Let's Share Our Near Death Experiences/Darwin Nominations

[warren t claim]

Over the years I've shaken hands with the Grim Reaper on a number of occasions but these stick in my mind and still give me shivers .

 

I was working on a 3.9 EFi Range Rover and didn't have a suitable high lift jack to raise it up with so I popped a couple of half bricks under a Halfrauds budget trolley jack and removed the rear wheel. To make matters worse the Rangie was on soft ground but as this wasnt the first time I'd worked on it in these circumstances I wasn't overly concerned. When I needed to remove the other wheel I simply built some sort of Jenga tower and lowered the two tonne behemouth onto it and repeated the half brick/trolly jack routine the other side. All was going to plan and I was happily under it when I noticed the whole arrangement take on a sort of Range Rover Rhombus type shape and at that point I really wish I was at home watching the TV! I didn't actually see the car come crashing down as I was still on my back after frantically pulling myself from under it, how close I was to being decapitated is best illustrated by the fact the beanie hat I was wearing was dragged off my head and wedged between the towbar and the ground....

 

Many years ago I borrowed an ageing XJ-S off a lad at work and was determined to get my first indicated 150 mph out of it. The road I'd chosen for this vmax run was the last stretch of the M62 from Huyton towards the Rocket interchange as I was working in Warrinton at the time and it was on my way home. 130 mph came up easily then 140.....145....148....150! Fucking done it! Hang on, was that the end of motorway in a third of a mile sign???? Have you ever tried to stop a heavy car from a high speed? Brakes that you thought were pretty good are actually piss poor. Anyway, there was no way the poor old Jag was going to stop in time for the traffic lights so I mused over whether I was going to run into the back of a stationary car at speed or just overshoot the junction and ram raid the (ironic) Jaguar showroom on the other side. Well the lights were on red but there was only one car waiting in the right hand lane so I somehow managed to avoid that impact, experiencing more luck than any prick with a heavy right foot deserves I also managed to squeeze into a gap of cross moving traffic and steer right and into Edge Lane and finally halt the brute.

 

Ok, own up! What similar experiences have you had?

[dollywobbler]

Seem to recall doing similar to your Jag routine, but much slower. I was in a Ford Fiesta, doing about 20mph on sheet ice. Sailed straight across a junction. I had at least realised that continuing to brake would have seen us (four up...) in a hedge, so came off the brakes and hoped for the best. Thankfully, that's exactly what fate gave me and there was nothing coming.

 

My closest-to-death experience was when I was heading up to Hull in a battered, 170,000 mile Citroen Dyane. At the M18 interchange, the slow lane just stopped dead, presumably because some muppet couldn't decide whether to take the turn or not. I slammed the anchors on, congratulated myself on avoiding a smash when an HGV went sailing past up the hard shoulder. If he'd tried to brake rather than swerve, I would not be hear now. In fact, it would have been like being in this red 2CV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUIxMIyExqE

 

It would have at least been quick...

[alf892]

I used to do quite a long commute (115 miles each way) and used to leave home about 4.30am and then leave office about 3.30 for the trip home.

 

I did this for quite a few years and had a routine of stopping just before Stamford (heading A1 south) to have a coffee and walk about to avoid feeling tired.

 

So one lovely sunny afternoon after this break I was just south of Peterborough in the outside lane doing about 55 in a line of traffic............next thing I know I am waking up and the car is heading backwards in the outside lane. Loking to my front there is an artic bearing down on me and i can see the driver standing up on his brake. All came to a stop and I felt pretty OK.............I think because I had slept through the whole thing. Witnesses however were shook up as they had been awake through the whole thing. Apparently I went from the outside lane onto the n/s grass, spun around and back out across both lanes where I hit the armco with the front n/s of the car and then backwards down the road scraping armco again. Car was a mess........3 month old X type which never really felt the same following an 8k repair.

