Near miss ( worst crash witnessed or been in)

[needforspeed]

Just seen a very near miss by a Toyota aygo and a transit, which got me thinking about the last major accident i witnessed

Only ever seen 1 proper accident which will stay with me...it was about 21 yrs ago i was about 8 and on way to school whwn a Renault 5 (turned out to be stolen)

Crashed head on into a bus, it was a routmaster type bus.the Renault was litrally destroyed on impact. Wedging itself fully under front of bus.

Guy was killed and bus driver injured. No passengers on bus thankfully as bus was returning to depot.

 

So anyone else witnessed or been involved in any bad ones and can tell the tale.?

[bub2006]

School inset day. Dad step-up,sister going for meal in dad's mk3 granada. Coming across top of Skegby a car cut him up,hit black ice and spun a few times in middle of road. Slid into a parked 3 series bmw completely folding the granny around the back end of the BMW. We all lived bar some bruising and stepmum broke her collar bone. My worst one was the one mentioned on here. Not bad but still shook me up

[UltraWomble]

1987 I was a rear seat passenger in a Capri that broke up after going out of control on the M6 near Wigan.

 

I suffered severe burns to my right leg, bollocks ( no shit) and minor burns to hands and face and a fractured tib & fib on my right leg - which is one of the reasons today I still have problems with my right leg as the circulation is shit. 

 

Front seat passenger (Andy) died in the impact. Driver got away with a broken clavicle and wrist. Chap next to me (John) broke both legs but avoided getting his pants melted to him as he was wearing jeans.

 

Turns out the Capri had been previously in a bad smash and badly repaired which is why it broke up.

 

30 years on I still have issues with my leg:

[vulgalour]

I reversed into a house once.

[xtriple]

Do bike accidents count? I have had LOADS!

 

I was going back to Loughborough Uni' one Friday night and it was snowing... not just a gentle covering, proper foot deep stuff and getting worse.  It took me about three hours to do twenty miles and I was getting really scared/stressed but I carried on (hot date waiting!) and I got to a roundabout where you turn right for Nottingham and go straight on up a hill towards Loughborough and so went straight on. Suddenly, the snow cleared, like gone completely! So I booted it to make up for lost time and as I got over the brow of the hill, there was the snow, straight line, no snow one side 18 inches deep the other! So I hit it and some speed and spun instantly... there was an artic coming towards me with a line of cars behind it and I missed the lot and slid down the bank coming to rest with the passenger side rear wing about six inches from a very solid tree and the boot about the same from a brick wall.... I hit, precisely, nothing!

 

But, I did rip the exhaust off and there was no chance of getting the car out of the ditch son arctic conditions I had to hitch back to uni! Got the car recovered the next day and got  a mate to run me down there to pick it and it really was unmarked apart from sounding like a chieftain tank!

 

The car was a Honda S800 coupe in black, I loved that little car but by hell, did it suffer in my families hands - my stepDad wrote it off about a year later when I lent it to him for a day!

[RichardK]

Two "lift off oversteer" moments for other drivers - one, a German-based squaddie in a LHD 306 Cabriolet - overcooked it on the roads near Lauder and rolled it so violently the rear window popped. Car landed in a tree, LHD square into the trunk, and fell out. Side airbags and thick sills saved him, I think, and the door fell off the hinges to emergency access was good.

 

I would guess he'd been doing about 85; the bend was one that in a very similar 306 Cabriolet, I would shy away at around that speed as the throttle control went from subtle to "whoops" and if you overcorrected or clipped the kerb... well, those would be the results. Was still impressed that it had rolled so fast it burst the roof (window) like a balloon.

 

And a Mk 3 Cavalier on the top of Carter Barr, near the animal shelter/kennels. Weather was poor and I think they hit ice, the car slid out, then fired headlong into a ditch, flipping onto the roof.

 

In both of these cases, the people in the cars were fundamentally unhurt.

 

I've had three crashes, and one counts as a near miss. First was at college, when a fellow student decided to "impress" the students getting onto the buses and accelerated from one car park, flat out, right into the rear side of my van coming out of the other carpark. Skidmarks suggested a speed over 40mph whilst passing a line of buses and students.

 

Second, a newly acquired Beetle had faulty heat exchangers. Passed out, only came to because the ragtop popped open. Mentioned that before, i think.

