Wtinessed a fun accident today

So.. I am following two cars down the road. The one in the right lane is almost on the shoulder as per normal it seems anymore, and the one in the left lane is just about staying in the middle of their lane.

As we approach the tunnel on the AC Expressway as it heads towards the borgata, Harrahs, and Brigantine NJ.. the road doesn't narrow any.. but the shoulders disappear as you start to dip down to go into what passes for "underground" on a barrier island.

As the barriers rise and the road dips.. both cars infront of me swerve towards the middle of the road.. (you can see where this is going?) and sideswipe each other more or less on the dividing line between the two lanes.

It just amazes me that people lack the awareness of their car, where it is on the road, and the fact that a barrier on the shoulder is NOT going to jump out and wreck your car if you just stay in your own damn lane.

Yes, I am a bit upset.. the accident made me 5 minutes late for work.. and I was going to be half an hour early

I saw one that was not so fun the other day. Coming up 65N in Nashville I was in the middle lane running 45 a S10 was pacing beside me in the right lane. Traffic in the right lane was at a complete stop....the guy in t S10 didn't hit his brakes until about 20' before the accident. Pieces of the debris bounced off the side of my truck, scared the bejeebus out of me.

I had an Explorer clip the front of a semi and roll in front of me on 65 south of Indianapolis.......this was back in '06, but I remember finding debris from that in the undercarriage before I sold the car in '09.

mad_machine wrote: It just amazes me that people lack the awareness of their car, where it is on the road, and the fact that a barrier on the shoulder is NOT going to jump out and wreck your car if you just stay in your own damn lane.

QFT

I remember seeing an idiot crash once. I was still in high school (waaaayyy 10 years ago ), and my parents, brother, and I were on our way to an extended family gathering. There happened to be a car show in my grandma's town, so we were all crammed in my dad's 1965 Mustang. unfortunately, it's POURING rain. The kind where we couldn't break 45 or the wipers couldn't keep up. It's just as well, because it was crazy hot and humid, and this car has no A/C. Going too fast makes the engine run too hot, and rolling down the windows means I get sprayed in the face with rain. There's something about an old car that makes a simple interstate trip into a real event. I kinda wish more newer cars were like that. They wouldn't sell for crap, i guess, since the only people who appreciate that kind of thing wouldn't want to dump 20K on a new car just to feel miserable driving down the road.

Anyhoo, we were in the right lane with a couple other people going around the same speed, just trying to get where we're going, and some idiot in an explorer goes flying by at 70 or so. He gets about 20 yards ahead, hits standing water, and promptly slams into a guardrail, flinging glass and parts of his front end all over the road. Here we are in a weighted down Mustang on skinny tires in the rain. Thank God it had front disk brakes...

The problem wasn't the barrier or the low shoulder, it was the tunnel. Everyone knows that when approaching any tunnel you are required to decelerate at a minimum of 25mph as quickly as possible. It's in every driver handbook.

There's a bridge over a creek just a half mile from home. Of course it has concrete rails/abutments, but they are 2-3 feet off the edge of the pavement, which is full width right across the bridge. Most pickups and SUVs will veer to the center of the road when crossing it. It's a few hundred yards from the high school and most of the traffic is students or mothers dropping off students. The big yellow school buses can manage to stay in their lane but Mom dropping off Buffy can't figure out that she has 3 or 4 feet of clearance if she stays in her lane.

Recently driving to the airport (495->BW Parkway-> BWI for anyone in the DC area), a car (which I will call "shiny happy person car") dramatically came over 3 lanes to cut me off, so that they could make the exit... they proceeded to tailgate the car in front of them for several minutes (that I could see).

With traffic, I ended up in front of shiny happy person car. There was a random "brake check" where we slowed down to 30 mph... they apparently didn't see it, and swerved to miss the car in front of them (a CR-V or something)... well, "shiny happy person car" not only didn't miss, but the CRV was high enough that it took out a significant portion of their front end (bumper+hood+radiator), at the cost of what appeared to be no more than the bumper on the CRV.

And that was my shining example of Carma for the day...

I'm not sure what the hell I saw last night - I come around a bend and there are flashers, trooper, flatbed... and a big ass boat on it's side in someone's front yard. I mean, like... big. The kind you see in deep sea fishing shows with the beam over the helm.

No truck. No trailer. Just a busted up boat. In February. 150 miles from the ocean. In a front yard on a country road.

Best I can figure is they towed the vehicles away already but otherwise... it had to fall off of something and they kept going. There was nada on the local news last night nor in the paper this AM. Pirate cover up? WTF?

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: There was nada on the local news last night nor in the paper this AM. Pirate cover up? WTF?

Wormhole.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: I'm not sure what the hell I saw last night - I come around a bend and there are flashers, trooper, flatbed... and a big ass boat on it's side in someone's front yard. I mean, like... big. The kind you see in deep sea fishing shows with the beam over the helm. No truck. No trailer. Just a busted up boat. In February. 150 miles from the ocean. In a front yard on a country road. Best I can figure is they towed the vehicles away already but otherwise... it had to fall off of something and they kept going. There was nada on the local news last night nor in the paper this AM. Pirate cover up? WTF?

Wow, you should have taken pics.

The accidents I see are pretty mundane. Old dude backing clean into another car in a parking lot. Guy pulling out into the highway, while he wasn't the first in line to do so.

It's the ones I only see the aftermath of that I can't figure out. The wrecks people manage to get into are unbelievable considering the speed limits and how fast the average person drives here. The most common thing being knocked-over signs in the middle of islands at roundabout exits. Just, how?

