Your Crashes

[SandyCat]

Following on from Jeebos excellent close to disaster thread how about an actual crash thread?

In 34 years of driving I have only been involved in 3 crashes and the first one I wasn't driving and the last one was 30 years ago so that's not too bad I guess.

First one I was in a Mk3 Cortina front seat passenger driving through a crossroads when a woman pulled out. Both cars written off and she was thrown into the road but luckily no bad injuries.

Second one I was driving a Mk4 Cortina down a country lane and lost it on a corner on wet leaves. 4 of us in the car and badly damaged the front end but no injuries.

Last one was in my dads Granada Mk2 and pulling out of a junction in the damp and got fish tailing. Inexperience kicked in and I froze with my foot down on the gas just trying to correct with the wheel only so barrelled into the railings opposite. Abandoned the car in the road in horror and ran back for my dad! ha ha He was fine about it to be fair. He is more bothered about injuries than the car.

He used to say if you crash and walk away you learn more than all the telling in the world and he was right.

[jeebowhite]

haha, thanks for that one :D

Well....

In my first Ford (fiesta), I was driving down a one way street. some fool in a truck was driving the wrong way and was heading straight at me in the junction. I reversed as there was nowhere else to go and just as I was coming round a postman was coming up behind me in his LDV. I slammed the anchors on, thankfully, it was just a case of I stopped at that perfect moment, where all that happened was his tow eye brushed my bumper, a very tiny scratch was all there was!

Second accident was a doozy, It was in my Focus! I was approaching a roundabout, guy in front floored it to get out of the junction then slammed his anchors on quicker than he moved, sadly as I saw him moving, I was looking on the roundabout (didnt see anything!) and was proceeding to go out and parked in his boot. wrote off his Rover (cant remember the model, might have been a 600). He wanted me to pay him £1600 for the car to stop it going to the insurers so I told him where to go. Insurer valued his oh so perfect car at £700 :D

Last crash was not my fault, where some fist decided my boot was an excellent parking space, he was driving at about 25mph and I havent a clue how he didnt see me, but the end result was the CMAX needing a new rear end....

[Philf1]

Couple of minor bumps but only one big one. Was in an escort RS turbo god I loved that car. Typical freezing winter morning but raods perfectly clear. However hit some ice lurking in the shadow of a tree which spun me round 360 hit a tree face on and ended up in a ditch backwards. Car was totalled I was taken to hospital blues and twos they phoned my wife to tell her I had serious head injury. I didn't just whiplash and hurt pride really Insurance wanted to repair the car but chassis was twisted to hell and it had no front or rear left on it so they wrote it off in the end.

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[SeanW]

Had one...and a couple of minor bumps that barely disturbed the dirt.

I'd had the Focus for a whopping 2 weeks! Been for a checkup at the Dentist and was just leaving. Cranked the heater up and as it started to warm up I started with a pretty impressive sneezing fit (due to the air freshner mounted on the vent).

Lost the ability to work out where I was in the road, and inbetween lifting off and trying to find the brake pedal (not easy when your body is violently jerking) I sideswiped a Micra.

Wrote the Micra off and required full NS suspension rebuild, new wing, few scuffs sorted, pretentioners replacing and reset and a new steering rack

Pics below (what the phito of my car doesn't show is how the front wheels are pointing in opposite directions lol)

No injuries to anyone (other than my pride)

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[gregers]

oh go on then,

my lovely renault 18 turbo(yes used to be a reanult nut)

sat at the last roundabout at godstone just before you join the m25,and a guy in a van decided to try and park himself on my rear seats.you ever wanna see a bulldog chewing a wasp,my missus was out the car before id even taken my belt off,he gets out to give her some abuse then watches me calmly get out the car( i was 6' 2" back in 1990,and 15 stone)he bricked it and bolt his doors and refused to get out.he did in the end his missus thought i was goner kill him,until i said its my missus you want to be wary of.oh the car was a write off.

and 1.5k of damage to my teeth through whiplash.

