"Uh-oh!" moments behind the wheel?

[hardcore302]

My worst, turned out ok:

In one of the counties of NYC, Queens County, there is a major road called, appropriately, Queens boulevard. I believe four lanes, each way, and a two lane service road, each way. Islands complete with black iron fences about waist high separate them.

We know it as the boulevard of death, as it has been dubbed by the news. Impatient New Yorkers cannot wait for the signal to walk, or just hop over the barriers. Hundreds of pedestrians have been killed, and it's almost alwas at the fault of the pedestrian.

I patrol most of Queens blvd, depending on assignment. I once saw a woman's legs severed by a truck, because she couldn't wait for the walk signal.

Now to my uh oh moment:

Rape in progress comes over about a half mile north of my location on QB. 40 MPH limit. I want to get to the job quick, but in NYC, with so many people, even at 1AM (my case), you can drive fast in your cruiser, but don't be reckless. So I do about 65, light sirens.

Out of the corner of my eye, at the last second, I see a woman staring at her phone, headphones on, a real space cadet, completely oblivious to the Vic with lights and sirens, and I missed her by INCHES. She would have been obliterated, and the way liberal NYC is, somehow it would have been my fault. Happens all the time.

I swerve, miss the barrier, and wind up facing the opposite direction, while she stands in the middle of the road, in disbelief, cars honking.

She hopped over three barriers, no walk sign, middle of the road, on the cell phone. I was less than friendly.

 

[Camu Mahubah]

Wow I couldn't imagine driving in NYC. I get stressed out in my little town...

Yah I'd prolly take the bus. Or I'd walk but I'm usually a good pedestrian cause I don't wanna end up dead...

 

[JT1]

Tow truck covering 1.5 lanes on a two lane country rd. pulling some poor feller out of the ditch in a total white out/ pitch black night time. Seems as if he ended up in that ditch due to a 100 yd patch of black ice, you may ask how I know this ice was there, well I happened to end up skidding accross this black ice as I narrowly avoided the tow truck that I could barely see even with it's strobes flashing.

So all in all I narrowly avoided the truck, crossed into an on-coming lane(the half that wasn't blocked), while in the dark of the night with ZERO traction. I was probably as white as the ghost I almost became!

 

[The_Jeff]

I figure my "win" ratio of avoiding other idiots compared to stuff I've done is about 30:1.

In a walmart parking lot of all places I was impatient and went too fast around a gentle corner in snow & ice. Lead to a 4 wheel drift into an opposing lane; oncoming traffic had to "ditch" into a parking spot.

I wonder if densely populated urban residents get immune to the sound of sirens, as you can typically hear one echoing from blocks away anytime if you listen hard enough.

 

[tinmanSC]

Northern Illinois, middle of winter. We just had a major ice storm, it was hard to get anywhere. I had tried to drive my RWD Lexus SC, no go. Not a chance. I got about a block and a half away from my house and I had to turn around. I got my FWD Grand Prix out. The Grand Prix didn't have any heat, hence my reluctance to drive it. Anyway, I'm driving around, freezing my butt off, I come to a stop sign... I hit the brake... and the wheels stop spinning. That's really all that happens. Just the wheels stop. The car doesn't. At that moment, the ABS light (low-trac actually on GM cars) comes on and the ABS starts pounding away. It's a 4-way stop and I'm thinking about ditching the car into the snow on the right side if i cannot stop. When, out of the corner of my eye, what do I see? A crown vic, with "Police" on the side of it, and red and blue lights on the top. I already know by now that I cannot stop before the sign... and amazingly, HE CAN'T EITHER! Nothing we can do, I'm convinced we are going to hit each other, Just then my tires get something resembling traction (ABS to the rescue!), i move the wheel a few degrees, it was just enough. We both sail through the intersection coming within inches of each other. We grinned at each other while we passed. I then went home and changed my pants.

 

[Camu Mahubah]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
I figure my "win" ratio of avoiding other idiots compared to stuff I've done is about 30:1.

In a walmart parking lot of all places I was impatient and went too fast around a gentle corner in snow & ice. Lead to a 4 wheel drift into an opposing lane; oncoming traffic had to "ditch" into a parking spot.

I wonder if densely populated urban residents get immune to the sound of sirens, as you can typically hear one echoing from blocks away anytime if you listen hard enough.


I was pretty much immune to sirens when I lived in Lakeland, Florida.

 

[NateDN10]

Another winter story.

