Stupid Accidents You Wish You Could Take Back
 

After seeing the red GTO loose it in a powered turn in the Video posted somewhere on PY, I was thinking about some other "stupid" accidents I have seen or been a part of.

Hey, if you cant laugh at yourself......?

I was towing a Plymouth Arrow down I95 getting on Beltway around DC/MD years ago in late 70s (19 or 20 y.o) or so for a rental car co I worked for.

We would deliver and pick up the cars in and around DC Metro area and we towed our little co Arrow around with us using a bumper hitch using new PLY VOLARIEs.
Free gas, and worked my own hours while in school.

I95 South bound ENDED merging onto I 495 Capital Beltway by means of a HORSESHOE sharp turn around 25mph iirc.

I hit that thing running 65 or so, but nailed the brakes to late. She started to spin. I spun both cars around twice or so, tearing them up.

Had traffic blocked on I95 South for hours while I was standing there listening to State Troopers joking around.

Thats really the only accident I have ever had that was my fault, but it was a dumb one.....if only I had been paying attention.

:o

I had a 'Dukeboys' moment that ended with a totalled car and a thrashed tree in the first few weeks of my driverslicense.

Only really dumb a$$ thing i regret was not strapping down tight my 67 ss chevelle on my trailer back in the early 90's, i was coming up to a stop light under 25 mph. & felt a thump',, looked in my outside mirrors & seen the trailer still on, ok thats not it,, then.. a sinking feeling not seeing the car in the review mirror! it passed me on the left went through a traffic light, 'can't believe no one broad sided it' then it hit square in the front a telephone pole, needless to say a buddy was coming the other way & seen my delema & helped me reload it & get the heck out of there before i was charged for leaning pole, i took the car back to the body shop were i just picked it up not less than 1 hr. ago & said hey you missed a spot on the hood!, we all had a good laugh & fixed it again, those were the days i don't regret..

A guy who I carpooled with in early high school (Maryland) wanted to learn to drive on ice so on our way home one day we went to the neighborhood pool/tennis club which was closed but had nice layer of ice all over the parking lot.

This older guy, his neighbor buddy was telling him how to drive on ice and driver was a nervous wreck. He had just bought this big ole Plymouth land cruiser from his grandparent and didnt want to mess it up.

Anyway, he gets some speed up and hit s the brakes, stared to spin and SLAMS into this concrete pole (used to attach chain to)

It gives a little bit just enought for the car to RIDE UP the pole and catch under the rear bumper!!!! It was off the ground by three or so feet...both tires

Three of us in backseat so we all jumped out and were dying laughing until they got into it and started swinging at each other.

Guy got his car wrecked and punched out by his friend.

That was the darndest thing I have seen.

did a nasty burnout on a curve on an industial sidestreet when i was 16. 20,000 mile mint cutlass supreme . mommys car. backwards and sideways over the curb i went. :eek: snapped a tie rod in half and who knows what else. $700 to fix 34 years ago. needless to say it was quite awhile till i got to drive it again. lucky for me my parents were divorced. my old man would have kicked my arse if he was around !!

Man, I know that hurt J.D.......

My best friends Dad was a District Commander in the WASH, DC Police Department who had to go in all hours of day and night from Maryland burbs.

He bought this Pinto being a FORD man for the gas mileage in 74 /74 or so.

We had it out once (and only once) and I was driving going though the gears (speed shifting) a little over the top and I RIPPED the shifter out of the trans housing. It had plastic threads of some cheap design.

We put it back and his old man made it down the street before he shifted into second and it came off in his hand.

Boy we were scared of him, but he didnt get us on that one!...lol ;)

Jeff :usa2:

The spring of 77, Moms out of town. Later I found out it was for Cobalt and Chemo treatments I took her Gran Torino W/ a 351 Cleveland with extra head work done to it man the car was fast, Long story short I was showing off to a friend with a burn out , car went into a fishtail into a fence just a few scratches on the car

I cant post it on the net

A gal I was sort-of dating accidentally knocked the shifter into reverse at 70 mph on I-90. All I can say is she was impatient about getting back to my place. The car didn't slow down (and neither did she) so I popped it back into drive and kept driving. Next morning no reverse. It was my dad's FWD Dodge and had to pay for a $900 tranny overhaul before giving it back to him. Actually, I don't regret it that much. The guys at the Dodge dealer thought it was a great story.