 

In all very scary and I don't remember getting any of the usual warning signs you get when you are tired. I can only put it down to having had to attend a meeting and they served sarnies......on my drive I was fat, content and bored - I think this added up and made sleep come on real quick. I could have very easily died and it has made me really careful about driving long distance and this still gives me the shivers. It is so easy.....

[STUNO]

report in the paper today of someone who used a scissor jack on the side of a hill to change the oil.

squashed. funeral asap

me, did the car on bricks thing once, took the front wheels off then  I went away to get something and returned to a pile of dust and the car on the road, I had a word with myself re stupidity after that.

[Largactil]

1994 - A mate has an '86 Fiat Uno Turbo i.e, which had been modified Max Power-stylee before he bought it.

 

Bolt in cage / Corbeau seat / MASSIVE 15" O.Z Mitos / Leda Suspension.

 

In addition, it had a mechanical bleed valve fitted, which was wound all the way down - This car flew.

 

Anyway, it was completely stripped out and didn't have a passenger seat, just a folded up piece of carpet to sit on.

 

We went out for a spin, with me as passenger sitting on the carpet and holding onto the roll cage to brace myself. Part of the route involved a tightening / unsighted left hand bend on a 'B' road near Stirling University. This had a slight downhill approach, so it was easy to pick up a fair amount of speed into it.

 

On approach, my mate was telling me he'd taken it at 80mph the other day, but reckoned he could do it 10mph faster...

 

(Nowadays when I drive this piece of road, I tackle the bend at 40-50mph, which is juuuust about as fast as you'd want to go in 'normal' driving).

 

Mate enters the blind bend at 90mph, and the car snaps sideways (lift off oversteer, I'd imagine), and starts to completely rotate past the point of no return - At the same time, another boy racer in a Nova SR is coming the opposite direction, and tramping on too. 

 

We miss clipping his right rear 3/4 panel with the Uno's front left wing by a fag paper's width, as we complete three complete 360 spins, all down the 'right' side of the road.

 

Come to rest without a scratch, but facing the wrong way on a blind NSL bend.

 

Start up, and drive off.

 

Not sure how I'd have fared sat on a carpet / holding onto the cage - In addition, it went for an MOT a few weeks later, and was found to be rotten as a pear and scrapped.

 

I think if we'd actually hit anything, we'd be part human / part Uno, as all the bits disintegrated and recombined... 

[phil_lihp]

My closest-to-death experience was when I was heading up to Hull in a battered, 170,000 mile Citroen Dyane. At the M18 interchange, the slow lane just stopped dead, presumably because some muppet couldn't decide whether to take the turn or not. I slammed the anchors on, congratulated myself on avoiding a smash when an HGV went sailing past up the hard shoulder. If he'd tried to brake rather than swerve, I would not be hear now. In fact, it would have been like being in this red 2CV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUIxMIyExqE

 

It would have at least been quick...

 

Not as bad as a HGV, but I was driving down a windy A-road a few years back and rounded a corner at about 50mph to discover a stationary line of cars stopped by a flock of sheep in the road.  I braked pretty hard and managed to stop fairly comfortably behind the car in front, then realised I was now stopped dead on a blind bend.  The rising feeling of discomfort gave way to horror when I looked in the rearview mirror in time to see a VW T4 van appear at high speed, I saw his nose dive as he braked hard and thankfully he managed to swerve round me.  He came to a stop beside me on the wrong side of the road - had he not, he'd have shortened my Fiesta quite a bit.

 

The same Fiesta on the same road taught me a valuable lesson about bald tyres in the wet when it aquaplaned at 55mph and snapped sideways with no warning.  I kept it on the road and we ended up facing back the right way, thankfully the road was clear.  My passenger was not amused.

 

Worst Darwin award moment was a few years ago, driving back on the North Devon link road at night, very very tired.  Going up a hill on a lefthand bend I moved out into the overtaking lane to go past a slow car.  As I drew alongside the car, some headlights appeared round the bend in the opposite direction...in my 'overtaking' lane.  It suddenly dawned on me I was so out of it I'd somehow invented a lane where there wasn't one and was driving on the wrong side of the road doing 60+mph towards a car doing the same or faster speed with nowhere to go.  Somehow I managed to get past and dive in with inches to spare, avoiding a head-on collision, major brown-trouser moment and I have never driven a car when that tired since.