It was about 5 degrees F out. We had gotten some snow the night before, but not much. The roads were mostly plowed. They either didn't salt the roads, or it was to cold to do any good. Anyhow, traffic was moving about 45mph because of the conditions, but there was a good amount of traffic. At a bend in the interstate, people started braking to slow down. I tapped the brakes and felt the rear of my car start to slide. Let off the brakes and tried to bring it back in line, but it was too late. My car doesn't have ABS, so I tried pumping the brakes. I started sliding sideways and all I remember is sliding facing backwards and winding up in the shoulder. Amazingly, there wasn't anyone immediately behind me and no damage was done. It was scary though.

 

[calvin1]

Thinking through my clench-inducing moments one in particular comes to mind. I'm on a major city street that is just four ruts, two in either direction, and using the road outside of those ruts is impossible so traffic is locked into those two paths rolling along at about 20MPH. I'm driving my '95 Bronco and my wife is in the passenger seat. Urbanites have this idiotic tendency to use the street rather than the sidewalk during the winter because usually the street is clearer. I look ahead and see some dips**t walking down the street and he's at most 12 inches from traffic. The problem is that the Hondas and even Buicks have been passing him okay but I'm sure to be the widest vehicle that's tried to get around him so far. With the road iced over and the very short time between when I saw him and when I passed him there's absolutely nothing I can do except pray. If I'd tried to take evasive maneuvers I'd most likely have blasted him sideways. I clenched as I got right up to him and fixed my stare straight ahead; I want to preserve as much plausible deniability for the court room as I can. My wife didn't notice him until his head went by the mirror and I looked over afterwards and she was ghost white. She claims we missed the fool by about an inch and a half.

 

[rpn453]

My scariest driving incident came when I was driving through a good snowfall on a mountain pass last winter. The roads were slippery and snow-covered, so I had decided to not exceed the posted limits on the curves. Normal speed limit was 90 km/hr. Curves were often posted at 70 or 60. I had plenty of traction at those cornering speeds and felt safe (studded Cooper Weathermasters). Then, I came upon a more heavily marked curve with bigger signs, but the limit was still 60 so I took it at 60. It was a long, slow downhill curve and as the radius began decreasing I was already at full understeer, spinning the front tires just a bit to keep them digging in the direction I wanted to go and slowly drifting toward the guardrail while hoping that the curve wouldn't get any tighter. I got to about two feet from the guard rail, the curve radius leveled off, and I continued to understeer beside the guardrail for a bit. When we got back on the following straight, my buddy in the passenger seat commented that he was surprised that I chose to drive so close to the guardrail. He hadn't realized that it wasn't by choice and that I was in an understeer condition the whole way, so at least I only scared myself! It wasn't really anything too crazy, considering that it would only have resulted in body damage if I had kissed the guard rail, but it happened so slowly that I had plenty of time to get nervous. Looking back, there was an element of fun in driving at the limit for such a long stretch, making fine adjustments to the throttle to change the amount of understeer. I wasn't really enjoying it at the time though.

 

[sciphi]

I was merging onto I-26 from I-95 one night back when I lived in SC. There's a nasty accident with lots of police and emergency vehicles everywhere. I'm pulling as wide as possible around it while attempting to merge with the 70 mph traffic. A police cruiser blithely pulls out right in front of me when I'm doing about 45 and accelerating as hard as the Buick could to avoid the 18-wheeler who is barreling up my tailpipe. Thankfully I made it to the shoulder in time to avoid the slowly-moving cruiser and let the 18-wheeler sail past. No harm to anybody, thankfully.

Another time when I was driving the Buick fully loaded on the I-290 around Buffalo, NY, some Canuck in a new SUV blew a "Yield" sign in some construction doing maybe 30 mph a couple hundred feet in front of me when I was doing 50 mph through this super-narrow construction site. I braked as hard the Buick's brakes would allow, ending up just inches away from the guys bumper. Thankfully the delivery truck behind me was far enough back to slow in time. My heart rate didn't return to normal for a while after.

 

[AuthorEditor]

Middle of the winter on Rt. 2 in Massachusetts, clear road, no weather, coming over the summit of Mt. Greylock at about 50 mph when I pop over a rise and the road is full of cars pointing in all different directions and people wandering around between various accidents. I hit the brakes and discover the road is completely glare black ice as my VW Dasher wagon whips around 180 degrees and I let off the brakes to proceed backwards down Rt. 2 at slightly less than 50 mph with people diving out of the way. Went through everyone without hitting them, missed all the cars, then slid off the road backwards until I came to rest in the ditch. Throughout all this my sister, riding shotgun, kept calling out my name, and I kept saying, "We're all right, we're all right, we're all right."

 

[01rangerxl]

I've had LOTS of uh oh moments.

