Automotive

Your Craziest True Stories Of The Times You Nearly Died While Driving

By TechKee Admin

Posted on February 5, 2017

“Code Brown! Code Brown!” screams your internal monologue as instinct takes over and you try to save yourself from the inevitable spin-out/crash. And miraculously, you do. Somehow.

Last week, I asked you for your narrowest saves. The one that made you thank the gods, both known and unknown. What saved you? Was it your own reflexes? Sheer dumb luck? Or was it some higher power at work?

We may never know. We’re only grateful that we lived to tell the tale. I feel that I should also remind you all to do your speeding on racetracks only! There is no need to be putting yourself and others in danger for a few moments of adrenaline.

And with that in mind…

Bike VS Jeep (TheRawhideKid)

Gotta keep an eye on those pink Jeeps.

TheRawhideKid

2/01/17 3:02pm

Lots of ice stories in here. Never dealt with that in CA or AZ, but I do ride sportbikes!

Years ago, I was out riding my SV650s up at Tortilla Flat with some buddies, having a good old time. Sunday morning, early, very few tourists, and we went up to the very top section of the road where no one ventures. Good piece of road up there.

Every time I was gonna really go for it and up the pace, I’d do a recon run downhill before railing back up. Myself and my buddy Ant on a GSXR1000 were having a friendly duel downhill.(9/10ths pace, if I’m really being honest)

Get to the bottom of the hill, turn around, and I take the lead going back up. In my memory, the road is empty (we just rode down it) and it’s safe to push maximum street pace.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5442415,-111.3383521,3a,75y,72.18h,82.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1syJZugXb03J6c6D_g2xMl7Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

Flying up the hill, there’s a sequence that goes, 1st gear right hairpin, then a right left right 2nd/3rd gear sweeper. The final right is gentle, but rising and partially blind.

I’m wide open in 3rd, 70-80 mph leaned over to the right, about to crest this rise, when from behind the bush, coming off a dirt road I never knew about, a pink tour Jeep appears in my lane, pulling across the road to make a left and head downhill.

OH. SHIT. Full front brake, knees digging into the sides of the tank, back wheel lifting off the ground, I am braking as hard as I humanly can. I can quickly calculate that there is no way this bike will stop in time to not eat the side of a jeep at 40mph or so.

Time is in slow motion, and I’m racking my brain for ways to get out of this predicament. The jeep is slowly moving left. 40 feet. A little more. 30 feet. Creeping further. 20 feet. Wait… is that a sliver of daylight appearing behind the car? 10 feet.

Steering slightly right, on just the front wheel… I slipped past the back of the Jeep, on the very edge of the asphalt, and hauled the bike down to 5 mph. Rode the remaining mile of the road in a daze, parked it, and just sat on the ground.

Ant is stunned into silence as well. It took me 30 of 40 minutes to get back on the bike and ride home. Definitely stared into the eyes of the Reaper that day. Scary business.

I ride track now. LOL

Don’t Drink And Drive (needsblinkerfluid)

Don’t drink and drive. Don’t drink and drive.

needsblinkerfluid

1/31/17 2:59pm

I’m going to forgo the passing and morons running me off the road stories. We all have those in stride.

I’ll divert mine to the LAST night I ever had any more than one-two drinks before driving. I was 19. I was dumb. My friend brought my weakness, good old Number 7. (Jack Daniels to all those that are more classy than I) Anyways I drank that stuff down. I was young and had no idea how to handle my alcohol. Got in my dad’s 04 Lancer Wagon to drive to downtown Miami with my bud on Dixie Highway/US 1/Useless One. We’re driving and he wants his backpack from the hatch area. As he crawls back I decide to yank the wheel real hard because tipsy self thought it would funny to make him fall all over the car.

Literally did a 540ish spin around 830-9 o clock at night on a four lane busy highway. Nobody hit us thank GOD. No cops were there, thank GOD. We just went to a nearby park and sat for awhile to get our nerves back.

I have never risked drinking and driving again. Even remembering back to this now I get goosebumps thinking how close I was to death that night.

Free Pass (Austin)

But no more after this one.

