Announcement

**SteveC** · 17 May 2001, 05:38

Hey Rich! You from Southend? Funnily enough there's a couple of us from Southend/westcliff/etc in this forum

Anyway, I think my closest shave must have been as I said in the other thread - when my bonnet lid flew up and moulded itself around my windscreen whilst doing 70mph. That's sooo scary! (For the benefit of locals to Southend, I was on the A127 just before the Rayleigh Weir London-bound). I was in the outside lane too - I just had to slam on the brakes, and head for the kerb, hoping nothing was in my way!

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

**RichL** · 17 May 2001, 05:55

Steve - actually I'm about 10 miles West of you in Stanford.

**Vlip** · 17 May 2001, 06:04

Taking a 60 cm high rock on the right track of the tank I was commanding during my under off school...

We were moving on firing position, driving full speed on a road when the pilot just let the tank move a little bit to much to the right. The right track hit that stone right in the middle and drove over. Sending half of our 25 tons tank in the air. One track in the air, the other on the road. We "flew" few meters before landing down. The pilot braked slightly to take control again and as if nothing happened accelerated again full gaz...

Trust me, being on top of a turret and suddenly seeing your tank banking 25° and driving on one track is a scary sight...

Vlip

P.S: The "funny" part of it is that after the exercise I completely checked the right track and the front of the tank to see where it had hit the massive stone and there were not a single scratch to be seen.
All my kudos to the fellow american and swiss engineers who built that machine

**cbman** · 17 May 2001, 06:34

Closest I came to the police is when I was going 160Km/h on highway 21 near home and I got nailed... I had been driving for almost 2 days straight and was a bit antsy to get home.

The officer who pulled me over was one of the ones that my father does some gunsmithing for. He took one look at me and then at the pile of coffee cups and the fact that the bags under my eyes took up most of my face and laughed and told me to slow down and for my sake get some sleep (He pulled me over 10 minutes from home)

Closest call... I pulled out to pass some idiot kids driving 60 in a 80 zone and they sped up trying to race me while not realizing there was a really big truck heading towards me in the lane... I ended up going onto the shoulder of the road on the other side to dodge the truck and damn near killed myself because the gravel was really soft... I managed to recover without rolling or tipping and got back on the road...

Actually I just remembered something scarier... that was when I was on a four lane highway just entering town and some idiot in a big lincoln or caddy pulled out from the side to get into the far lanes and stopped dead in the lane infront of me... there was only about 200 meters (If that) and I was doing close to 80Km/h... I just nailed the brakes and being my brothers little Sport Ute (Lada Niva.. I know.. its a lada) needed a brake job it pulled and sent me around one and a half (540 degrees) before stopping... I was only about 5 feet from the guys car and the bastard had the nerve to give me the finger.
Big mistake as I was pissed.. my heart was pounding.. and I had a big trailer hitch solidly mounted on the frame of this thing... it didn't take me long to put a nice hole in the side of his shiny car...

I don't even think he had insurance because he took off before the police arrived... it wasn't hard to find him and he got charged with leaving the scene of an accident and reckless endangerment of life... I somehow forgot to mention that I had deliberately put a hole in the side of his car

Just thinking of it gives me the willies

**Chris B** · 17 May 2001, 06:40

Had just gotten my drivers license and borrowed my moms car. So i´m criusing at a leasurely 60 MPH in the city (i know... insane). Being brand new to driving I wasn´t paying much attention to what I was doing, so I turned my head left and right to check out girls I look back at the road and foun out I´m about to ram the rear end of a bus.... so needles to say I just slammed the breaks and prayed. When the wheels stopped screeching I had stopped about 4 inches short of winning a chicken race with the rear end of a city bus!

**Fat Tone** · 17 May 2001, 07:29

I once span my little car 540 degrees on a suddenly wet road, ending up against the opposite kerb. If I had been 10 seconds earlier, or the oncoming 38 tonne truck had been 10 seconds later ... I wouldn't be writing this now.

Tony.

**agallag** · 17 May 2001, 08:55

Ok, I was putting along at 150km/h in a 70km/h zone, with me and four friends in my mother's car. I was about 17 at the time. I suddenly notice a significant increase in red and blue light inside my car. . I pull over. Cop pulls over behind me. I sit sweating in the car for about 30 seconds. Cop's siren fires up again and he tears off into the night. I guess it was happy hour at the donut shop . I take about 5 minutes to stop shaking, then proceed at about 60km/h the rest of the way.

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Andrew
Carpe Cerevisi

**Johnny Ray** · 21 May 2001, 19:57

Closest shave with the police? You're kidding? LOL. I've been in jail more times than I care to admit. Also, questioned for murder (pesky ol' dead body in my drive way....."did you do that?"), etc.

Wow. Life is good now.

John

**KvHagedorn** · 21 May 2001, 22:37

Alright, I have had more than one close shave.. the first, though, was the closest.

