What's your scariest 'near miss' in a shite car...

[stripped fred]

Back in 1988 just after passing my test my dad told me quite clearly that he would NEVER insure me on his car. He used to drive a Scimitar GTE and before that a selection of Triumphs. So, i bought my mum's mini clubman 1100 off her. It was a but tatty looking so me and my dad hand painted it blue which smartened it up a bit. It had the wrong gearbox so was too low geared so I fitted bigger wheels with spacers and that helped a bit. I loved that car and the walnut dashboard added a bit of class.

 

I had two scary moments in that car. The first was where I went out for a drive to Bradgate Park with my mate who was in his dad's Audi 80 1.6. A very nice car at the time. I had 4 girls in my car (the only time I ever have) and he had 5 mates in his. Obviously I was quite illegal and overloaded. Anyway I raced off trying to show him who was boss on a straight stretch of road and he came charging after me. I then hit a right hand corner that also went downhill. My n/s rear tyre touched some gravel in a laybay and we went slaloming down the hill. He came round the corner and scraped the whole left side of his dad's shiny car down the rear corner of mine and then put it in the ditch. We got his car out by getting the biggest girl to sit on his bonnet to aid traction. My dent was bashed out with a hammer and his dad never got his fixed and drive it like that for the next 5 years. We both received a bollocking we survived. A lesson learnt.

 

However, that wasn't the scariest moment in that car. That happened when I was driving on my own a few months later. I was driving down a long hill that had a t-junction at the bottom. I pressed my brake pedal and it went to the floor. Shit what do I do know? So I pulled on my handbrake as hard as I could and the handbrake cable snapped! As an inexperienced driver I surprisingly knew that you could slow yourself by going down the gears. I still hit the t-junction with some speed that I managed to wipe off by turning into a pub car park and driving round a couple of times.

 

My driving career hasn't been quite as dangerous since so I may have lost 2 of my 9 lives early on but it was character building.

 

Over to you...

[Asimo]

Front wheel locked on a Farina Riley. Careered across the pavement and into the entrance of Woolworths in Watford. No actual damage.

 

(The wheel lock was caused by a broken shoe return spring)

[Station]

Driving onto the M6 from the M54 slip road in the Nippa.

That's not the scary part!

As I was coming onto the motorway, the truck in the first lane decided to pull over onto the slip road exit. He didn't see me. I was accelerating at the time (luckily), and his front end missed my back end by inches. I'd hate to think of what damage a 20 ton truck could do to a 1980's 600kg Malaysian car.

[stripped fred]

Front wheel locked on a Farina Riley. Careered across the pavement and into the entrance of Woolworths in Watford. No actual damage.

 

(The wheel lock was caused by a broken shoe return spring)

That could have been much worse!

[fordperv]

I had a 7.5 tonne truck coming towards me when I was driving my Capri along a road that was wide enough for a car and a half, the roads were icy, the driver of the truck braked hard sliding towards me, luckily there was an exit for a golf course, i sent my car sideways into the exit, i thought I was going to need a change of underwear, if I was in a front wheel drive car I think there would've been a collision

[oldcars]

I was towing the caravan, it was windy and downhill. We came out of a sheltered section so i thought the wind might catch the van a little so i moved nearer the hard shoulder. When checking my mirrors as you do more when towing i could see some Mondeo i think it was with a badly laden van (very nose down) come past me at some speed. Just as he got level his van started snaking badly, i slowed and the tail of his van must have been inches from the front of the Santa Fe.

He was still snaking, i checked no traffic was coming and straddled the two lanes with the hazzards on as i really thought he was going to bin in but he got control and pulled into the hard shoulder.

When we went past my wife said he looked white as a sheet. Bit close for comfort. Personally i never overtake downhill when towing but each to there own.

[Alan_Green]

• Not a near miss, but this is my Y reg Ambassador after being hit head on by a muppet in an FSO Polonez. How is that for a shite combination? 

Scary to say the least. Head on smash both cars doing 40ish shunted us into some trees trapping us and then the whole tangled mess went on fire!

[LabRat]

Joining the m60 on my way home from work at the Bredbury junction, which spits you onto the motorway in lane 3.