[Brent_Crude]

A couple stand out for me, both of which were a direct result of some frankly stupid driving on my part. Not something I am proud of and both quite uncharacteristic: 

 

1. Seeing what an Alfa 166 could 'do' in the early hours on a stretch of the M4. The answer was.... quite a lot and it seemed comfortable doing so. However, a few days later I was checking the tyres and the underside generally and discovered that the off side rear tyre was so badly worn on the inside that you could see the steel plies, despite it being barely worn at all across the outside and centre of the tyre (I later found out that these big Alfas were shockers for drastically uneven tyre wear). Had it blown at the speed I was doing it would have almost certainly been curtains or a blue badge for life.

 

2. In an auto Merc deciding to overtake a slow moving car on a hill with what looked like ample time and space to overtake, I slipped it down to 3rd and floored it and hit the rev limiter rather sooner than expected, causing the engine to completely cut out. I was left stranded on the wrong side of the road still doing about 45, with the car I was overtaking blocking me to the left and a Volvo 240 GL bearing downhill on me at about 50. Mercifully the 'slow' car undertook me and I managed to get back to the safety of the left hand lane just in time to see the poor sod in the Volvo go past checking his undies for soiling. Despite the acres of bonnet between the Volvo driver and me, I think we both would've left the scene with only straw-fed meals ahead of us.  

[barefoot]

My only near death experience was after crashing a Datsun 100a head on into a Leyland Clydesdale.

I remember standing in a side road watching the fleet of ambulances, police cars etc heading off at high speed towards the hospital.

The tall white bloke with the wings that I was stood next to told me that I'd better get off after them.

 

This was an absolutely crystal clear memory until the first time I ever told anyone about it, since then it has faded exponentially.

[purplebargeken]

Oddly never had a near death experience in a car. Had on whilst falling off the Honda ST1100 that I had. I fell into the path of a bus and it missed squishing my head by 2" so I am told. I came to in the back of the ambulance and asked Ambulance Man why I was there. Deadpan he said: You've been hit on the head by a bus'. 'Okay, fair enough' said I. My helmet looked like it had been rogered by a JCB on steroids, what a mess.

 

Other near death experiences have been:

 

When I was about 6 I went to Spain with my sister. I was slowly swimming in the pool and some Spaniardbastard Lothario's decided it would be fun to chuck her in the pool. She landed on me and pushed me under. Not content with that, she then trod on my shoulder and pushed me deeper. It was actually rather peaceful, although my exact thoughts were 'Great, drowned by my own sister'. I kid you not.

 

at age 16 I worked on board a container ship which trundled between Manchester and Montreal. It was late in the evening, in the Atlantic, a couple of days away from canada, it was snowing and little iceflows bobbed about from time to time. I was dressed in jeans and a T shirt and my job involved the illegal dumping of ships rubbish over the arse end of the ship. All was fine until my last bag. I took a huge swing, slipped and launched myself after the bag. I grabbed hold of the railing as I flew over it and was seesawing for many seconds before I managed to haul myself back on deck. Outcome: death - which would have occured by me either being minced by the props or dying fairly quickly of exposure as it would have been ages before they would notice my being absent, then factor in the stopping and turning distance of a ship the size of a couple of football pitches. Fish food time.

 

The last time was in the late 1990's. I used to work as a community nurse in ealing. I also managed a team of support workers. One lad fancied himself as a bit of a joker. This particular afternoon, I was in a rush to go and visit a patient. I grabbed a cheese sandwich that my colleagues were making in the kitchen for the drop in and scarpered into the car park. I had my rucksack on and as I took a bite of the sandwich, said joker popped out from behind the big pillar and shouted 'boo'. I jumped, breathed in and semi-chewed lump of cheese sandwich happily lodged itself in my throat. There I was choking, doing the finger across the throat gesture hoping that he might try and do something. He did. He laughed. He thought I was joking. It was only when I actually collapsed onto the floor that he realised that I wasn't pissing about. He then tried to do the back slap/heimlich thingy which was somewhat hampered my my rucksack and me being on the floor.