 

And finally, after a late night collecting parents from a long-delayed flight, got back around 5am in the Cherokee and decided I'd take my XR4x4 home instead. 2 miles. Road I knew better than the back of my hand. Not being daft, just 50 in NSL, when either a tight spot on the rack (that had been showing up, but not diagnosed) or simply hitting black ice caused the car to slide. 5am. Tired. Lost which way I'd spun, went to power out of the slide but aimed the car wrong, leaving skidmarks for a healthy distance that were as far apart as the car was wide. When it regained traction I'd got the steering in the right place, but not enough road and it fired into a hedge. Not a straight panel on it and the crossmember below the radiator was almost inside the sump. Walked away from it, the police showed up, and before they'd even had time to suss it out they'd slipped over themselves.

 

Helpfully, half Kelso's boy racers had gone "Oh, an XR4x4, you'll never make that slide", presumably having seen how I drove my Capris then...

[Matt]

Thankfully I've never been in or witnessed anything particularly serious. Touch wood that stays true for a long, long time.

 

Worst I've seen was the aftermath of a head on from a distance in which one occupant only suffered a broken leg (because modern cars). Worst I've been in was when my dad pulled out on a local in a supermarket car park in France. They were in a MK1 Clio and we were in a MK1 Scenic so it was basically nothing to us.

[Ghosty]

Nearly been knocked off my bike and broken a leg twice lately, one was a lucky escape and my own fault, the other was a twunt in an SLK that didn't give way to the right on a mini roundabout for some reason and just kept going.

Cycling is a massive PITA sometimes.

[plasticvandan]

Only the one thankfully,and the sound of tarmac kissing fibreglass will haunt me forever

The volvo that fled the scene won that argument.

[RichardK]

Thankfully I've never been in or witnessed anything particularly serious. Touch wood that stays true for a long, long time.

 

Worst I've seen was the aftermath of a head on from a distance in which one occupant only suffered a broken leg (because modern cars). Worst I've been in was when my dad pulled out on a local in a supermarket car park in France. They were in a MK1 Clio and we were in a MK1 Scenic so it was basically nothing to us.

 

Worst aftermath I've ever seen would a be a toss up between the bike accident on the A71 where the emergency services were laying out a lot of towel sized covers instead of one bodybag, including covering a helmet complete with face still inside, or someone who REALLY screwed up the Dartford Tunnel where an upside-down Escort was clearly in a rough state before the jaws of life reached it, and the baby seat sat next to it looking similarly rough.

[Christine]

1987 I was a rear seat passenger in a Capri that broke up after going out of control on the M6 near Wigan.

 

I suffered severe burns to my right leg, bollocks ( no shit) and minor burns to hands and face and a fractured tib & fib on my right leg - which is one of the reasons today I still have problems with my right leg as the circulation is shit. 

 

Front seat passenger (Andy) died in the impact. Driver got away with a broken clavicle and wrist. Chap next to me (John) broke both legs but avoided getting his pants melted to him as he was wearing jeans.

 

Turns out the Capri had been previously in a bad smash and badly repaired which is why it broke up.

 

30 years on I still have issues with my leg:

 

 

You wanna pick that scab off mate, an let all the pus out..  Awesome !

[taxi paul]

Going over the cat and fiddle towards Buxton ,uphill in a slow wagon. When a Volvo overtook me and gave me the finger for holding him up I assume. He then booted it and I met up with him a couple of bends later stuck on a dry stone wall ,steam coming from front of car. Would have stopped to help but he was ok and the driver of the wagon he had hit on the way was helping* him. Worst thing I have seen was when dropping someone off at the hospital in my taxi and a lady stood outside the mental health unit. Shouted something then poured petrol over herself and set herself on fire. Poor lady not the way to go.

[dollywobbler]

I think my best near miss is when I was an over-eager 21-year old in my Subaru Impreza Sport. Yeah, not even a quick one. I still discovered lift-off oversteer on a twisty road near Balsall Common though. Not quick or clever enough to catch the slide, so we went flying over the wrong side of the road, smashed the front right corner into a tree, skidded sidewards on two wheels and landed facing the other way. If anyone had been travelling in the opposite direction, it would have been absolutely horrific. As it was, I merely left my girlfriend of the time with mental scars... What a twat.

 

My Peugeot 306 was quite unlucky. First off, I remember approaching a set of traffic lights on a dual carriageway (Hagley Road, Birmingham direction at Bearwood if anyone knows it). As I was coming up to pass a car approaching the green lights, an old lady suddenly appeared right in front of me, scuttling across the road. I mashed the brake pedal through the floor and in the ensuing skid, must have kissed the door of the car next to me. Somehow I missed her. That was one of those 'park up until the shaking stops' moments. 

 

Then there was the time a Renault Extra was driving towards me with a concrete post on the roof. Which fell off and took the door mirror straight off the car. That's a bit too close to my head for comfort.