A while back I was in the left lane on a four lane major road. Shortly after crossing an intersection, a fire truck responding to a call turns on to the road behind me. I wanted to get over into the right lane, but there was a car next to me. They would not help me out at all - when I sped up they did too, when I slowed down they did too. I have no idea what the motivation behind this behavior was, but it should have been pretty obvious to anyone with some amount of vision and two or three working brain cells that I needed to get out of the way of the fire truck. At this point the fire truck was moving up behind me quick, so I just went for the grass/dirt median doing about 50 MPH. It was interesting. I found a lot of grass in the grille and radiator the next day, and my head hit the roof of the cab. There are a lot of ruts and ditches in this median, so it's good I didn't hit any big ones. The truck was undamaged. Once there was a break in traffic I pulled back on the road and headed on my way.

A similar incident happened when I had my Explorer. A '67-'72 F-100 in front of me was way overloaded with car bumpers. They were stacked above the cab and not well secured. The inevitable happened, and a bumper came off the truck and landed directly in front of my Explorer as I was doing 70-75 MPH on the interstate. There were cars everywhere, so the median was my only choice. I hit it doing no less than 65 MPH, and it was a grass/dirt median. The Explorer responded surprisingly well. It just plowed through the median and I pulled back on the interstate without even stopping.

I had lots of close calls with my old truck as well. I was at school the first time it snowed while I had my driver's license. I had my 2.5L manual trans Ranger at the time, and couldn't resist temptation. I punched the gas leaving the school entrance at lunch, and the truck almost immediately did a 180* turn. Later that day I sailed through a couple stop signs and did some other dumb stuff. Nothing like a 2WD pickup, parents at work, and your first snow day with a driver's license.

 

[CROWNVIC4LIFE]

After living in New York City the bulk of my life I would much rather drive in NYC then Miami any day...Every roadway and highway down here is a suicide run.

 

[Spazdog]

A 2000+ Taurus driver decided that he was about to miss his exit so he made a hard right....
...from the far left lane at 60+ mph.

This of course whipped him in front of me in the right center lane with his tires screaming.

He didn't make the exit at all. Not even close. But he did slam into the wall which sent him spinning further back into traffic right in front of me.

I was braking fairly hard but then looked up into my rearview mirror and noticed the cab-over truck RIGHT FREAKIN' ON TOP OF ME!
Check right and crank wheel hard right. Punch it!

Fortunately, my Mazda is quite a bit more agile than the Taurus.
Unfortunately, the Taurus does not have my car as a buffer between it at the many tons of oncoming Semi.

I hit the next exit and went back to check for injuries. A very angry looking prison tatted Cholo was yelling and gesturing at the cab of the truck. He was not seriously injured from the looks of things, a testimony to his Taurus' surviveability more than his driving ability. He said some threatening things to me when I asked him if he was okay so I drove off and reported the incident.

Took me about a minute to extract the seat cover from the seat of my pants clinch.

 

[ediamiam]

coming down highway 50 in winter, from Lake Tahoe, catching a patch of black ice on a hairpin turn, tapping the brakes, losing control and having the car spin around in a 180. almost hit the guard rail and if i went over, they would have found me in the spring time after i thawed out.

 

[Nick R]

Had quite a few of these. This past winter I was pulling into the school parking lot, which is about 125ft long, very slight downhill. At the end is a left turn, ahead is a parking space and a rail. Well, the road looked clear, and I was only doing like 5, 6mph. I hit the brakes to slow and stop for the traffic in front of me (parents dropping off kids) and..... nothing happens. ABS kicks on and I just keep sailing down. I was like "uh-oh" there were parallel parking lanes on the right, I slammed harder on the brakes nad cranked the wheel, and I stopped about halfway past her, on the right. If I hadn't turned, it wouldn't have been good. I went inside and told them to get their rear ends out with bags of salt.

First winter I drove, 3 years ago this winter, I was making a slight left from a stop sign, it was kind of a y intersection, I was making the left turn from the short part of the y, onto the long part. Well, I'm driving the expedition, I turn the wheel, I'm not going fast at all... Aaaannnnd it keeps going straight. Uh oh. I crank it more and tap the brakes, and end up with the passenger tire in the snowbank on the far side of the road.

And some yahoo decided to run out from one of the access roads connecting two sides of the highway, from behind a tree, sprinting across the road. Meanwhile, luckily it was light traffic, because here I am motoring along at about 72-75mph and I had to slam on my brakes and swerve to avoid hitting the friggin idiot.

And lastly, there was last week, when I SAW the buick coming towards me, and I saw him look up and I'm like "here it comes...." sure enough.... BAM. sonofa..... * Pounded my firsts on the horn, pulled to the side, and started yelling at the kid. I was not happy.