 

During this event I was very calm, and quite detached. My thoughts were drifting away after the initial pain and again I clearly recall thinking 'Well isn't this bloody marvellous, killed by a fucking cheese fucking sandwich in the fucking car park at fucking work'. The joker then got lucky as a wallop actually dislodged the lump and out it popped. He then legged it and vanished for several days as he thought I was going to kill him. I wasn't. However, my throat hurt for about 2 weeks afterwards. I still like cheese sandwiches.

[dollywobbler]

Oh, forgot a near-Darwinism I once had. Bond Equipe. The rear brakes seized a mile into a 130 mile drive home. For some reason, me and my mate decided it'd be a good idea to remove the brake shoes. Problem solved! This proves that at the time, I really did have very, very little knowledge of how brakes worked. Naturally, the next attempt at stopping didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped. Fortunately, I calmly indicated right and swung into a road that went up a steep hill. Pulled the handbrake on. That didn't work either. Turned it off, in gear. Got out and rather sheepishly called a breakdown truck. The time waiting for it was spent putting the brake shoes back in place...

[tooSavvy]

Hmm.. 'Near Wheelchair' experiences, do they count?

 

Top of stepladder in our living room, applying pressure to wood - stuck with 'no more nails' - onto the wall. Not immediately aware of acceleration away from wall.. more of extending of arms.. 1millionth of a second thought 'Aggghhhh!' before hitting the Workmate, across my back.

 

It was closed and that means the steel 'guiderails' were exposed >> I hit it right in the middle, between them.

 

Jeezz it hurt!!  but I izz verry lukkie, methinks?

 

tooSavvy

[cort16]

I bought Mk1 Orion 1.6i Ghia very cheap because it had a very light bump at the front. I was blezzing about in it for a few days and always though the steering felt a bit odd. It was an intermin car so I Scooted up to Edinburgh to check out some prospective purchases. On the way back I thought I'd feel maximum powa so absolutely flew down the road but everytime I went over a bump at speed I heard a ZZzzt noise. Being young dumb and full of chips I just kept going and when I got out found a tyre down to the metal and a large section of wing eroded. It basically went flat as I looked at it. The small bump had mangled the front suspension so one of the front wheels would make a fair amount of contact with the front wing if you went over even a mild dip.

 

Another one involved Nissan Silvia drift WEPON, which had knackered popup light models, which I'd disconnected and expertly* wedged up with blocks of wood. All was going well until I was shooting down the A7 late at night, and went over a bump about 80mph and the blocks fell out closing the lights. Instant darkness caused a little 2p to appear in my underpants. All I could think to do was stick the hazards on and try my best to bring it to a safe halt as the the hazards came on and off "I can see!", "I'm going to die", I can see!," I'm going to die" and so on. That Silvia was a right shit heap and the turbo would occasionally lose all boost right in the middle of an already fuckwitted over taking manouvre so you'd drop about 50bhp right when you needed it most.

[maxpower]

Reads like "homer's best bits"

[DVee8]

Heading into work one saturday morning around 5am in my ex Jaguar S-Type R.I took a left hand bend whereupone the rear of the car over took me sending me up the embankment,then digging in to the soft verge and spitting me back out into the road facing the wrong way in the path of a oncoming Qashqai.

[rml2345]

I've had a couple of accidents in my short time driving... However the scariest moment was on a damp afternoon in a long line of M8 rush hour traffic, doing about 50mph when an odd shaped ambulance goes past in the opposite carriageway. When I looked back the traffic in front was stationary with the kind of gap you'd think was close at 30mph. So I jammed on the brakes and forgot that the 740 doesn't have ABS... 

Did manage to bring it to a halt with inches to spare and tyre based fog. I doubt the van behind was much impressed either.