[b1g_dav3]

Mine was 3 and half years ago, I was coming home from a night out and a drunk driver comes across the junction on red, into the front of my car at the side and flips my car twice, doing around 60mph it was estimated. Poor little mini at the time was destroyed >_>

[laumk7]

Years ago on the afan valley road in South Wales, took a corner at 30 on a mountain road (Brecon beacons I think). Corner wasn't marked adverse camber, no chevrons nothing except a slow written on road on a national speed limit road, so as said I took it at 30 thinking that'd be plenty, it should be marked a 20 corner as one of my rears slipped off onto the 'guttering' sending me into a skid then a spin. I smashed through the first concrete fence post like it wasn't there and then flipped back on itself and ended up ON the fence overhanging the mountain edge on the other side of the road facing the exact opposite direction to which I'd started.

Wrote car off completely, when I went back to collect my things car was even sat at a nice angle on the perfectly flat ground! With bodywork damage to 3 sides, oh and one wheel looked splayed as well

Ford Mondeo mk3

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[Philf1]

Sounds like a lucky escape there Laurie

[jeebowhite]

Crikey there are some tales there!

[karlos1987]

Going down the motorway at 3am taking the Mrs drunk friends home.

Luckily the motorway was empty the Mrs thought it would be funny to grab the steering wheel. Started spinning down the m4 then smashed into the central reservation. Managed to roll onto hard shoulder.

Wrote off the brand new punto.

This was a courtesy car as some tool drove into my fiesta.

Needless to say me and the girl are no longer together. Lol.

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[jeebowhite]

bleedin ell, I hope she paid for it!

that was bleedin stupid, lets be fair!

[karlos1987]

bleedin ell, I hope she paid for it!

that was bleedin stupid, lets be fair!

Put it this way. I've never hit a woman in my life. But i came very close that night.

Oh she paid for it. I made sure she did.

She paid the excess on that car and then brought me a set of 18s with tyres to go on my fiesta. Shortly after they was fitted I told her where to go.

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[laumk7]

Should've had her done for attempted murder! Why didn't the police prosecute? stupid woman

I look back on my big accident as a lucky escape, someone was definitely looking down on me that day x

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[karlos1987]

I should of done really. To be honest I don't know about the police.

I told the insurance company the truth and just got her to pay up and left it at that.

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[laumk7]

Did your no claims get affected by her idiocy?

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[jeebowhite]

does that not affect you as a claim on your insurance though? or do you only pay the excess and thats it you dont tell anyone anything else?

[karlos1987]

I didn't have any no claims at the.time and told her the wheels and tyres she brought me was towards the increase of premium for the next 5 years.

No it still went down as a claim. Prob cost me more than what she paid out over the 5 years to be fair.

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[jeebowhite]

ah so you had the 5 year claim issue...

bleedin heck! hopefully that is over now anyway!

[karlos1987]

Yea. This was probably 8-9 years ago. So all sorted now.

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[jeebowhite]

Yeah I cant say I blame you for dropping her :P

[karlos1987]

I was very close to dropping her with my fist at the time aswel. Lol

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[jeebowhite]

lol, well its a good job you were the bigger man in that situation!

[.Martin]

This is a long one - sorry!

On the 26th of March 2006 I was out for a drive with my friend. We were coming back into town and he lost control on a bend doing about 65mph and went into a kerb, we rolled accross the road and down into a field through a wall facing the oposite direction we were travelling.

I don't remember too much but I was trapped for about 45mins. We only crashed 2mins away from an ambulance station but there wasn't any in our town that night. I had to wait for an ambulance to come from 30+miles away.

When the fire brigade cut the roof out from under me and pulled me out it was the most excruciating pain in the world ever. My legs were caught up in the dash board somehow. They lay me out on a stretcher and told me they were going to have to cut off my trousers. They had given me loads of gas and air by now and I was pretty wrecked so I decided to enlighten them on the fact that I was in a rush that morning and just put on the first scabby pair of boxer shorts I could find (my gentleman jewels were hingin oot the hole in the bottom). as soon as they got them off they knew I had broken both my legs. They put me in an ambulance and took me to Wick Hospital

This was the most horrible hospital EVER. No one knew what they were doing. They didn't relax my missus or family. They tried to arrange air ambulance to get me to Inverness Hospital but it was to foggy. In the end I had to spend the night. Next morning it was still too foggy so at about 10am I got sent via road ambulance. 120miles of twisting, bumpy roads in a van more rattly than a stripped out fiesta!!!! Even with the morpheine I could still feel it when I went round corners! Don't feel sorry for me though, my poor pregnant missus had a soarer bum!