One time I saw a Focus on its roof in a ditch, with tire scrape marks on the jersey barrier and skid marks all across the road. This was in a gentle left curve, even if he was going top speed I don't know how he managed to mess up so bad.

Just a few days ago I saw a pickup with its ass end up on the jersey barrier in the middle of the highway, in the middle of one of the longest straights in the country, facing the wrong way. I snapped this blurrycam pic:

There is a merge lane onto the highway about 300m back where he came from (ahead of where I'm going, in the oncoming lanes), but apart from that it's a total flat straight for about 3/4 mile behind him and 1/4 mile ahead of him. Amazing.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

I'd bet many of those were caused by falling asleep or nodding off and over-reacting when coming back. I know I've had more close-calls than I'd care to remember.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Where are you that people drive on the wrong side of the road?

Barbados...or most of the world for that matter, everyone drove on that side until you Americans invented driving on the other side in your country's angsty teenager phase

Gameboy's pic reminds me of one that happened on the Don Holt Bridge on I-526 in Charleston a few years ago: three guys in a Wrangler were towing a trailer that was poorly loaded with grass sod, it started swaying and literally threw the Wrangler over a jersey barrier, throwing all three passengers out in the process. This was in the middle of 8AM rush hour traffic, miraculously all 3 walked away from it.

It wasn't an accident, but it was scary: heading north on an unplowed divided highway in a snowstorm. Most of us were in the right lane, carefully spaced, going maybe 45 or 50 mph. Then we saw, roaring up the left lane way back in the distance, something very big. When it blasted past, going about 70, it turned out to be an enormous Freightliner puling a trailer loaded with... giant cultivators.

Dude, it's January. Nobody is going to need that stuff until spring. Slow the heck down.

I almost got hit by an S2000 last night. On a four lane road (2 in each direction) he was in the left lane JUST ahead of me in the right lane. There was a sign for road construction ahead, and he had to merge into the right lane, and did so without noticing I was there. He probably missed my front bumper by a few inches. For the next three blocks he was politely waving and flashing his lights to me, in attempts to apologize. As annoying as it was to have to slam on the brakes to keep someone from hitting me, at least he wasn't one of those shiny happy people that almost hits you, then flips you off despite the fact that they were clearly at fault.

Sitting at an offramp light yesterday, two lanes, both turn left, right is wider towards the end to allow people to turn right as well. Motorcyclist decides to pass on the right in the gutter, gets to the part where the concrete gutter and asphalt road seperate, hits the bump and goes sideways and down. Never good to see someone go down but only his pride was hurt.

Not so fun was the accident on the opposing side of the fwy on the way home yesterday, looked like more than 2 cars with one facing the wrong way. Backed up traffic in that direction for a good 2 or 3 hours. Slowed down my side considerably too from lookie loos.

DuctTape&Bondo wrote: Slowed down my side considerably too from lookie loos.

I once saw aerial footage from an accident on a highway in Ontario. It was an 8-lane highway, 4 in each direction with a barrier in the middle. One side was completely unaffected, but you could see this perfect pattern of traffic slowing and bunching up as they approached where the accident was on the other side, and then accelerating away.

My girlfriend was almost involved in a wreck precipitated by a police chase yesterday morning.

She was sitting on an off ramp waiting to turn right (Northbound) when a Charger blew past her between the lines of cars, jumped the median/wedge between the turn lanes, and hit two cars traveling with the light in opposite directions. He pushed through that wreck and turned Northbound, where in the span of half a block he hit a truck head-on. The State Trooper caught up with him at this point, hopped out of his car, gun drawn, and literally dragged the dude out of his window.

Amazingly, no serious injuries. My girlfriend missed getting sideswiped by both the perp and cop by inches.

When she got where she was going (county courthouse), the building next door (jail) was on fire.

Weird day.

We're getting a little rain here today, so the nearest highway interchange ramp will have its standard wet-weather accident.

It's a left exit, sweeping left hand corner, increasing radius, double apex, downhill, with no positive camber, marked at 25mph. What happens like clockwork is that somebody will charge in too hot and start to push wide, overreact and lift/brake, then the back end will snap around and they'll wind up in the rhubarb on the inside of the corner. If they snap around hard enough to do a full 180 and hit the curb with their right wheels, they might roll over, to add injury to insult.

Every time. I should stand there and film it like the locals do at the Nurburgring.

Am I the only one who tries to get as close as possible to the wall?

Driving I-70W through Dayton when it was all construction zone ~5 years back was a blast. I think I left mirror marks in spots

And then there's the nameless who was driving a truck and was seeing how close to the traffic cones he could get with the trailer...

The amount of accidents I've seen first hand since moving to Colorado 2 years ago is absolutely insane. I've seen more wrecks in 2 years of living here than I have my entire life combined. One time on the 50 mile trip up I-25 to Denver from Colorado Springs I saw 4 wrecks, FOUR...IN ONE DAY, on a 50 mile stretch of interstate, and it was as sunny and dry as could be. Add a little rain or snow in the mix and all hell breaks loose. This state truly has the worst drivers I have ever seen.

GameboyRMH wrote: Just a few days ago I saw a pickup with its ass end up on the jersey barrier in the middle of the highway, in the middle of one of the longest straights in the country, facing the wrong way. I snapped this blurrycam pic: There is a merge lane onto the highway about 300m back where he came from (ahead of where I'm going, in the oncoming lanes), but apart from that it's a total flat straight for about 3/4 mile behind him and 1/4 mile ahead of him. Amazing.

Those always boggle my mind.

Best one I have seen was someone rolling along in a Ford Festiva and they were talking on their phone on I65N in Nashville and they ran right into the back of a moving semi.

Autocross should be required. My 16 year old has a pretty good idea where the right side of the car is.