Since then I've left much bigger gaps and actually paid attention to where the fuck I was going.

 

I did manage to drop a cast aluminium ticket machine on my own head once, but that's not car related...

[Spiny Norman]

Not long after I started driving, during a particularly cold snap I stopped to get some petrol and tried to defrost the frozen up locking petrol cap with a Zippo.

[nacho man]

I have been lurking on the old site for ages but registered now on the new phase 2/mk2 facelifted autoshite site. Thought I would share this pic. 

 

 

 

 

 

It was the first real fast car I ever bought a e36 Bmw alpina b2.5, I was 20, not long joined the army and thanks to hsbc i could afford it. Second time I drove it was back from down south upto nottingham. Thrashed it the whole way home often reaching silly speeds as I thought I was a driving hero (I am not) on the way back down to camp sun night I stopped at a services and started speaking to a old boy who liked alpinas and he said "whats that on the inside of the rear tyre mate"........ Oh Oh. I was too scared to drive on it so started to jack it up and put the spare on, but the alloy had really bonded to the hub, I kicked and pulled and wacked and cursed as hard as I could, in the end called the aa who had to bash it off with a mallet. Next day "can I have a price please mate for a 265/45/17" or whatever silly size it was, sorry mate there a special order, michelin specially made them for alpinas, think they was 285 each, I needed the other rear as well, so in the end I got stretch before it was cool with some 245/45/17's or something. Still to this day I am crap at looking over cars before I buy them, most of the time I have bought them before I have already got there looked at it. I usually find the hole in the sill, mayo on the oil filler cap etc etc the day after I have got it home.

[retrogeezer]

I was sat at a red light on a dual carriageway on my Honda MBX125 when I was 17. It was about midnight, pouring with rain and there were no cars ahead of me or coming from the right where the lights were green. 

 

I vaguely heard the sound of screeching tyres on the wet road and knowing it was nothing ahead of me guessed it was from behind so just opened the throttle and went. I stopped again about 30 feet up the road and looked back to see a car sideways across the junction right where I  had been sat waiting..

[MK5 Escort]

Worst Darwin award moment was a few years ago, driving back on the North Devon link road at night, very very tired.  Going up a hill on a lefthand bend I moved out into the overtaking lane to go past a slow car.  As I drew alongside the car, some headlights appeared round the bend in the opposite direction...in my 'overtaking' lane.  It suddenly dawned on me I was so out of it I'd somehow invented a lane where there wasn't one and was driving on the wrong side of the road doing 60+mph towards a car doing the same or faster speed with nowhere to go.  Somehow I managed to get past and dive in with inches to spare, avoiding a head-on collision, major brown-trouser moment and I have never driven a car when that tired since.

 

Same road (A361 for those who don’t know), near enough identical experience but in the early afternoon... It was 2002. Only a few months into my driving career and certainly my biggest Darwin moment to date.

 

We were going on holiday and heading west for the coast. So, the boot full of luggage including half of the back seat. We’d been on the road for around five hours, although we’d stopped off for half an hour or so not much earlier on the M5 at Taunton Deane. We’d been holidaying in this particular neck of the woods since 1994 (and still go now...), so it’s not as if I didn’t know the road well enough.

 

Anyway, at some random location on one of the standard two lane stretch (one in each direction), I decided I’d had enough of sitting behind someone doing around 54/55mph behind another vehicle (can’t remember what, now) in a 60mph zone on a road which you tend to hold traffic up by doing that... The view ahead was clear enough with only a soft curve ahead. Nothing approaching that I could see - or so I thought. So, I dropped down into fourth gained a few mph and started to pull out.

 

As I drew alongside the car I was passing it suddenly dawned on me that a silver Porsche 911 had suddenly appeared into view that I didn’t see as I pulled out. Heck. So, instead of pulling back in I decided to basically floor it. Being fully laden this didn’t exactly do all that much. It was at this point where I was now at the ‘point of no return’ that it become quite clear the approaching Porsche was doing considerably more than 60mph... This was some major misjudgment on my part.  

