Nice thread kit,
I've been in a LOT of trouble, but just little enough to not get slammed by insurance. Lets see:
95 Subaru impreza sedan - ditched twice, no damage, towed away from both by friends
My friend's 80's model buick skylark - I was driving and rear ended an overweight wench who slammed on her brakes for no apparent reason - she was on the phone with the police before she even pulled over. Left some of my friend's new paint job on her car which was wiped off with a paper towel but destroyed my friend's fiberglass front end. The police officer had to CONVINCE her she might have been injured in the accident (she said "no, I'm fine" several times while the cop said "are you SURE?", to which she eventually replied "welllll, my back hurts a little". The cop reported it as a "personal injury accident) she tried and failed to get an insurance settlement, and my friend already had a new front end he planned on putting on anyway. This incident somehow ended up with no ramifications whatsoever
.
93 Subaru legacy wagon - ditched once, no damage, drove out. My 1st speeding stop - It was a passing zone and a slow-moving loaded up contractor truck with a bunch of ladders on it, "offered" me a pass. I took it, and noticed some oncoming traffic coming in hot, so I sped up to finish my pass and get back in my lane. One of the cars in that incoming traffic was the po-po. Very unlucky. Got it reduced to moving violation.
Edit: oh yeah, I've never hit a deer, but a deer hit me on the drivers side of this car one time. Small dent and a few tufts of fur.
94 Ford F-150 (father's truck) - ripped a softball size hole in some lady's old fiberglass buick while in high school - left a note on her windshield and forked over a 1 or 2 hundred to fix it. Also rear ended another horrible old witch who stopped at the bottom of an on ramp for NO REASON on a slick day. There was no visible damage to her car, but she found some little pucker in the fender and managed to win $900 from my insurance. Awful person - deserved to be rear-ended by me :-P
93 Toyota corolla sedan - ditched once - This was awful - I was driving home late one night about a year and a half ago. I was driving home to my parents house where there's a reasonably large curve in the road. It was apparently a little slick, and with a couple ditched cars under my belt, controlled the car into a light landing gently into a ditch. I couldn't manage to get it out, and a passer-by stopped and offered her help. This failed, and I ran to my parents house about 3/4 mile away to get my father's truck to drag it out. Turns out the lady who helped me called the cops, and one was there waiting for me. He had a marine corps style haircut and a marine corps style attitude - he was a real prick. He convinced his self I had alcohol on my breath (I had some drinks MUCH earlier that night, but I was definitely not intoxicated). He also took the liberty of searching my vehicle without my consent, constantly spitting through the process. He then decided to keep me in the back of the police car for a while even though I was not under arrest. I was forced to pay a towtruck to pull my car out of the ditch even though I had my father's truck ready. My parents learned of the event by now, and arrived on the scene, as baffled as I was that I was required to hire a towtruck. They were not pissed - thank ****
. I got an awesome lawyer for this and ended up with no points on my license, the $100 for the towtruck, and a $275 fine - Still no bill from the lawyer to this day. My
real disdain for most cops began here.
Also in the 93 corolla - Second speeding ticket - totally legitimate, guilty, 79 in a 65 (huge downhill
) Got some points that were removed with defensive driving class I regularly go to for insurance discount.
My current 98 Civic - 3rd speeding ticket - sneaky school zone in Chittenango NY (fun fact: this is where L. Frank Baum, the creator of The Wizard of Oz, was from). this cop was really nice and saw that I was on my way to do a job at their local advance auto parts with my ladder, cabling, and tools. - let me off with a local traffic infraction that consisted only of a fine, no points, nothing involved with the state.
Since then I've been stopped numerous times (for driving too slow, for headlights, just for the hell of it) and never ticketed. some of the police were alright, some were obviously looking for trouble.
With all but my current car, I (may or may not) have parking tickets up the wazoo at a local university, where I am/was a volunteer DJ at their radio station, but not a student and therefore am effectively immune to their parking tickets - by now with overdue payment penalties, I've probably accrued over a thousand dollars in fines
. Not paying those
.
I've had several parking tickets in NYC and have been towed in NYC - an awful place to park - I try to avoid driving there at all now, but next time I park there and forever more, I'm taking photos of my car after parking.
Fun parking ticket facts: in some little towns that are essentially little pieces of San Francisco that someone dropped out of an airplane (like Asheville, NC and Ithaca, NY) the first parking ticket you get is a free warning. I've kept these as souvenirs.
Part of me is just plain unlucky, part of me has a will to stick it to authority, sometimes I just make honest mistakes. Luckily I've never been hurt, nor hurt anyone else.