 

The shitebox pug 307 decided to wait until i hit 70 mph and was being tailgated by a prat in a bmw, before faulting out the abs.... By locking the damn pump up and applying the brakes on its own accord, without any bloody warning!

 

Mr Bmw had a fairly epic brown trouser moment as we went from 70mph to 20mph without any brakelights and lots of tyre smoke. No damage other than brown trousers all round. (And a bolloxed abs pump/ecu).

 

Somehow it let go again and let me limp it to the hard shoulder before packing up again. The recovery fella kindly gave me a tow to the nearest scrappy with the damn thing, then a lift home!

[rainagain]

All in my Nova shortly after passing my test:

 

Going down my Dad's street in winter only doing 15-20 as it was on a hill and icy, as I got near his house I applied the brakes and the wheels locked and the car didn't slow down. By this point I was doing about 30 and the corner at the bottom of the hill was rapidly approaching. The thought of using the gears to slow it had just crossed my mind as the car did a neat 360 and stopped against the kerb almost perfectly outside my dad's. My Dad said later when I got inside his house I was pure white and very quiet.

 

I was driving along a 60 road stuck behind a van doing 40, I was trying to overtake but gave up so dropped back. He pulled over to the left and stopped, I thought he was being considerate and letting me past, but no he was actually trying to turn right into a layby on the opposite site of the road that had an angled entrance like below and needed the whole width of the road to get his van turned in:

 

                  _____ Layby

                 /         \

-------------------------------------------- Road

                         <--van direction

 

I didn't know this as he wasn't using his indicators instead I had already 'dropped a cog and floored it' for the overtake then the van drove away from the side of the road and started to cross in front of me. I always remember stamping on the brakes as hard as I could whilst being sure I was going to hit him. I left two big black lines and managed to stop with the front of my car a few feet from his drivers door. The guy leaned out and asked if I was ok and thought it was quite funny. I was too in shock to question his indicator use, so just managed to mumble a 'yes'

[mercrocker]

I don't really want to dwell on the countless near misses I have put myself through in case the very thought of them tempts fate.....However, when I was young and stupid the sheer new-ness (but shite-ness, nevertheless) of a company R4 van got me out of some scrapes.  As did it's comically narrow width and surefooted lack of too much power.  I did manage to kill it eventually in a triple barrel-roll but even then it looked after me.  

 

When I was old and stupid I very nearly turned the Oxford over when cocking around on the snow and ice.  It slid off the road and rocked, Italian job fashion, over a (thankfully low ) culvert on a deserted forest road.  Luckily the road was not quite deserted and just as I was wondering what to do next I had a Charlie Croker moment as two blokes appeared over the horizon (from Christ knows where - we were miles from pubs and houses).   They had apparently seen the whole 180 degree ballet dance and wondered if I was going to make it without dumping the car two feet into the ditch.  Very kindly they helped me manhandle the Farina back on reasonably hard ground but for some reason declined the offer of a lift preferring what must have been a three mile trudge.....

[martc]

I was in the middle lane of the M1 overtaking a line of lorries in a fully loaded 2CV. There was a sage green Volvo lorry behind (one of those with the square grill with Volvo written on it). There was an uphill incline and I had the accelerator pedal flat on the floor. The pedal is connected to a rod - which at this point gave a Gallic shrug and disconnected.

 

There was an immediate loss of power, and no where to go. I vividly recall the "Volvo" on the grill of the lorry behind getting bigger and bigger in the rear view mirror. By the time I could only read "lv" in the mirror, the gap between two of the lorries in the inside lane drew level with me and I steered sharply to the left, through the gap and onto the hard shoulder. Fortunately there was no one on the shoulder, the gap between the lorries was wide enough and the paint on the offside rear wing was thin enough to allow the Volvo to pass with out hitting it.

 

I then had to get out of the car, lean in and reconnect the pedal. The open door, and my arse, over hung into the nearside lane. The drive home was in silence (apart from the whistles and booms from the car...).

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Far too many, I'll start with one from the 2nd week after I passed my test.