 

I got to the point where my rear bumper was about level with the front of the bonnet of the car I was overtaking. It was basically pull in now or have a head-on. So, I swerved over at precisely the same time the 911 was now shooting past at pretty much at the same level as me.  A second more and without doubt I wouldn't be here now.

 

As for the Porsche, how the hell he didn’t clip my offside as I pulled back over I really don’t know. He had to have swerved. The funny thing is that there was no typical blasts of the horn, flashes of headlights or anything. Very surreal. I do often wonder if the 911 driver was half-asleep himself...or on drugs...

 

I will admit that it’s made me think twice if not thrice about overtaking on standard (non dual carriageway/motorway) roads ever since regardless of what car I’m driving.

[Hendry]

I've had 2 particularly scary near misses, both when i was younger and even more stupid than I am now.

 

First one when I'd only had my licence about 5 months and only the second time I'd driven since passing (took the car off the road to do it up before I got too used to driving it around and ended up never getting round to it) me and some mates had been to a "cruise" and were making our way to another mates house, we were going from Kilmarnock to Irvine. Mates were from that area so knew the roads well, I didn't, we'd been topping a ton along some dual carriageways then I was still pushing along as I came up to a sharp bend before a roundabout which I didn't know was there, took the bend too fast, was already under steering 1 way then tried to go turn inthe opposite direction for the roundabout, lost control, pinballed the OSR wheel off the kerb and it pinged me sideways into the other lane to my left going in the same direction right infront of an artic who luckily due to the roundabout was going slow enough to slow down enough to let me move off. Bent the back axle, lesson not learned.

 

Second time I was coming along an A-road with a few dodgy bends which was notorious for bad accidents late 1 night, circa 1am, was doing more than the 60 limit and was getting bored about 9 of 10 miles from home, was also quite tired, saw red tail lights in the distance and decided I'd catch him up and overtake before the road became a 30 a few miles down the road. This road is full of tight but not all that sharp bends and it'd been raining all day so the road was pretty greasy, took the bend too quick with too much of a turn of the wheel and felt the back end going like at first the near side rear was going to hit the wall to my left (railway line behind the wall) then realised it was going to do a 180 spin. So tried to gently turn the front wheels the opposite direction from the way the back end was going, knowing full well lifting off or breaking would make it worse, but turning the wheels only made it worse as it made the front end was now sliding out, then realised if I'd just let it happen it would've come to a stop without any repercussions but turning the wheel had now sped up how quickly the rear was spinning out since the front end was unsettled and no longer planted, to my right was an embankment fulfills trees I was heading right for but luckily on this part of the road there were kerbstones at the edge of the road which I clipped instead which slowed my momentum down avoiding the trees. Bent the back axle again and wrecked the skirt and rear bumper.

 

Both Astras as well, mk3 and mk4, Suffice to say with that and some old bunt driving into the side of my mk5 Astra and writing if off me and Astras are not a good combo

[PhilA]

Ooh, tales for down the pub. Pass the peanuts, mine's half a shandy, I'm drivin'.

 

About a decade ago, on a nice clear, warm, sunny Somerset afternoon, I'm headed towards Bath in my newly-aquired Vauxhall Victor (the orange pickup one), the road is open, I'm pootling along at a fair turn of speed as it's a lovely straight piece of road. The engine's thrumming along, the birds are chirping, and... there's two cars and a 7.5 tonner in my way.

 

I'm about here http://goo.gl/maps/DCFf3 when I see them up ahead in the distance.

 

I decide that I can get past them, knowing the road fairly well. I plant my foot into the carpet. The gearbox kickdown cable at this point in my ownership wasn't connected, so a lot of noise ensued, and not much extra progress. Still, it was a 3.5 litre engine, had even with old SU's and a knackered cam it had infinite amounts more torque and power than the 899cc Fiat I'd been driving previously and to top it off I was INVINCIBLE. (Being younger).

