How serious are you about driving safely? How many crashes have you had?

[MetroMPG]

Most people here probably know I used to teach defensive driving (long time ago, galaxy far away etc.).

I like to think I still take my driving more seriously than average.

What got me wondering about this was hearing someone talk about a crash where she rear-ended another car: the light turned green, traffic started accelerating, then the cars ahead in her lane unexpectedly stopped. She didn't stop as fast as the car in front. Bang.

Her first response was to blame her 2 year-old car for not having better brakes.

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Ever watch the TV series Mayday? (Aircraft crash investigations.) I love how they dig down to root causes. Turns out aircraft rarely have "accidents" (a word that suggests unpredictability/the whim of fate). Pilots generally admit and learn from their mistakes (when it's their fault) to improve safety.

None of this "my car should have had better brakes".

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I have a "too close for comfort" driving situation maybe every other year or so.

The last one was just a couple of months ago. While leaving a parking lot onto a 2-lane road, I was talking to a passenger about a building off to our left (see where this is going?), I looked right before I went but failed to notice the car coming from that way, at about 40 km/h = 25 mph.

Lucky #1: I noticed him after I started pulling out, so I stopped short before I actually got into his path. Lucky #2: he had seen me start to go and was already hard on the brakes - he wouldn't have hit me even if I had gotten in front of him.

He gave me a well-deserved dirty look as he proceeded past (slowly), but thankfully didn't blast his horn at me. I didn't need to hear it - I was already well aware I'd just made a bone-headed blunder!

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I've never been involved in a crash with another vehicle.

But I've had a few minor solo incidents, and now that I think of it, they were all in the snow or rain (hello ditch / curb!). All when I was younger.

Fortunately, no worse outcomes than messing up an alignment, one time popping a tire off the bead, or scraping against an icy snowbank.

I never blamed my car's tires. Root cause: speed too fast for conditions/available traction.

If one day I ever screw up enough to be involved in an actual crash, I hope I'll be willing to learn something from it.

[MetroMPG]

PS: happy most statistically dangerous day to drive in the U.S.A.


..

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Haven't had any crash, not even some minor incident, for the last 12 years. None of them so serious at all anyway.

[redpoint5]

Lots of incidents due to my risk taking behavior.

Took a 90 degree corner going 45 MPH in a VW Bug the night before beginning my senior year of highschool. Ended up on the side in a farm field with a busted side window and a tire pulled off the bead. Lucky for Dan Simonton, we were on the way to TP his house. Had to crawl straight up to get out of the car, then push it back onto its wheels, then put the spare tire on.

Lots and lots and lots of close calls, stuck in snow (days of my life spent shoveling, putting chains on/off), stuck in ditches, high-centers.

Hit the front end of a Bronco with the rear end of my Subaru (pit maneuver on myself) once while emergency swerving to avoid a guy I couldn't see until the last second (lights off at night, in a rainstorm). I spun 360 and maintained my lane, the Bronco driver drove his car off the freeway, through the bushes, and into the safety wires. I shouldn't have been doing 85 MPH.

I'm a very skilled driver, mostly due to having pushed the limits of every vehicle I've had in my youth, in every environment I encountered. I was at higher risk of accident due to my risk taking in the past, but a lower risk now due to driver skill. You'll never hear me say I ran my car off the road trying to avoid a deer.

Bad brakes is a BS excuse, and I wouldn't let anyone get away with that. Modern cars can brake so hard they lock all 4 tires up, unless there is something seriously wrong with the braking system. Since brakes are capable of locking up the wheels, tire choice is what affects stopping distances.

Air crash disasters are my favorite thing to watch because the cause is so thoroughly studied, and often involves a series of very unlikely events that conspired to confuse the pilot.

EDIT: Do we include not at fault incidents? Been rear-ended twice and backed into once.

I don't know how people get into crashes while driving normally. Every single close call or crash has been due to driving at extreme limits. I've never had a close call when driving speed limits, and using normal acceleration and cornering speeds.

[ksa8907]

Can we consider per mile/kilometer?

Roughly 225k miles in 12 years I have had:
One single vehicle accident in the ice and snow
One rear end accident (i was rear ended)

I too, drive defensively. Employers really push Smith 5.


Edit: maybe more, that's just counting the cars I owned, miles not wrecks

[Xist]

I have rear-ended three vehicles in twenty-two years, sideswiped a teenager in a bus, and knocked another teenager (I hope!) into two other vehicles in another bus (I hope!).

What would be the odds of me hitting the same teenager twice in the same bus?

1. I was distracted (and stupid).
2. I was distracted (and stupid).
3. I was distracted (and stupid).
4. I was accelerating from a stop sign and the teen ran a stop sign on the wrong side of the road. I did not have time to react.
5. The teenager actually knocked me into oncoming traffic with his pickup. I knocked him into two other vehicles when I swerved out of incoming traffic.

I do not know what happened immediately before I was involved in the pinball game, but I must wonder how hard his 3,500-pound vehicle hit my 30,000-pound vehicle, and how we ended up with three vehicles in two lanes.

Consequences:
1. The guy got out, looked at our bumpers, got back into his car, and drove off.
2. The bolts in my vanity plate gouged her bumper cover and I had my insurance pay for it. Having a dealership replace the bumper probably would have been cheaper. I would not have known how to look up a body shop back in 2002. I barely had a cell phone back then and the crazy thing didn't do anything besides place and receive calls!
3. The guy said it wasn't bad enough to worry about.
4. The police did not cite me.
5. The police did not cite me.