 

Then there was the time the clutch cable failed and I got a tow from the AA. A bunch of twatty students decided to cross the road between me and the tow vehicle. A Vauxhall Brava can tow a 306 even when the brakes are applied! I got scratches down the bonnet from that. Idiots.

 

Worst car-to-car I've ever been involved in was when my 2CV got thumped up the arse by a Mondeo, punting us into a recovery truck. I count myself very lucky that I've never encountered anything worse than that. A sore neck and a severe case of the grumps was all I had to live with. The 2CV needed a fair bit of work mind. It was quite mangled. 

[needforspeed]

Going over the cat and fiddle towards Buxton ,uphill in a slow wagon. When a Volvo overtook me and gave me the finger for holding him up I assume. He then booted it and I met up with him a couple of bends later stuck on a dry stone wall ,steam coming from front of car. Would have stopped to help but he was ok and the driver of the wagon he had hit on the way was helping* him. Worst thing I have seen was when dropping someone off at the hospital in my taxi and a lady stood outside the mental health unit. Shouted something then poured petrol over herself and set herself on fire. Poor lady not the way to go.

Jesus christ, that is horrific.

[UltraWomble]

You wanna pick that scab off mate, an let all the pus out..  Awesome !

That is weeping pus.

For some reason whenever I become ill my leg breaks down and goes to shit. This time (and the worst of the lot) was due to a nasty Strep-G blood infection that I seem to have picked up from work. Im quite resigned to losing this leg at some point in the future, the surgeons have already hinted that its a possibility.

[needforspeed]

I remember my Dad telling me about a garage he worked for in the 80s had a metro van for getting parts,Tea etc lol.

Well 1 day they had an engine in the back and the owners son was to bring it back to the yard, he decided to go get pished (well it was the 80s) and drive it back after a "few" later,

Owner got a call saying son had crashed into a roundabout at speed ( basically a walled one) and the engine had came out through windscreen basically. Apparently his head was found on bonnet while rest of body was in footwell!

[Christine]

That is weeping pus.

For some reason whenever I become ill my leg breaks down and goes to shit. This time (and the worst of the lot) was due to a nasty Strep-G blood infection that I seem to have picked up from work. Im quite resigned to losing this leg at some point in the future, the surgeons have already hinted that its a possibility.

That looks ideal for the maggot treatment...?

[Lankytim]

A Capri broke up? wtf, the whole ordeal sounds terrible. 

[STUNO]

Many years ago (late 60's?) I saw the result of a head-on crash between a Humber Snipe and one of the earliest Honda Civics. Honda pair were both dead and partially hanging out the rear window/hatchback. The two in the Humber were cut and bruised but ok. This was on the Auckland harbour bridge and this and others lead to a moveable central barrier being put in place.

Something I will never forget seeing, but the barrier was no use when I got rear-ended on there a few years ago, fortunately I had left a good space in front so was not pushed under the truck in front.

[Barry Cade]

Couple of years back I forgot I was in Germany, and went head on with a Polo on a blind bend. Flew over the bonnet and landed on my feet. Polo was a bit injured but the ZZR still carried the wife and I home...

 

 

Worst thing I ever witnessed was one evening on the way home from work In my Mk1 Senator when I worked in MacRae and Dick in Dingwall. Travelling home to Tain just before Ken's Garage, a Fireblade came howling past, ducking in and out of the cars. A couple of cars ahead of me was an empty low loader,He pulled out to pass, and tried to pull in again as there was a Discovery coming the other way. He bounced off the low loader and swerved into the path of the Disco, and the Bullbar took his head, still in the helmet, clean off. The bike flew for a good few hundred yards, his body went one way coming to rest in the middle of the road and his head was at the kerbside, still strapped into the helmet. I had a few sleepless nights and nightmares for a while after that.

[Bone]

Do bike accidents count? I have had LOADS!

 

I was going back to Loughborough Uni' one Friday night and it was snowing... not just a gentle covering, proper foot deep stuff and getting worse.  It took me about three hours to do twenty miles and I was getting really scared/stressed but I carried on (hot date waiting!) and I got to a roundabout where you turn right for Nottingham and go straight on up a hill towards Loughborough and so went straight on. Suddenly, the snow cleared, like gone completely! So I booted it to make up for lost time and as I got over the brow of the hill, there was the snow, straight line, no snow one side 18 inches deep the other! So I hit it and some speed and spun instantly... there was an artic coming towards me with a line of cars behind it and I missed the lot and slid down the bank coming to rest with the passenger side rear wing about six inches from a very solid tree and the boot about the same from a brick wall.... I hit, precisely, nothing!