 

I start to pass the traffic up about here http://goo.gl/maps/5iaVA when I get onto the wrong side of the road, doing probably 60-ish. Spot the right hander up ahead? Back then the trees were more into the road. Cue articulated truck. Inconveniently using the side of the road I'm presently occupying, and making good progress due to the downhill grade.

 

I slam the gearshift from D to 2, the gearbox obliges and the car begins to accelerate harder, the decision "I'm already past the first one, I can make it" was made... at speed unknown, redline approaching, more importantly truck approaching, the car begins to vibrate violently with a distressing RAAAAKKRAKAKAAAAAKKKKKAAAAARRRKKKK noise. Power begins to drop off. I keep the throttle planted, praying to whichever deity was willing to listen and ducked in front of the 7.5 tonner with very little space to spare. The artic had all his lights on and the 7.5 tonner was laying on the two-tone by that point. Pulled up at the traffic light, heart pounding, engine making distressing noises at idle. Drove off gently, nursing the poor vehicle to town.

 

Later inspection found that whoever had assembled the engine and gearbox before I got the car had attached the torque converter to the flex plate with a number of wrong size bolts, chopped with an angle grinder and not rated for anything above kitchen door hinges. Two had come out completely, one was loose to the point there were about 3 threads showing (the source of the noise, the head was hitting the back of the engine) and the fourth was finger tight.

 

Another memorable one was in the aforementioned Fiat, headed a similar direction on the A37 into Bristol. All was well, pretty summer afternoon. The route this way is mostly uphill, or flat. Headed into Hengrove, you hit this downhill section which is fairly steep.

I was about here, approaching the traffic light. http://goo.gl/maps/ePCHc. I'm off the throttle, in third gear slowing down on the engine when the car in front decides at the last moment to take a right and stop in my lane. The light has just changed red so I check my mirror, put my foot on the brake and the pedal goes straight to the floor with a SQUNNNDDTTCH noise. No braking occurs.

 

Rapidly headed towards the intersection where one lane is blocked and the traffic is crossing across the road, I'm rapidly running out of options. Above 5mph first wasn't engage-able, even when new, the handbrake was less effective than opening the door and putting a foot down on the floor...Anyone who has owned a Fiat Panda, Uno or Cinquecento will attest to how utterly dire the handbrake is (Think the Triumph on the Top Gear Road Tests episode) so that was straight out of the window as an option.

 

In a panic, I pumped the brake pedal a few times and got a semblance of stopping power back. Pulled over in front of the shops on the left. I think what is the reptile shop was back then a piano store. I got out, took a look and my right rear wheel was smoking. The rear brake mechanism had jammed on just enough to heat the drum up and boil the fluid all the way back to the master cylinder. Luckily pumping the brakes resumed service on the other half of the brake system. Went inside and asked the shop guy if I could jack my car up on his lot and he agreed. Freed the brake up after it had cooled and continued my journey. Got home and bled the brakes...

 

Various other fun times, like a brown trousers moment where the points slipped and closed up on my Hillman, turning a roaring 1592cc powerhouse into a burning fireworks factory whilst trying to pass cars up, other more minor brown-trousers moments like torque steer in an Escort RS Turbo generated by hitting the verge on the wrong side of the street whilst hard on the loud pedal.

 

Come to think of it, most of my "moments" involve passing cars up on the wrong side of the road. This is why I bought a car with 375hp. So I can scare myself at even higher speeds. I must be nuts.

 

--Phil

[garethj]

I've had a few which would have been horrific injuries, but only a couple that were close to death.

 

a. The bike one, near miss

b. The car one, not a miss

 

a. I was going very, very fast on the motorway, but it was quiet and I was pretty safe in lane 3 because there was nothing even in lane 2, just a very few cars in lane 1.  It was fine.

 

But at very high speeds things change quite quickly and soon there was a van in lane 2.  In the time I thought about lifting off, he'd pulled into lane 3 and I hit the brakes.  I managed to scrub off about 60mph which still left a closing speed of about 40mph, I didn't think there was enough space to squeeze through on the right but thankfully he saw me and pulled back into lane 2 otherwise I'd have been through his back doors and not in the euphemism way.