I was using my mom's Capri ( N reg 1600 XL ) for work in Central London and it was raining.

I turned right onto Blacfriars Bridge( major road 3 lanes each direction) and inevitably the back end stepped out, now I should have corrected it and backed off, even then I knew that.

I applied full opposite lock and put my foot down harder, I even caught it when it went the other way, this increased my confidence so I changed up and nailed it again........

Somehow I missed the buses,taxis other cars etc as I spun 3 or 4 times across all lanes and came to a halt,quite hard, against the kerb facing into the traffic .

I sheepishly did a U-turn and carried on , the next weekend I made a nice little slide hammer to change the bent half shaft that mysteriously started vibrating the next day when my mom dropped me at the station.

[theorganist]

In 1993, I was 18 and had passed my test two months previously. I was driving a couple of friends were driving through the Merry Hill centre in my bright yellow Renault 5 (an A reg) trying to impress the girls which hung around there in the evening. It didn't really compare to a Nova which was the youngsters choice of car at the time.

 

I was approaching a roundabout where a dual carriageway crosses with a 40 then 30 limit IIRC (said roundabout is now replaced by traffic lights). A Volvo 440 which was quite new was coming down the dual carriageway from the right. I thought I had time and pulled onto the round about (I actually entered it first) my OSF and the Volvo's NSF collided, I think the Volvo was doing more than 30 when it entered the round about but being young and scared I stupidly said it was my fault. No one was hurt, the Volvo owner was unimpressed to say the least. He was in his thirties with his quite glamourous looking partner with him.

 

I managed to drive home and the only damage done to the Renault 5 was a scrape on the bumper and a smallish dent in the wing. The bumpers on the Renault 5 were made of what seemed to be very solid thick plastic. The Volvo however ended up with a bent wheel and the guy had to wait for the AA to take him home.

 

I was proudly telling everyone for weeks there after how my little Renault had wrote off a Volvo (even though it was only a 440 (and I suspect it wasn't wrote off))!

[theorganist]

Oops posted twice!

[rml2345]

I'm better known for direct hits than near misses but there's one I'll never forget.

Was travelling home from Edinburgh in my old 740GL, on the M8 in heavy but moving traffic. Utterly boring as such situations often are and pissing it down to ensure maximum bleakness.

I saw an odd shaped ambulance go past in the opposite carriageway and thought, "That's odd". Looked back round and traffic had stopped.

Oh shit.

Slammed the brakes on and then remembered it's not ABS as the whole thing locked up and slid towards the car in front in a fog of tyre smoke.

By some miracle of new tyres and brakes in good order it managed to stop with half a bawhair between me and the car in front.

Thankfully the rather pale looking bloke in the Transit behind managed to pull up as well.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Yeah, mix of near misses and direct hits. Mostly performed by 'friends' of mine. A particularly stunning example was an erstwhile mate of mine propelling the two of us at speed in a Quattro. Brakes appeared to be the issue as we continued at about 70 across a wooded roundabout taking out the front suspension and narrowly missing several trees. Lovely police chaps gave me a lift home though. My associate spent rather longer in the company of plod....

[xtriple]

So many it's hard to choose one or two!

 

When I was in my mega skint phase (at uni with small child and no income) I ran a succession of absolute snotters that had no right to be on the road. One (and my favourite) was a Citroen 2CV that was held together with gaffer tape and spit and the roof was more tape than roof. It used to leak like a sieve everywhere but it was bloody reliable and great fun... though my son hated it with a passion!

 

Coming back from lectures in Exeter involves a long climb up a really steep hill, to make matters worse, it's just at the point the A38 goes into four lanes as it splits to go to Torbay one way and Plymouth the other. The routine in the 2CV was to get as much speed up as possible on the flat bit so as to minimise the chances of being in first gear by the time the top of the hill was reached!

 

This particular day, the rain was coming down in sheets and bouncing off the road, I was doing the usual thing of getting as much speed as possible and I think I saw 70 through the raindrops on the dash just as the hill started. Just at that point a lorry in the outside lane decided he didn't want to go to Plymouth so would drift over into the middle lane where there happened to be a Citroen hurrying along. The bow wave of wind from his cab hit the little Citroen and ripped the roof straight back! It wasn't held all that well but to choose that precise moment for the gaffer tape to lose stickchion was most inconvenient.