 

But, I did rip the exhaust off and there was no chance of getting the car out of the ditch son arctic conditions I had to hitch back to uni! Got the car recovered the next day and got  a mate to run me down there to pick it and it really was unmarked apart from sounding like a chieftain tank!

 

The car was a Honda S800 coupe in black, I loved that little car but by hell, did it suffer in my families hands - my stepDad wrote it off about a year later when I lent it to him for a day!

Sometime in the early 80's at a flat in Didsbury in Manchester. This guy we'd met in the pub earlier suggested going to the Kentucky, so after taking a few orders from the rest of us (all of us I think) he set off in the night in search of poultry. There was a generous covering of snow on the ground and because the take out was a good few miles away we assumed he had a car.

Hours later he returned with the battered and soggy remnants of of about a tenth of the amount he had gone for. It turned out that his choice of transportation was a Honda 400/4 that he claimed he had fell of 30 times on the snow during his quest. To be fair, his bike was battered to fucking pieces, so were his knees. 

[DavidB]

Seems very sad, a spouse/mother waiting for son/daughter/husband to come home with the tea in the oven and they never do.

[LessThanEqual]

Tried going over a roundabout with my driver's side window misted up to the point where I couldn't see out of it as I did not have a demister sponge in the car and nearly drove into the side of a red Vectra. If not for my godly* reactions I would've crashed my Polo. Needless to say I now keep a chamois sponge in my door card. I felt like such an idiot. Still do. As a matter of fact, I am.

[Mr A Lawrence]

2003 we're moving house from Ellesmere Port to flint. Using the then girlfriends (now wife) large Renault master parts van after work, last trip back to the port 2am we're sat at the lights at 2mills by the Honda garage when the missus suddenly drives up onto the path then a tealeaf in a mk4 escort rams up the arse of the ford pickup in front of us so hard it lifted the back wheels up off the road.

 

As we're all getting out check on everybody the scrote manages to start the now properly fucked escort and fucked off up the road leaving a trail of oil, water and other fluids in his wake.

 

The plod found it about a mile away.

 

Here's a couple of pics of stuff I collected when I was a recovery driver.

 

[omegod]

I don't like this thread, makes me sad. Manky leg pic was ace though 

[Barry Cade]

[Coprolalia]

Worst I've been in was getting T-boned exiting the big flyover roundabout near the UHW in Cardiff in other halfs Yaris. No witnesses, 50-50, knobs.

 

Profession means I tend to see aftermath now. NCAP has made a huge difference.

 

Worst I've come upon; grew up near the A272 in Sussex. Beautiful sweeping road popular with bikers. Coming along on our way back from Primary school a biker passes us doing over a ton. Few miles later all traffic is stopped.

Said bike gone over a blind crest and into side of sileage trailer coming out of a farm track. His torso was welded to the side of the trailer. Bike and legs nowhere to be seen. Grim.

[New POD]

on a twisty road near Balsall Common though.

 

https://goo.gl/maps/Zp4xtD3N7ew

<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m0!3m2!1sen!2suk!4v1447097330736!6m8!1m7!1sVbX-suzJlx1WfMOx_-B3rQ!2m2!1d52.383862668648!2d-1.644143378096425!3f237.12303952264938!4f-1.4345084745550878!5f0.7820865974627469" width="600" height="450" frameborder="0" style="border:0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

I was on a Z500 with my mate (Bob Ludwell) on the back doing macc 5 through an orange light, when an escort van coming the other way, almost turned right in front of us. He stopped with cm to spare, and I went into a bit of a tank slapper before regaining control.

The idea of commuting from Coventry to Redditch on a z500 via Tile hill Balsall common, Knowle, Dorrige and Hockley Heath, in order to avoid using the motorway was not a great plan now I think about it.

[eddyramrod]

This one, obviously....

Thankfully nobody was injured, least of all me.

 

In other news: December 1989 on the East Lancs Road, I overtook a cyclist (no bike path at that point) and looked in my mirror to make sure I'd cleared him... and saw the Escort van behind me mow him down.  The van scarpered (driver was drunk and on a ban).  The cyclist died.

Also... in 2001 a little girl (10-11 years old) ran out across the road through traffic.  I had the length of a Transit (she'd gone behind it) to stop a 1979 Cadillac from 25 mph.  When I hit her I was doing about 5 so I think I did pretty well.  She survived.

[purplebargeken]

Maybe 1984/85: Travelling home from work in Widnes along the main road from Glebe Garage to the right turn towards Sutton, St. Helens. Coach parked on the right hand side, parents waiting on the grass verge on my left. Gran and grand daughter step out from the coach and get hit full on. Gran died whilst we were working on her, grand daughter too. Not nice.