 

[ekpolk]

Hardcore:

Glad you made it through that one, without having to live with the memory of obliterating that boob (even if it would have been her fault...).

Maybe you can give me the LEO's speculative opinion on one of my memorable "uh-oh" moments that still baffles me, 25 years or so later.

Back in 1984, I was a flight student in the town I now call my permanent home. I was coming back from a Saturday date, late, driving my "high output" (190 hp from 5.0L -- hahaha) V-8 Trans-Am. I was heading down Navy Boulevard, the main drag leading to the front gate at NAS Pensacola, speed limit 35, doing at least 75 at about 2 a.m. I wasn't DUI, but any reasonable cop would/could have suspected that... Anyway, I wasn't paying attention, and realized about two car lengths back that I was about to pass a marked cruiser, with lightbar.

I didn't even bother with the brakes. I figured I was totally busted, if he wanted me -- nothing I could say on that one. I just kept going, waiting for those lights to come on.

To my utter amazement, they never did -- there was no reaction at all from the cruiser. He just kept cruising at about the limit. Being about two miles from the base, I just gradually, very gradually slowed, and a mile or so later, I saw him turn off. His blue lights weren't on, so I doubt he was headed for another emergency, but who knows.

Took me about two hours to come down from the adrenaline rush, and I still have no idea why I didn't suffer a billion-dollar traffic ticket??? Yup, that was an uh-oh moment alright.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: ediamiam
coming down highway 50 in winter, from Lake Tahoe, catching a patch of black ice on a hairpin turn, tapping the brakes, losing control and having the car spin around in a 180. almost hit the guard rail and if i went over, they would have found me in the spring time after i thawed out.


Oh stop being so pessimistic. Surely somebody would have noticed the breach in the guard rail. They'd have found you, fresh frozen and open-casket eligible!

 

[Colt45ws]

Not too long after I got my license, I understeered my old Cavalier into a curb one rainy day. Cost me a junk yard steelie.
Another time, after I got my Vic, I was driving down a 50MPH 4 lane road at about 11PM. My front bumper was just about even with the rear bumper of a white Caravan in the right lane and I was slowly pulling. As we are getting closer to a side street, all of a sudden the Caravan drops anchor. I cant even see anything off to the right because of where Im at so I do the same instinctively. Then I see a old Colt station wagon bound across the road, appearantly not stopping for a stop sign. The Caravan just missed it.
Probably more, but Ive forgotten.

 

[Fazzone]

When it comes to uh-oh moments, I've had my fair share. If I had to narrow it down, I'd say these were my worst. Years ago, I was working out of town and had to run and get product about an hour away. It was my last day and I was free to head home(6hr drive) so I was moving along. I pulled out to pass the car in front, and about the time I got even with him he sped up. Suddenly there's a oncoming car so I floored it, at which point the transmission blows. Now it wouldn't have been bad had the car behind me not decided to follow. I slammed on the brakes and somehow found a driveway to pull into in the nick of time. Ended up spending an extra 4 days down there.

Then there was the trailer incident. Both cousins were going racing up in Superior, so there dad took the trailer with no plates and I was told to stay right behind. Thing was that was the year they added a toolbox on the trailer which in turn forced the car to be put further to the back. We knew it had a tendancy to sway, but as long as you drove around 60 it was fine. Turns out the speedometer in their dads truck was about 10mph off. Got on the brand new highway(opened 3 days prior) and were on our way. Came over the first hill and suddenly the trailer took control. Tried everything to get it under control, but it had the old surge type brakes so I couldn't get the trailer back in line. Ended up loosing it and left skid marks from the right shoulder accross to the left and back to the exit ramp we landed on. Had 3 cars behind ne when it all went wrong. Somehow there had been a fire truck that just exited so he waited to see if we were ok. Ended up putting a small dent in the truck from a reflector I clipped and the trailed had a broken fender mount from the race car shifting on the trailer. Turned around, got the car back in place, switched trucks and went on our way just to get there and then get rained out. Needless to say, we all gained a healthy respect for towing, and both my cousin and I decided it was time for bigger trucks.

Lastly, this past winter, I had to go to a meeting in Madison with a manger from Rochester. We headed out with my truck since the roads were bad. Once we got into WI they were better. So I'm in the left lane going about 65 when I hit a patch of ice. Slid accross into the right lane and was headed for an overpass. Luckily I was able to correct it, but in thr process ended up sliding back into the left lane. My passenger had no clue how close we came to wrecking until I told him once we arrived.