 

To add to this, the feeble horn of the 2 CV was doing little to alert the truck to my presence inches to his left, so lorry drifting into me, rain lashing down inside the car and my left hand firmly clenched on the roof bar trying to stop it coming off altogether! It was a very hairy few moments before a gap opened to my left that allowed me to slot in - must have been at least one layer of gaffer tape clearance between the front wing and the lorry.

[stripped fred]

I few 'incidents' driving our chod then! I remember a few more thinking about it and a lot of them were due to rear wheel drive, skinny tyres, no abs etc. Probably taught me more about driving than youngsters nowadays with their fwd, lifeless steering, advanced suspension, 8 airbags, abs and stability control though...

[stripped fred]

So many it's hard to choose one or two!

 

When I was in my mega skint phase (at uni with small child and no income) I ran a succession of absolute snotters that had no right to be on the road. One (and my favourite) was a Citroen 2CV that was held together with gaffer tape and spit and the roof was more tape than roof. It used to leak like a sieve everywhere but it was bloody reliable and great fun... though my son hated it with a passion!

 

Coming back from lectures in Exeter involves a long climb up a really steep hill, to make matters worse, it's just at the point the A38 goes into four lanes as it splits to go to Torbay one way and Plymouth the other. The routine in the 2CV was to get as much speed up as possible on the flat bit so as to minimise the chances of being in first gear by the time the top of the hill was reached!

 

This particular day, the rain was coming down in sheets and bouncing off the road, I was doing the usual thing of getting as much speed as possible and I think I saw 70 through the raindrops on the dash just as the hill started. Just at that point a lorry in the outside lane decided he didn't want to go to Plymouth so would drift over into the middle lane where there happened to be a Citroen hurrying along. The bow wave of wind from his cab hit the little Citroen and ripped the roof straight back! It wasn't held all that well but to choose that precise moment for the gaffer tape to lose stickchion was most inconvenient.

 

To add to this, the feeble horn of the 2 CV was doing little to alert the truck to my presence inches to his left, so lorry drifting into me, rain lashing down inside the car and my left hand firmly clenched on the roof bar trying to stop it coming off altogether! It was a very hairy few moments before a gap opened to my left that allowed me to slot in - must have been at least one layer of gaffer tape clearance between the front wing and the lorry.

I remember a similar incident when driving along the M25 on the way back from London in my 2CV. I hadn't had the car long and thought it would be a good idea to open the front part of the roof. Needless to say the wind caught it and the bar flipped over and smacked me on the head while then ripping the roof straight off leaving it trailing behind me. I veered onto the hard shoulder in a daze only to find it was coned off so back on the motorway I went before finding somewhere to stop. A helpful ex 2cv owner stopped and helped me secure what was left of the roof with tape. It then started raining, heavily and this continued all the way back to Leicester. A damp journey but a lesson learnt!

[Negative Creep]

Citroen AX on the M25, there was a minor bump a few cars ahead so we all came to safe stop. Except I looked in my rear view mirror to see an Omega steaming towards me - luckily he swerved into the hard shoulder and stopped several car lengths in front

[danthecapriman]

I've had a few.

1979 Volvo 244, approached a roundabout, on a 40mph road. Pressed brakes and nothing happened. Pressed again, nothing, pedal went to the floor! By this time I was fast approaching the roundabout and the back end of a learner car sat at the give way line. I yanked the handbrake on as hard as I could and luckily just managed to stop. I got the car recovered home and it turned out the front brake had seized and boiled the brake fluid! Easily fixed.

 

In my 74 Capri, driving down a 60mph A road, some blind twat pulled out of a car park entrance right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, so hard I was actually lifting my arse off the seat! Just managed to stop in time. I got out and gave the twat a right dressing down! I later got home and found I hadn't escaped unscathed. The brakes must have been pushed so hard it popped the seals in the master cylinder, brake fluid everywhere. This one was very close, it scared the shit out of me.