When I was 17, I had to go to a high school speech tournament 30 miles away. I was driving my parents' 1976 Chevy Impala (yeah, I know.. anyway..) I decided to have some fun and speed the whole way, so I took a couple of lesser-traveled two lane highways rather than risk the well-patrolled interstate. While I was happily cruising along at about 85mph, some smartass on a motorcycle pulled out right in front of me. No biggie, I thought.. so I slid over into the oncoming lane and passed him without breaking stride. This surprised him, I believe, due to the fact that, after initially falling far behind, he suddenly grew very large in my rear view mirror. "Want to race, eh?" I thought, and floored it. I kept one eye on the road and one eye on him until he slowly began to fade into the distance behind. An abrupt chill came over me when I heard a scary sort of grating sound coming from the dash.. I looked down and it was only the speedometer needle grinding insistently against the peg at over 110mph.. whew, was that all? I slowed down and cruised into town. The motorcyclist was nowhere to be seen.

I suppose that would have been enough for any normal human, but this was me and I was 17, so.. That night I thought the joyride down had been fun, so I decided to do it again. I went back down the same winding two-lane highway on my way back home, feeling quite comfortable rolling along through the night at 85, when I saw a 1950s era Chevy pickup in front of me a ways down the road. Now, travelling at 85mph on a dark road, it isn't easy to tell whether a hulking 50s pickup is slowing to a stop or just going the speed a 50s pickup is accustomed to going. I assumed the latter and, without slowing, slid into the oncoming lane to pass, as I had so successfully done earlier that day. The unfortunate thing was, in its hulking, vertical way, the 1950s era Chevy Pickup had been obscuring a 1973 Ford Pinto (remember the ones that blew up like an incendiary bomb upon impact? ..Yeah, those.) The Pinto was turning left. Imagine my surprise when this little car appeared with its drivers' side to me directly ahead. With time only to react I moved onto the opposite shoulder, barely missing a row of mailboxes, and tore past in front of the poor folks in the Pinto, hearing a slight bump toward the hind quarters of my car. I slowed and pulled back over to my own shoulder and stopped. I briefly thought of bolting, but the 50s pickup pulled in ahead of me, so better instincts prevailed and I turned around and went back to see if the Pinto folks were alright. They were fine.. it was a guy from the local college bringing his date home. She sat motionless in the front seat, several shades paler than anyone could normally be. I apologized, but I think he was too shaken to be upset. We looked at his front driver's side fender, which was slightly dented. The Impala, of course, was unscathed. We decided among us that we didn't need to report this, exchanged addresses, and I later sent him a $150 check for the damages to his car. To say I was lucky is an understatement. Had I been going just a bit more slowly, we all would have died in a huge fireball. Oh well. I drove home from that one at 55mph, shaking all the way.

I later learned that this highway, with its blind, winding curves, had been a deathtrap for years. Sadly, a couple of years after my brush with fate, some friends were not as lucky as I. The man who had been my dentist all my life was driving home from a football game with his wife and two of his sons. An Army soldier who had been drinking crossed the center line and collided with them head-on. They all died.

**Pneumatic** · 22 May 2001, 01:39

I was 17 and driving my brand new Mustang GT. It was a fast car that had been to the speed shop and been modified to make it even faster. Of course all of my buddies from school were gunning for me every time we met on the road. My parents had been on me about not racing, and I had already gotten a ticket or two. I was about to lose my car because of it.

One day coming home from my girlfriends house a buddy from school caught me on the road. He was in the lane next to me, gunning it and letting off trying to get me to race. I resisted for miles even though he was doing circles around me on the 3 lane road. Finally the testosterone was too much and the next time he came around me I dumped it and we were off. I worked through the gears till I was in the top of 4th and we were FLYING. My car would do 70 in 2nd gear so I have no idea how fast we were going. The speedo was buried for a gear or two.

I was in the center lane and he was in the far right lane. We were doing well over 120 when I realized that I was approaching a car up ahead. I slid over into the far left lane and we buzzed this poor sucker on either side going wide open. Well, we got to the next light (I beat him by several car lengths) and I was in the process of berating my buddy when the car that we had passed pulled between us. Guess who it was. That's right, it was my Dad.

That's the only time I ever heard my dad curse.

**Jammrock** · 22 May 2001, 16:31

I remember it well...all of them...

[flashback]

So there I was, a young college freshman cruising down I-80 in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, USA. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but it just happened to occur during a high wind snow storm in November. And as anyone that has driven I-80 in Wyoming at night in a storm storm can tell you, it's nasty!

But since I was such a stud I was cruising down the road at ... 65 MPH (~105 kph). So I'm cruising down the road and I see an OLD VW Mini-bus hogging up the slow lane. Like I always do, I change lanes and start passing him. The problem was that VW Mini-buses have the aerodynamics of a brick, which causes a wind shear on windy days (like it was). I hit the wind shear and at the same time hit a patch of ice/snow.