When I got there they took me straight off to Surgery. It was supposed to last 4 hours. It took 8 and a half. They ran into all sorts of complications and I lost 10 units of blood. Turns out I lay in Wick for almost 12 hours with wrecked lungs and a broken thumb and they never noticed (told you you it was a horrible hospital)

I spent 4 days in Intensive Care which were horrible because the drugs played with my mind and I didn't have a clue what was going on or who to trust. Then I was in high dependancy where some fat nurse (with a beard) shaved my face with one of those yellow razors (you know the ones. you get 60 for 99p) I got moved out of there on my 20th birthday! Then I spent a fortnight in a dependant fracture ward. I hadn't emptied my bowels in the whole time I was in the hospital. Whilst the nurses were giving me my bed bath at the time (not nearly as sexy as it sounds) one of them uttered the line "You know that problem your having with your bowels? I'm just gonna give you something for it now..." and proceeded to stick a suppository in my hoop! I screamed out in shock and had to apologise for my expletives afterwords

I finished my stint in the revovery ward of the fractures unit. All together I spent 64 long days in Inverness Hospital. Thankfully the missus stayed by my side for the 1st 3 weeks. It all became normal to me. I'd get up, have my breakfast, go on my CPM for exercise, pop to the shop for a paper/magazine and back for lunch. Then visitors, dinner, visitors, TV, listening to old men snore. One day Laura was winding me up, telling me she wasn't going to buy me a Fast Ford mag before she got the train home whilst we were outside the newsagent area. I uttered the words loud enough that people could hear "You pushed me down the stairs and I'll never walk again and you won't even buy me a bleedin magazine" she rushed off to get the magazine with a red face and launched it at me When I left the hospital the hardest things were getting used to the fact that pavements aren't flat so my wheelchair always pulled to the outside and not having bars either side of my bed when I slept - weird eh?

The whole time I was in hospital, no one could figure out how I had done so much damage to my body but never had any head trauma. Whilst travelling to a followup appointment I was nearly in another accident where my Dad had to do an emergency stop. The first thing I did was put my right hand up to the Jebus handle to protect my face. Obviously I must have done the same thing the night of the accident.

The doctors said if it weren't for the fact I had a seat belt on and the car had an air bag I would probably have died.

Around June I slowly learned to walk again but it was hard because I couldn't put weight on my right leg as there was a mini scaffolding holding the bones together as they knitted. I got 2 pins in my left leg so was also in agony from that. It took two physio's and a 5 foot gutter frame to get me taking steps.

In July I managed to convince them to let me take the gutter frame home to practice in my living room. By the end of the first day I had made it to the end of the street and back

In August, my wife had to have a Caesearan section. I was still in the wheelchair at this point. The chair was too dirty to go to theatre so I managed to blag a set of brand new crutches from the Surgeon. I took my very first steps into the theatre for the birth of my daughter.

I was on crutches for pretty much two years after this.

Fast forward to 2010, the day before my compensation claim was due to be heard in the High Court in Edinburgh. I got a phonecall from my union representative to say they had decided not to fight it but to accept the first offer. My solicitor was looking for £300k I got £70k! From that £70k I had to payback 16k to the DWP for all the benefits I had claimed to that date (incapacity/DLA) plus I had had an interim payment of 10k in 2009 as my finances had gone to the pooper whilst I was out of work and we were getting married. After all that, I had £44k to compensate me.

I now have a 15-20 degree range of movement in my left knee, walk with a massive limp and now my back and hip are starting to get nackered due to the way I walk. I have to take pain killers every day to get over the pain.

It's a pretty depressing story but I'm still here

Anyway, some pics

The Scene







These trainers were pretty much brand new





The car got recovered










Legs/Metalwork










First haircut after getting home

Edited August 4, 2014 by jeebowhite
removed a couple of words

[karlos1987]

Wow. That is some story. Glad you got better. Even though your starting to feel it now with your back and hip. How was your friend?

I must say to have no head injuries after the state the car ended in is very impressive.

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[jeebowhite]

Holy Crackers, that is a bad story!

With the friend who you lay your trust in, are you two still friends after that?