Date on Saturday nights. Those were the days!

@Leanne1986 I bloody hated that show with a passion, contrived fake bullshit!
When she said “lorra lorra laffs boys & girls.” I almost ate my own head!!
Us “proper” northeners say it with more charisma like bonnie lass ;¬}

@Coloma Great Answer but don’t ask to borrow my car!

@ANef_is_Enuf
@Cruiser

Yes, it was tragic! Thing is, she didn’t have a mark on her, just a little blood at the corner of her beak. ;-(
All I could think of was I backed over her, and maybe she banged her little head under the car. She was just lying there, when I got home an hour later. Sooo, I ASSUME I ran over her, but, truthfully, I cannot be a 100% sure.

@Ron_C

Never fear, Coloma travels in grace, even if she’s a bit ditzy at times. lol

@ucme I actually miss Cilla!

@Leanne1986 What….did she die? Or are you referring to her lack of screen presence these days?

@ucme Just the lack of screen presence, she reminds me of staying with my grandparents on a saturday night because they always watched Blind Date!

@Leanne1986 Ahh, That’s okay then. My mam used to love her shows, Surprise Surprise being another bloody awful one. Still, i’m relieved to hear she’s still alive XD

@ucme You’re a big softie really!

@Leanne1986 I wouldn’t dream of pretending otherwise.

Only one, and it was really minor. I broke one fingernail.

We were in a van, and some dude didn’t see us I guess, and went on when it was our turn. Our driver wasn’t able to stop in time although he tried, and we crashed into the side of the other person’s car. No injuries, so that was good.

I’ve been in quite a few – only 3 while I was the driver – 1 was the other person’s fault (minor) and the two others I was the only car involved (besides the truck in the second part of the second story) and weather was the cause. Of those two one was very minor and one was very serious. The serious one was when I was exiting the highway and hit black ice causing me to spin around about 4 times (across all 4 lanes of highway traffic – from the far right exit lane) and eventually crash through the median. I was then struck by a truck. That sucked and was super scary. The car was totaled. I had my seatbelt on – and since my original speed was only about 24mph I was told I was lucky my airbags didn’t work right (luck huh?) or deploy when the truck hit me (not front impact) I had a concussion, stitches and two black eyes for a month (my knee hit me in the nose) it has caused me great anxiety. I still avoid that stretch of highway and this accident I speak of was in 1997. It could have been much worse.