Have you ever seen a wreck getting ready to happen and there was nothing you could do but watch?
I don’t know why I thought of this, but several years ago I came to a stop at a stop light. The cross traffic light turned green and the cars started to move…and this guy turned right in front of another car that was going straight. It seemed to me that the car that had the right of way had time to react and stop….but he didn’t. He didn’t react at ALL. It seemed like a long time passed before he hit the side of the car turning, and all I could do was watch… :(
As a witness I pulled over. Turns out the kid driving the car with the right of way was simply an inexperienced driver. He probably couldn’t imagine something like that happening and so was completely unprepared for it. I think he was 15, and his mom was with him. He was freaked out, she was pretty freaked out she probably saw it coming too and they were glad I stayed to file the report because the other driver was trying to say it was their fault.
It was awful! But you know, all new drivers need a bit of a wreck early on at low speeds. Better than finding out the impossible CAN happen when you’re doing 80.
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Yay!! It let me ask a question!
Q: Have you ever seen a wreck getting ready to happen and there was nothing you could do but watch?
A: You mean like today’s Seahawks/49er game?
Yes, but I was lucky and was able to do something about it.
About 5 years ago I was driving down a local, rural, 2 lane highway with a speed limit of 50mph.
There was BMW driving erratically, swerving all over the road ahead of me. No other cars on the road and this person was ALL OVER the place, crossing the line and careening around.
I was terrified they were going to cause a head on collision and hung way back, watching, scared to death.
A few miles up the road I came around a bend and the car was pulled onto the shoulder of the road and a little boy of about 8 or so was just exiting the passenger side of the car.
I pulled up behind them and asked if everything was okay and he said that his mother was scaring him.
I took his hand and walked him up to the fence line of a rural ranch property and told him to hold onto the fence and wait there.
I approached the car and asked the woman to give me her keys, she was clearly fucked up on something, and she refused. I told her I would take her wherever she needed to go, but she just screamed at me to give her her son back and then peeled out, narrowly missing running over me and pulling out onto the highway right in front of a motor home and almost causing an accident.
I took the child up to the ranch and called the police.
They took the boy to his father and later that day they arrested the mom, based on my description of the vehicle driving around, intoxicated on pain killers looking for her son!
The story went that the 15 yr. old daughter came home from school, found the mom passed out and no little brother around. The mom couldn’t remember where her son was, sooo, she puts the 15 yr. old in the car, still fucked up and is aimlessly driving around looking for her son when the police pulled her over.
Amazing!
I was awarded a citizens commendation award through our local P.D. for ” heroic” intervention. Like a lot of people say, I just did what needed to be done, and did not consider it heroic in the least.
Hopefully the mother got the help she needed. Crazy day it was!
I was almost the guest of honor at a wreck 45 minutes ago. Some yahoo decided to make a left turn with me less than 20 feet away and going about 50. He started to turn, I hit the brakes hard and he pulled back at the last second. I hate that feeling so much.
Ever farted in a biscuit tin, talk about fire in the hole…sheesh!
Don’t know if this counts, but…
A couple of weeks ago, it was pretty windy around here, and I needed to take the train into town.
I tend to leave late, so when I arrived at the platform, the train was two minutes out – at the most. I noticed a girl, about eleven, with her mom. They were having fun in the wind, dancing around a little.
Suddenly, the mom’s mitten dropped, and, caught in the wind, fell onto the railings. Then…mom went over to the edge, and climbed down. She managed to pick up her precious mitten, but the platform’s pretty high, so she couldn’t climb back up. I could see the train approaching, and she was still laughing.
When her daughter started to panic, trying to pull her back up, she finally seemed to grasp that she was in trouble. I rushed over to them and, with the girl, managed to pull her back up.
The train rushed in, and I was shaking for quite a while. It was horrible.
^^ Yup. For a mitten. As soon as she was safe, she started laughing again. O_o
Stupid people tend to laugh at the stupidest things. They almost cause a massive collision and they just laugh and wave and drive away with a stupid grin on their face..
My first accident an old lady turned left in front of me – time slowed down and I saw her grandson in the passenger seat, but the cars behind her passing on the shoulder – I knew I didn’t want to hit them head-on, so I had to hit her car, and aimed for the rear tire so her grandson wouldn’t get hurt.
I also was the first car at a light when an accident just as you described happened… the car that was going straight swerved and the car that was turning clipped it, causing the first vehicle to roll all the way over and take out the traffic light pole in the process. Fortunately the guy wasn’t hurt. I stayed and was a witness when the police arrived.
It’s weird how time slows down, isn’t it.
Okay, I am eating crow on the comment about the 49ers/Seahawks game. But tasty crow it is!
Yes, I grew up in Denver Colorado and witnessed many cars helplessly sliding into one another. Luckily, it never happened to me.
Of course @ETpro. It’s just worse than being a bystander. Tell us about it.
@Dutchess_III Well, I rode through 2 crashes where I thought I was going to die, and one I never saw coming till after impact, but that was the scariest of all once it was underway.
The first was on Wilshire Blvd. In LA. I was heading toward downtown when a light changed in front of me. I came to a stop. An impatient city bus driver, perhaps trying to make up schedule, was apparently hoping to pass me and looking behind him in his left review mirror. He never saw me apply brakes of stop. He never saw the red light in front of him. He hit the back of my 67 Mustang just just off center, left. The impact was so great it catapulted me though traffic now pouring through the intersection on the other road. It seemed like I passed right through some of the cars in the cross traffic, but I didn’t hit any. My car ended up hitting a light pole about 30 feet beyond the intersection. I was badly whip-lashed, but alive.
Next was a kid diving a decrepit Volkswagen on Crenshaw Blvd. I was a passenger in a 66 Buick Riviera. We had the light. It had been green for some time. The driver, my best friend, saw it coming and said, “Prepare to die.” We hit the kid who ran the light on Crenshaw broadside and his VW beetle flipped 2½ times, coming up spinning on its roof. Due to the greater mass of our ride, the front end got crushed, but not much more. The kid in the VW had a blanket covering the seat stuffing that was spewing out of the driver’s seat, and it wrapped him, protecting him from all the flying glass. He came out of it unscathed but knocked so wonky that he told the police first on the scene that his brakes had failed months ago, and he’d been driving using the emergency brake. This time, it too failed. The cops inspected the brake master cylinder and it was totally dry. It wasn’t just low on brake fluid. There had been none in there for so long not a trace was left on the walls of the vessel.
He hit your 67 Mustang?? He should be drawn and quartered!
Scary stories @ETpro. I’m guessing no one had seat belts on either?
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