 

I was in Yorkshire one year in my old Volvo 340, it was snowing heavily and I went around a tight bend. On one side of the road was a line of trees on the other a big dry stone wall. As I went around the bend I heard police sirens. Then out of nowhere a police car appeared right in front of me, wrong side of the road trying to overtake another car coming the other way! On a tight blind bend FFS! That was almost a head on as there were no escape routes.

 

Non shite near misses,

 

Towing a heavy trailer behind a van, on the motorway. Suddenly there was a lot of vibration and the van and trailer began to violently rock and swerve. Luckily an exit came up so I let off the gas to slow down which stopped the swerving and pulled off the road. Had a look over the trailer and spotted that I'd lost two of the four bolts holding the trailers A frame to the tow eye/brake ram set up! The remaining two were there still but both loose! I retightened them and put two odd bolts in that I had spare in the van and finished the trip.

Took the trailer to be fixed properly afterwards and it turned out the original bolts were too small allowing it all to shake loose!

[Pillock]

G40 Polo on M1 J27 roundabout, in the wet. Lifted off in second, what I learned in the next few seconds was thus:

 

Engine braking in a supercharged car is vicious.

Lift off oversteer will surprise you

The surprised look on your face will be matched on the face of the driver of the 7.5t Iveco that was following you and is now lined up for a head-on.

[D Spares & Tyres]

So many........

 

2 involve the Mustang I had aged 18 ( shite Mustang, 1979 3.3 )

 

Straight road in Suffolk. Right angled bend, I went straight into a muddy fiel but had the presence of mind somehow to just bury the throttle and power my way out the same way I came. Must of looked cool

 

Same car, tailgating someone in a Polo. they jabbed the brakes. So did I. Yank brakes are far more powerful than anything I had encountered at that point and I did a 180 spin and carried on the way I came. Total accident but must also have looked cool.

 

Ten years later. Lada Niva. Driving with a mate (future brother in law) Car went `doink` He looked at me and said what was what? No idea says I. Then car violently lurched into a ditch. Snapped ball joint   I still have the ball joint in my garage   This accident looked less cool I imagine

[richardmorris]

hardly a near miss, but I only had a bruise on my knee from the centre console and my chest from the seatbelt. Idiot Frenchman on the wrong side of the road. In France!

 

That's me in the top left hand photo from the witnesses following me. We closed the main road south from tours for two hours!

 

Edit again, because I'm still pissed off 14 year later, the month before the paintwork had been done, new radiator, spheres and cambelt. My sunglasses smashed against the windscreen and i think I was in shock for a while. Also my first, and so far only, breathalyser ( zero of course).

It was the last ever series 1 metal bumpered cx sold in the uk. Made in 1984 as a special order for p/o specification French embassy in australia and registered as a cit. uk car in 1987 after being forgotten in a warehouse with five other cxs. All registered e 65? FTF by the way.

[gordonbennet]

Sister's Wartburg Knight, total brake failure going down the Welwyn slip road off the A1M, fortunately i'm not one who belts up to junctions and the very effective handbrake did the business, after a short while the brakes returned, i put it down to cheap shit east german fluid boiling up, fluid changed and it never happened again.

 

Scared mesen silly far too many times to recall by driving like a complete tit.

[captain_70s]

In the 1850, driving through town at 25-30mph and some dozy bird in a people carrier pulls out in front of me from a junction at point blank range. I stand on the brakes and lock the wheels, realise there isn't enough space to stop so release and spin the wheel. Managed to end up in front of her car by some miracle, I wasn't more than a couple of inches from planting the passenger side of my car into hers.

 

In the 1300, going down the road in the pouring rain just leaving town at 30ish, misjudge a sharp corner, car goes sideways, I counter steer and end up drifting it. At the exit of the corner the road crosses a small bridge which is only wide enough for one car, the entrance is blind so I've no idea if the road is clear and nobody knows I'm coming. I drift onto the bridge sideways taking up the entire width  of the road before the car straightened out, than fuck there wasn't anything going the other way.

Girl in the passenger seat never even noticed despite me going "shit, shit, SHIT!" 'cause she was sending a text!