Austin

1/31/17 4:48pm

I was in a 570 RZR with a friend that his parents had just bought, we were up in the mountains in CO, driving on some trails way up on a hill side. There were little drainage berms on the trail/road going up the side of this pretty decent sized mountain and I was hitting them and getting a bit of air. We hit one pretty well and the landing was so soft and beautiful I needed more, I yelled over to my buddy “I’m gonna hit the next one pretty fast.” “OK” He screamed back. I stood on the throttle for way too long and as I got closer to the berm, I realized the road after it was sweeping further to the right than I was comfortable with. I bailed on the idea last second and got on the brakes. We hit the berm way too fast and the suspension was not set right. The berm lifted and set the nose down while springing the ass end up. I was staring at the dirt and out of reflex hit the brake, which was the last thing it needed. I specifically recall the back end standing further and further up and I was waiting for it to stop. I had a moment of clarity which was probably the most important thing I could have done, I moved my foot to the throttle and held it while open. The back end crashed back down and hopped sideways as we approached the edge of the road. The back end hit a small 8-12″ dirt berm that was the last bit of saving grace keeping us up there. I slowed down and said “sorry” lol. My buddy said “that would have hurt” as we looked down. It was probably over 500′ of a pretty darn steep drop (70 degrees? maybe) and there wasn’t a tree until a solid 100′ down.

That was my free bee I guess lol.

Corkscrew (BTDUBS)

How was it backwards?

Extra Coat Of Paint (IKnowMyCarIsAnEconomyCarWithATurboOnIt)

It was that close.

IKnowMyCarIsAnEconomyCarWithATurboOnIt

1/31/17 3:21pm

I was 16 with my brand new license all shiny in my pocket. I went out for a drive with friends one afternoon when school was over to smoke some Marlboro Lights we got off my buddy’s older brother and listen to some Nirvana in our flannel shirts.

I’m cruising down a four lane city street with a divided center section doing about 45, which was the speed limit. A guy pulls out of the Meijer (call it a WalMart if you’re from elsewhere), looks left, looks right, looks at me, and pulls out right in front of my Porsche 944.

I swerve left since there’s no oncoming traffic, lose the back end, and slide behind him sideways as he continued to pull out into the road. I ended up backwards in the oncoming lane.

If they’d put an extra coat of paint on either car, we’d have hit each other. Scares the crap out of me 20 years later. That taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Three people could have been killed over that. My car had no airbags, and I would have destroyed his driver’s compartment hitting him at that speed on the side.

We both just drove off, but I aged 20 years in those 5 seconds.

It Didn’t Seem Like Anything Was Wrong… (Halicadd)

…at first.

Halicadd

2/01/17 2:53am

Awesome, I actually have an answer to one of these for once! I’m in Australia so apologies if a lot of my terminologies don’t make sense.

2005-ish. My first car was an A30 Nissan Maxima Ti, 1991, 190hp VG30DE, 4 speed auto, leather everywhere and electric everything. I thought I was a complete baller using the keypad entry system and ripping back the sunroof on warm days. Unfortunately it had a habit of eating gearboxes so I only owned it for about 18 months.

In the time I had it there were a couple of incidents. Driving it home from the dealership I managed to run into the back of a Honda Prelude because I forgot that auto cars creep forward when you take your foot off the brake, and I was playing with the sunroof.

That one didn’t cost much, the other one could have though.

It was late night in the middle of winter and I was heading home from the girlfriends house. It was about a 40 minute drive and it was pouring down. I mean absolutely pouring. Wipers were on max for the whole trip and I was still only able to do 80 (km/h) on the empty freeway, visibility wasn’t great.

Pulling off at my exit I was carrying a bit too much speed for the long tightening left hander. The dealership had replaced the front tyres when I bought the car as they were bald but the “new” set weren’t much better. The front of the car started to push and I found myself understeering and heading straight at a traffic island.

Being a young inexperienced lad I jumped on the brakes to try to slow down. It fixed the understeer problem but now the back end was sliding out and I was about to spin.

I wrenched the wheel to the right to try and catch it, overcorrected and lost control, spinning the other direction down the offramp, across the (thankfully deserted) street I was meant to be joining and into the centre divider where I came to a stop pointing backwards up the offramp. I had parked it backwards from 80 (50mph?) between two massive trees.

The car had jumped the curb backwards and I was worried I had completely destroyed the underside of my car so I jumped out and proceeded to completely soak myself looking for damage. After about 20 minutes I had calmed down enough to try and drive home. The car was fine, not a scratch of damage and it was purring as well as it ever had. I didn’t drive for a week afterwards though.

A month later the exhaust fell off. Turns out I had cracked it pretty bad. I thought it sounded awesome though so I didn’t bother fixing it.

I did a very similar thing more recently in a Honda Jazz/Fit but that was on an empty country road. I guess I haven’t learned my lesson.

Trees, Trees Everywhere (ateamfan42)

How did you not die?

ateamfan42

1/31/17 4:47pm

Back in high school I had a Ford Ranger for a bit. Being a poor high school student, I was trying to get as much life out of my worn front tires as I could. I figured I’d run them through the summer and get some better tires before winter. They weren’t bald, but the tread was pretty low. On dry summer days, this was no big deal.