Suddenyl I find myself doing 180 degree fishtails at 65 mph (~105 kph) in the middle of nowhere Wyoming while passing a VW Mini-bus. Let me try and explain how it was. First I was perpendicular (90 degree angle to) the mini-bus. Then I was staring at the median between the highway. Then the bus, then the median, then the bus, then the median, then... I somehow pulled out of the fishtail. Ended up pointing the right way. Passed the VW Mini-bus and went about my merry way at 65 MPH (~105 kph).

[/flashback]

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**Rags** · 22 May 2001, 19:56

The closest I came to death is when I was moving back from college. It was Christmas time, and I had decided it would be cheaper to move my belongings myself in my car by means of three trips. I went to college in Kansas City, MO and I was moving back to Casper, WY. Being Christmas time, I was anxious to get the move done even though the roads were very slick, and there was blowing snow all through Wyoming and Nebraska on I-80. On my last trip back to get the rest of my things, I was driving through Nebraska a few miles outside of Kearny, the roads were so slick that even I was driving between 20 and 40 mph. I had been following this nice new full size pickup since I left the gas station in Cheyenne and was content to do so, every once in a while I would keep the distance close so no one would see it fit to cut in and cause an accident, as there were some drivers who thought they could drive fast on the road. Most who passed ended up in the ditch later on. There were wrecks everywhere, thus the patrol were in full force that day. Every time I would go into an underpass, the wind sheer would cause my car to fishtail, so I decided to back off even further from the Chevrolet pick up in front of me. About 15 seconds after deciding to drop some distance, I see a semi tractor trailer coming up behind me at a good clip, and we were approaching another underpass, so I backed off big time hoping I wouldn't get next to him when we went under it. Well, he passed me and was going easily 60-70 mph, he came out of the underpass right behind and to the side of the pickup that was infront of me, the wind caught him, sent his trailer sailing hard to the right hand lane, lifted up and spun around as it jack knifed and swiped the pickup truck into the center median. The truck was about 3 ft. tall after the big trailer flattened it. There were state troopers about 1/4 mi up the road for another accident, and they came immediately. No one in the pickup survived, it was one man and two of his children in the truck, I suspect they were between 4 and 8 years old, but it was hard to tell. I keep thinking back to that day while I am driving and remember that if I hadn't backed off in defense, I would have been a casualty as well, and how unfortunate it was that someone had to die because of having to save a few extra minutes in a holiday rush.

Anyone who knows me knows I drive hard and fast, but I rarely drive stupid. Slick roads are not something to mess around with. I have had my encounters with slick roads and me driving too fast when I was younger, and have definitely learned that being in a rush is just not worth it.

Rags

**EchoWars** · 23 May 2001, 01:13

Rags...wow...***

Personally, I used to spend so much time on the road I came to the conclusion that the vast majority of truck drivers are morons.

Backing-up that theory...in Mar of '92 I lived in Boise, ID. We were having an unusual spell of warm weather for that time of year up there. The previous year I had bought a CBR600F2, and hadn't been able to ride all winter (of course), so the warm weather and a nasty fight with my girlfriend convinced me to go for a ride. Around 10:30pm. donned the leathers and took off from Boise to Mountain Home (about 45mi) on a spring shake-down run down I-84. A little cool at 85MPH, but it felt nice to get away. Was probably about 25 to 30 miles out of Boise (and if you have ever been between Boise & Mountain Home, it's desolate) and started to pass a tractor-trailer rig. As I came upon him, I realized he wasn't really going that much slower than me. A little further up his side and I could also see that there was a minivan in his lane about 60 yards ahead of him...going REAL slow. The last thing I remember thinking was that 'ya know, I'll bet that trucker is gonna want this lane pretty quick'. I didn't really even have time to think it before the trucker did a patented 'whip-this-puppy-like-a-ferrari-inna-other-lane' manuver. 'Course, that's where I was. I swerved to keep from getting squished and went into the median, which consisted of an interesting mixture of huge volcanic boulders and knee-deep dirt with the consistancy of sifted flour. I went ****ole-over-elbows and woke up about 2 hours later, still in the median. The trucker didn't stop. And I couldn't be seen, as the median was wide and low at that point. Shortly after I came to, some kids from Mountain Home who were headed to a party in Boise stopped 'cause one of 'em thought he saw something in the median. Ergo the classic line "Dude, you wanna ride to the hospital?" I shattered my right wrist, my left collarbone, broke 4 ribs, and...well...the bike was, like, you know.
Why does this qualify? The rocks in the median. There is no flippin way I could have crashed where I did and not have eaten a rock at 85MPH. The rocks (the size of Lincoln's) were everywhere. Somehow I managed to bounce along in the deep-soft dirt and miss the rocks (which is more than I could say for my poor F2). The Hand Of God had to have protected me (although I'm still trying to figure out why..)

I have another CBR600 now. I stay away from trucks.

**Wombat** · 23 May 2001, 06:52

How about <A HREF="http://userfs.cec.wustl.edu/~rmf2/nearly_hit.mpeg>this guy</A>?
Watch it carefully, there's an extra car there.

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