Have you had an accident? Options

[LazyAngel]

Have you ever had some kind of road accident?
Either as a pedestrian, cyclist or another motorist.
Was it serious? Did you become a better driver as a result? Has it changed your driving?
Where you driving or a passenger?

I drove into a stobey pole a few years ago (like a light post, but only in Adelaide - they are like metal retainers filled with concrete. You're virtually dead if you hit one, they don't fall over easily). Wrote the car off (although we fixed it and I'm still driving it..well, it's dead at the moment) and had slight whiplash but no major damage. The stobey pole had to be replaced on the spot I damaged it so badly, and my car landed perpendicular to the road. Very embarrassing. I'm definitely a better driver now, and I hate having passengers because that's the side I rammed into the pole.

Al had a massive accident a few years ago in which some act of a god I don't believe in meant that no one died or was badly injured which I've mentioned here before..it's all on my mind because it's come up again with the driver who is a friend of ours.

So yeah, driving, yay!

[Jamie Noelle x3]

I totaled my first car, but I swear to this day it wasn't my fault.
A car in front of me slammed on their breaks because they saw another accident on the other side of the road. It had just finished snowing and my car wouldn't stop in time and my car was low and slid underneath theirs. I did about 4,000 in damage to their car, but it was a 2009 model, so I guess that's not too bad. In my car the airbags went off and shattered the window, and the sunroof came off track and lodged forward and would never shut again. It gave me 4 points on my license, most get 3 for a major accident, and now I pay out the youknowwhat for car insurance , errrr.
I used to have pictures of it after I totaled it, however my computer hard drive went and so did they.

Pre crashing:
(IMG:http://i53.tinypic.com/sb6gy8.jpg)

I hate driving in the winter. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

[still.the.one]

I've had 2 major accidents I got ticketed for: the first one, I was going too fast around a corner and braked at the wrong time causing the car to go spinning and hit two trees. I paid $950 in restitution to the people for them to plant new ones (they never did...:/). I learned my lesson hard that time I had a concussion, 2 broken ribs, and my little sister was in the car with me luckily she just had whiplash since we impacted on the driver side of the car. My friend was driving ahead of me at the time and she saw everything in her rearview mirrow it was like a dream where you think you are going to wake up and then you don't. I got cited for failure to maintain control this was only a few months after getting my license.

The second accident was about a year and a half ago I was really sick and on painkillers and a bunch of other medication, well little did I realize that the mix I had taken would make me fall asleep. I was driving to work and rear-ended a lady. She was really rude about it although. I woke up on impact and flipped out. She wouldn't even roll down her window to talk to me and she was already calling 911. She stayed in her car till they got there and made sure that she was okay, she also requested to be taken to the hospital. The cops even were amazed that she requested to do so because there was not any damage done to either car. We were both going at such a low rate it was a minor fender bender, but the cops cited me (it was MY fault) for failure to maintain assured clear distance.

I am VERY careful when I drive now. Even though people still claim I am a terrible driver I at least try to drive in a manner that won't cause me to have an accident. The one accident I was in that will stay with me is the one where my cousin was driving her brand-new car and we were t-boned. I had a feeding tube in the baby was in the back seat, the passenger side was the one that was impacted and the baby was fine but my ankle was sprained. It was not fun. It makes me SO cautious to make left turns into traffic and get to where I need to go

[TaraBreanne]

I've never been in an accident thank goodness, but I have almost fallen out of a moving car when the passenger door flung open when we made a fast left turn. Seat belt saved my life, I totally would have been thrown out of the car and then hit by a big truck if I hadn't been wearing one.

[Kare to the Bear]

Thankfully I've never been in an accident. I almost have a couple of times (due to me being distracted) but once I realized I almost hit them, I stopped distracting myself and started paying attention to the road.

[LazyAngel]

I just remembered an accident that Al and I were *almost* in, one of the scariest things of my life. Don't know how I forgot it. We were driving along an 80km stretch of road when it sort of bent, and a car coming the other way - the driver must have been asleep or drunk because they didn't curve with the road, they kept going straight and headed right for us. Al was driving my car and thankfully he's a good driver - he threw us into the tiny little emergency lane on the left - I swear I was an inch from the concrete baracade and there was maybe a foot gap on his side of the car. We never heard a smash behind us so we guess the driver must have woken up and gone back onto their side of the road.
Ergh.
I hate driving.
If I had been driving that day, we would have been seriously injured because my reflexes aren't that quick.

[hollipoo]

my most serious accident i was in, i never saw the guy coming. i pulled out and he hit me in my driver side door, totaling my car. i got a ticket for failure to obey traffic sign. that was it. to this day i will only cross that intersection at night, so that i can see headlights coming. my other two accidents, someone backed into my car. really minor. got my car patched up from those. now i always am really cautious when i see reverse lights come on cars. i do not want to be backed into again.

[Ah Leesh Ah]

I have never had a crash. I have only reversed into the bumper of a car, because it was pitch black and I didn't realise it was there. Err.

My friend once hit a pedestrian. He was driving to work, not speeding, this drugged up guy jumped in front of his car. He would have been going 70 km/h. Because the guy was still on drugs and had just escaped from a nearby hospital, my friend was cleared because technically it wasn't his fault! There was a dent in the bonnet of his car and the guy was flown to another hospital, but I think he lived.

The same friend is a volunteer firefighter and is always going to callouts to crashes. There was a crash near where we live where this idiot guy decided to take a car out (in which the rear brakes were disconnected), in the wet conditions, down a hill and sped. He span out, hit a massive tree and was on life support for a long time. I'm not even sure if he lived, but his passengers barely were scratched. My friend was first on site and was giving the guy first aid before the ambulance got there, he was pretty messed up for a while after seeing that. It makes me so angry to see people have such disrespect for life and other drivers. I drive past that tree every day and it's still black and wrecked from the impact.

[Miss K♥]

I had a brand-new Mercedes crash into our old Mazda and ruin the Mercedes in Melbourne. That's my only accident but it was shit because it was my fault. I temporarily forgot that people in Australia drove on the left and I looked the wrong way at a right-turn. Stupid me. Lucky the Mercedes lady was stupid enough to claim that my boyfriend was driving because she thought that since I was foreign, I would just run off and she would never see any money. Except Chris was at work and there were like fifteen people there to witness that. The insurance company dropped her straight away.

[flux]

never ever! :D