Cue a rainy day, pouring down. I’m headed down the road at a sensible pace. The windows are beginning to fog, so I crank the windows down a crack to get in some fresh air. At just that moment, I hit a puddle on the right edge of the road. But some washout action has sunk that part of the pavement, so the puddle is a couple inches deep.

It was like stomping on the right brake on a skid-steer. The pickup just jumped to the right, so that the moment I brought my gaze back from the side window to the windshield, all I saw were trees. These were the dense patch of trees to the side of that road in that spot.

I cranked the wheel hard to the left, and something miraculously bit in and pointed my pickup back toward the road. I managed a few “tank slappers” at full Code Brown and somehow brought things back to control.

My friend was following me in his car (which having decent tires had no trouble with the puddle). He watched the whole thing unfold in front of his eyes, and was convinced he was going to watch me crash into the trees and die. To this day neither of us know how I got out of that one unscathed.

There Are Moose Tests For A Reason (Lazyandtired)

When you’re as big as a moose, there’s no reason to give a shit.

Turkey (ITDriver)

They are quite large.

ITDriver

1/31/17 4:51pm

Probably my most memorable save was when I was riding my Ninja 500 home from college one day. I was 2 hours into my 3 hour trip in a somewhat scenic part of the trip. The highway travelled along a fairly long lake and there were hills and trees which is drastically different from the rest of the trip. I was moving at a pretty good clip, enjoying the break from the monotony of the roads leading up to this point. I rounded a long sweeping turn and coming up a slight hill. I see something that doesn’t look quite right, but my eyes play tricks on me and I pass it off as tall grass on the side of the road. As I get closer, it appears to be large birds covering the entire road. I start downshifting and stopping as quick as I can and realize the road is covered by about 100 wild turkeys. I’m getting closer and lock up my rear tire which causes the back end to start coming around. I tried to push my foot on the peg to keep it from sliding out more, but I’m still not going to stop in time. I brake harder on the front and start locking up the front as well. Fortunately that causes the tire to chirp as it’s struggling to maintain traction. The turkeys notice I’m coming and start scattering. They make a little whole right in front of me so my front tire will make it, but with my ass-end sliding a couple feet over, I’m going to smack at least one of them. I let off both brakes, my back end tucks in behind me as I fly right between them. I look in my mirror and see a cloud from my tire wearing a flat spot in it and the turkeys scattering. I stopped just down the road to collect myself and look over the bike. The only thing I noticed was the flat spot on the rear tire. It was still good enough to get me home, but was replaced as soon as I got there.

That made me think of another time on my new Interceptor. It had less than 300 miles on it, and apparently the tires were still a little slick. I took a curve from one road to another and got on it a little bit as I was coming through the turn. This caused the back end to let loose and swing around pointing me at the curb in the direction I just came from. I somehow got it to stop swinging around and got traction again to get it going the way I wanted to go but the engine died as soon as it was corrected. I coasted to a parking lot and pulled in. I found out day that it had a feature to kill the engine in circumstances similar to that.

A lot of the scariest saves were on my motorcycles. It’s probably a good thing I sold them, although I do miss riding.

T-Bone (DonVanSin)

I feel shaken just from reading this.

LEAN LEFT! (BigAsn)

JUST DO IT.

Graupel (msnovtue)

*searches Google for “graupel.”* Ah, I see.

msnovtue

2/01/17 2:40am

I don’t know about it being the closest save, but this one certainly had the highest pucker factor for sure. For one thing, I was driving a rental car in a foreign country.

You’re probably thinking, so what?

This is where I explain that the rental was a brand-new, shiny black Z3, and that I was driving on the A95 autobahn towards Munich, happily buzzing along at around 120-130 mph. The weather was a bit odd that day—bright blue sky but with these really dark clouds scattered here & there.

So I drive underneath one of these clouds… and suddenly learn about a new weather occurrance called graupel. Graupel is basically hail that isn’t completely frozen.

So I instantly go from clear, dry roads to ice rink…at 120. The stuff has also put a centimeter-thick layer of ice on the windshield, so I can’t see anything, either.

I immediately get off the gas and discover how nice downshifting in a car with paddle-shift is. Made it through okay, but decided it was a good time for a coffee break right afterwards, which gave the car time to melt and me time to recover.

Doesn’t seem all that exciting written down, but you try hitting mushy ice at 120….

Damn Deer (David Tennant’s Ego)

They are rats with hooves and I hate them.

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