Two different people broke mirrors on the same side of my Civic. I looked up the part and the lady wrote a check for $50 more and then I installed one from a junkyard. The second one dragged it out as long as possible. At least thirty e-mails went back and forth, he asked me all kinds of irrelevant questions and I kept telling him "I gave you the part number. Pay for my mirror!" He finally ordered me an aftermarket one for about what I paid for the used one.

Then there was the full-sized work van that rear-ended me on the freeway when I stopped for the SUV in front of me. He replaced the bumper cover himself, but I am not impressed with his work.

I almost forgot, when I was in high school I must have started the car with my foot on the accelerator instead of the clutch. All that I knew was that I was suddenly on a curb and everything was wrong. I blew the tire and bent the frame. It turns out that changing tires is self-explanatory.

Also, I was hit by an elk while driving under the speed limit. I never saw him coming.

Edit: One time a woman pulled into my lane and scratched my car while both of us were turning left. I pulled over, she kept going, I called 911, and they said "You waved her on."
"I absolutely did not."

Another time some guy freaked out and flipped me off when I came to a full stop at a stop sign. A block later there was another stop sign and he rear-ended me. I pulled over, he yelled at me and drove off, I called in his license plate number, and they told me to wait for an officer. Half an hour later someone showed up and said "You got the plate wrong."
"Did you try..."
"Yeah, we tried."

[Vman455]

I've been rear-ended twice, so nothing my fault. I prefer to keep risky driving on the autocross course, and I recommend everyone else do the same--you can't explore the limits of your car in a safer environment.

The first one, I was stopped at a light, and had been stopped for maybe half a minute, and the woman coming up behind me didn't even brake; she slammed my car into the BMW in front of me, and both her airbags deployed. I will say her insurance company, Progressive, was actually very nice to work with; they had me in a rental car the very next day and took care of everything with no hassle.

My first wreck happened when I was 8; riding with my dad, a drunk guy turned left just in front of us into a shopping center entrance. I remember my father saying, "Hold on!" just before we hit him broadside. My father always drove cheap compact 2WD Japanese pickups, so there wasn't enough crash energy to do much damage.

[gumby79]

Las time in the ditch '99

Trading paint 02 (ranger reclip the front drove it home on field fixes and creek water) 35 in a 10mph unmarked corner hit some gravel that made me cross the yelow line. thank you sir for driving your same year make and model down the hill and meeting me in the corner. yeah cost me an insurance claim but it kept me from going off a 200-foot cliff( that part of the Sierra National Forest has people that have been waiting decades for them and their cars to be found had a tow driver tell me about finding three cars before you found the one guy he was after seatbelts don't always save lives but it makes it easier to find the parts)

Rearended 1x 06 I was even driving defensively in front I knew I had a left turn into a sharp driveway coming up I tried to get him to back off but he just kept hugging me from the back side ( AA traction rating out stops a B)

Near miss my fault . Usualy like red said testing.
Find the limit and the correction for going past it in practice instead of when it counts and there's other cars and lives on the line. I've never owned a car that I couldn't pull out of a slide, side effects of testing.

Growing up in the San Joaquin Valley fog, two colors statistically improve your chances of a crash due to being invisible white and gray daytime running lights reduced this. I would turn down my dream car if it was painted Gray.

Near miss other people, stoped keeping track
On 1 such event my ex wife once was harassing me because I was stopping on a ice covered roadway me just stopping in the middle of the street for no apparent reason and then she saw the car slide by in front of us all four locked upabs going nuts doing about 25 miles an hour the Jeep Cherokee built momentum as it slid down the hill and I knew it wasn't going to stop; (I could stop safely or get t-boned in her door. ) . As they went by I gently nodded my head and waved saying I understand as the other driver went by saying thank you I don't know what I would have done if you had not stop. and she asked me how I knew that that was getting ready to happen and prevent it. You pay attention to anything that's moving when you drive the rear gun truck. the side effects of PTSD are not always undesired
it's nice when you make a blender and the guy that caught you doesn't make a big stink of it , and just acknowledges incidents occur and accidents are made to happen.
Metro is it only a major if the hook is called? If so then only 1 crash and 3 stucks life time

[Xist]

February 17 1986 Mom was driving us in her Toyota Corona wagon. A truck slammed on his brakes and she did not stop in-time. I am sure that car would have been much better than the Plymouth that replaced it.

[Stubby79]

I crashed my first car when I was 19. Bald tires on the back, going around a tight corner on a canyon "highway", back end lost grip...my fault for trying to keep up with traffic, rather than driving at what I felt comfortable doing. Car was totaled, I was very lucky to be able to walk away. Lesson learned.

I haven't crashed since. I did rear-end someone in my mid 20's because, rather like your example, I didn't expect the car ahead of me to stop suddenly when the light went green. No damage done except the imprint of the bolts that held on his rear license plate on the bumper cover of my car. Don't really consider it a crash since there was no real damage, but it was a nice little lesson/reminder.

I've had the occasional close call when I misjudged the situation. Like I almost rear-ended someone when I came in too fast behind them and they stopped for the light, because there was grit on the road and slamming on my brakes only made me instantly skid. (I steered out of that one instead). Had similar issues in the rain, once in a blue moon. My "new" daily driver has ABS, thankfully, so that shouldn't be such an issue...I hope.

My usual, patient driving style means I don't have to worry about such things. Don't drive angry or impatient. Chill. Get home safe.