 

There have been numerous occasions where I've come barrelling around a corner to find a tractor/lorry/drunk farmer in a Range Rover on the wrong side of the road and feeling glad my car is so narrow.

 

Don't think my '08 Yaris counts as shite but that saw far more action as it was my first car and I thought I was a fucking rally driver. Spinning it 180 on an ice road, skidding to a stop when coming round a corner to find a school bus parked in my lane and a tractor going the opposite way, me and a passenger simultaneously waking up to find me driving down the grass at the side of the road at 50mph and accidentally doing a "Scandinavian flick" at about 60mph on twisty road were highlights. I'm more sensible in the Doloshites, partially because I'm older and partially because the risk of being injured to the point of being fucked for life but not quite dead is a much larger possibility in a 38 year old car...

[purplebargeken]

Hmm, had a lovely white Triumph 1500TC auto. Got up early one morning to sod off to Stoneleigh for a show.

 

The car was in the middle of a narrow residential street with cars on either side. Somehow, I knocked the gear lever into drive and off she went as the choke was on. I have one leg in the car, one leg outside and am trying to work out what to do. The car is going faster and faster at this point and I am steering frantically to stop it from hitting anything and trying to hold the door closed as best I could. I eventually throw myself into the car and carry on like nothing happened exect my heart is trying to explode in my chest from the sheer panic. I still don't quite know what happened to be honest. Fecking shit meself though. 

[2MB]

My two scariest near misses both involve flying. First time was in my e30 on a backroad between blubberhouses and otley in the middle of the night. Hit in unsigned hump going a bit too fast and took off, only to see a pickup truck in the middle of the road coming the other way. Second time was 3 weeks ago in the 190d in the trough of bowland. I used to drive that road a lot a few years ago and thought I knew it off by heart but I'd forgotten about a particular jump in front of a hidden dip. At the other side was a frontera in the middle of the road (to be fair it's 1.5 cars wide) that I managed to alter my trajectory on take off just enough to miss. It felt like I went over its bonnet.

Both times had a few tenths of a second of eerie calm while airborne, in which I reminded myself not to steer or brake, followed by shaking fear a bit further down the road. The second one shit me up especislly

[fred]

Think the most pant  soiling was driving my Old Ventora back from Pendine sands to Walsall hit the M50 and it was howling down of rain couldnt see a lot as 1969 Wipers were useless above 45 mph - hit a huge plain of water and just went aqua planing back end came out and did a 200 yard 'drift' hanging on to the wheel and praying to the big sky pirate the lorry in front didnt put his brakes on

[MrDuke]

There's only 3 that really stick in my mind:

 

First was just after I'd passed my test, tearing round the M25 in a 2-dr Nova saloon. Learnt about M-way blind spots the hard way, as I tried to change lanes and missed being wiped out by a Transit by inches - fortunately the van driver was alert and braked in time. I've never changed lanes without looking over my shoulder since then.

 

Second was in my old Stanza, which had a very sticky front caliper when it was cold. I lived in the back of beyond, and generally by the time I reached the main roads it would've freed off nicely, so I never bothered fixing it. One morning I was late for work and had to cane it through the narrow lanes, until I met a parcel van coming the other way. Couple the instantly locking front wheel with the early Stanzas' tendency for horrific lift-off oversteer, and I have no idea how the hell I got past the van unscathed, it was bucking and skewing all over the place. I had to pull over further down the road for some slow deep breaths.

 

The third one was immensely funny in retrospect, not so much at the time. I was barrelling down the A55 towards the Brittania bridge in my over-heating Riva, and was too busy examining the temp needle to see the backed-up bridge traffic, as the lanes blended. I had slightly sticky back brakes at the time (notice the recurring theme...) and the tracking was way out, making it pull hard to the left under braking. Therefore, as I looked up at the rapidly approaching brake-lights, and stamped on the brake pedal, I executed a perfect, graceful, 180 deg spin before coming to rest with both o/s wheels exactly an inch from the kerb. The fact that I had no control over the maneuver whatsoever, and was now watching headlights bearing down on me, caused serious cloth-touching. I reckon it looked awesome from the outside, though.