 

b. I don't want this to sound like a bleating excuse about how it wasn't my fault but driving down a dual carriageway the last place you look for trouble is from the opposite carriageway.  I'd just dropped mrs_garethj and the kids at the airport and was driving back home in the family Mitsubishi Galant.  I was doing 65-70mph and had just overtaken a bus when I saw some dirt get kicked up from the central reservation.  There was no barrier between the carriageways, but the central reservation was grass about 10 yards wide.

 

Time slows down in these situations and I thought "Hit the br..." that was all I had time for when the car which had slithered across the central reservation hit me in the front corner.  I'd obviously closed my eyes for the bang and when I opened them I saw the road coming up to face me through the windscreen, that's not a nice thing.  I don't know how many times the car rolled over but you dissipate a lot of energy at 70mph and I eventually came to rest with the car on the passenger's side.  I braced my foot on the centre console, took the seatbelt off and hopped out through the smashed driver's window.

 

There wasn't a single straight panel on the car, all the airbags went off (about 10 of them) and it had shed all of its glass, one of its wheels and about 100 yards of plastic bits over the road.  I had a slightly bad cut on my hand, which needed a plaster.  I had lots of tiny cuts over me from the flying glass, but apart from a few aches over the next few days I was perfectly alright.

 

If you're going to crash, come to a stop over a hundred yards if possible.  It's a lot better than hitting a tree and doing 70mph to zero in 4 feet.  Or better still, don't crash, that's a lot better.

[catsinthewelder]

I've been bloody lucky not to die horribly over the years and now generally drive fairly slowly.

 

The worst of many motorbike near misses came on the way home from a nightshift at 7am.  It was pissing down and I was riding a 400cc Bandit with bald tyres accross Milburngate bridge in Durham at about 70mph.  The bridge has 2 lanes in each direction and a 40mph speed limit so the artic I was about to overtake can be forgiven for pulling out into the righthand lane ready to turn at the next roundabout.  I hit the brakes hard and found myself very sideways on the wrong side of the road with cars coming the other way.  I did manage to tuck myself behind the truck before they hit me but the back of the bike had been in all four lanes by that point.

 

The first car one that shit me up was a 10pm trip home from work in a Fiat Tipo.  Darkness can give you a certain degree of overconfidence on single track lanes as main beam headlamps coming the other way start to convince you that you can see around corners.  There was a sharp crest just after a bend on my journey home that was just too tempting not to jump the car on.  I held out for months but one day I tried,  took the corner at 50ish and launched over the crest only too see 4 dipped headlamps coming the other way.  The Tipo hit the deck with all four wheels already locked up and stopped in a cload of tyre smoke (after what felt like several minutes) about a foot from the front bumper of a red 316 touring,  after about a minute my body started working again and I dipped my lights and reversed into the passing place a few metres behind breathing a sigh of relief.

 

The next was for a change on the way to work,  I was late and driving a blue, L reg 205 diesel.  I pulled up at a T junction onto a trunk road and waited for several minutes while an enormous queue of northbound traffic passed with the southbound lane completely deserted,  the last vehicle in the queue was an articulated truck with a box trailer.  Looking left just before the truck came I could see a Royal Mail 7.5T truck about 1/4 of a mile away with what looked like a big queue of cars behind.  Foolishly I decided to nail it out as soon as the artic came past to get out in front of the other queue of traffic and mis-judged things fairly epically.  An N/A diesel 205 is not the quickest car in the world at the best of times and this was about the worst of times to fudge a gear-shift and get 4th instead of 2nd.  The truck was going a lot faster than I'd anticipated so I threw the pug straight into a bus stop on the other side of the road while the truck whistled past with the horn blaring.

 

That finally taught me to stop being a twat.

[jakebullet]

Does the old classic of finding yourself stuck under a car that you've just set on fire by welding count? Done that way too many times.