I was in the sacristy of a church in a tuxedo. My brother, also so clothed, was telling me "man, there's 100 people out there! We can't just blow out of here and cut out for Vegas!"

Yeah, I listened to him. Wish I hadn't.

Never do a big smokey burnout with your new bride in the car. Snow white wedding dresses become dingy gray, smell of rubber smoke, will need to be dry cleaned twice before being hermetically sealed in their permanent display box (a totally separate WTF), and you will hear about it for a LONG, LONG, LONG time..........

Ok - here's my most recent (of many) -

I picked up this nice, vintage Suburban:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...k/100_0607.jpg


It's a '97. Clean truck, nice and straight, got it from the original owner.

So I start fixing up the little things that need a tweak here or there. New break pedal pad, plugging holes where his cell phone holder was, etc. One of the things it was missing was the small cowl closeout panel (plastic) on the driver's side, at the base of the windshield. So I ordered a part from the LMC catalog and it arrived a couple days later.

I went to install the cowl panel and, although you can put the part in place, you can't drive the attaching screw with the hood on. I managed to get the screw started but the receiving threads were stripped out, so I had to run to the hardware store and buy a bigger screw.

So, after two days of horsing around - hood up, hood down, hood up, hood down - I still can't get the screw in there so I leave it.

Later that day we hop in the truck and head off down the road -

- and -

the hood flys up. Apparently I never latched it after all those hood up/hood down iterations. :rolleyes:

It was a very low speed manuever, hood pops up real lazily, so I nonchalantly look under the hood through the windshield and pull over into a parking lot. There was so little drama I don't think the kids even realized what happened -

- but -

it tweaked the rear edge of the hood at the hinges/attaching points.

So, now I've got this nice Suburban with a bent up hood. And - now I can't install the cowl panel because the bent hood does not allow enough room to fit the piece.

I thought about a fiberglass cowl hood, or finding a new/replacement steel hood, but....




Create $400-$600 worth of damage to install a $25 part? Yep - that's me.

:mad:

The good news is that I haven't caught anyone's hair on fire in quite a while...

:p

After dropping off a buddy from hig school, I decided to squeal tires while turning left (sort of like the red GTO vid), in what used to be my grandpa's 67 Galaxie, 4-dr. Lost it when I over corrected and hit a tree head on. To look at the skinny tree and then the car, you would have thought the car would have run it over and spit it out the tail pipe, but no it totaled the Galaxie and the car barely scraped any bark from it.

That was a fun car, I once fit 14 football players in that thing. Biggest damn car I've ever driven, by far.

This one was a friend of mine....Mark Wilson. He had his Mom's new Cordoba out for a ride. Less than 2000 miles on about a 1976(?) bright yellow under white vinyl with a white interior. He "hammered" on it as he was pulling out on the main road (there were 6 or 8 of us watching from the porch). The car actually fishtailed and he left the road and went up the short embankment in front of the house. At the top of that embankment was a telephone pole. He managed to hit it hard enough and at a weird enough angle that he smashed the front end of the car upward and then climbed the pole a couple of feet. Yes, his Mom was PISSED.

Oh god...where to start....

...for sure.

The big one for me was using an 1 lb ball peen hammer to pry something open ... while holding the metal end and prying, the old greasy wooden handle slipped and >BAM< ...I hit myself in the mouth with the business end of the effing hammer... the skin above my upper lip was severed as my teeth and the hammer met. My lip was all that was keeping the skin together.

Nothing like eight stitches and a chipped incisor...fortunately it healed well and chicks dig jagged teeth LOL...

When I was young, I remember pulling an engine out of my 68 442 in the back yard. Had help and we pulled the hood off and layed it behind the car on the ground. My help left so I started pulling the motor and trans together. As soon as it cleared the car, the car started rolling backwards down a slite hill. Ran over the middle of the hood all the way down. Had to figure how to get the car 300' back up the hill by myself.
How about a not so bright moment of trying to blow out a coffee can of gas that my brother lit on fire.
When I was real young tried to get a marble out of a black can of spray paint with a hatchet. Didn't end to well. Petty bad when your dad falls on the ground laghfing at you.

I'd pay a $ to see that.
:pound:

Around 10 yrs old a friend wanted to find out what golf balls where made out of.
Put 1 in a vice and went at it with a hack saw.
Not sure what it was, but the liquid squirt'd straight into one of his eyes.
While bob'n and weaving with hand over eye, said it burned like hell.
Turned very bright red too.

I have coffee coming out my nose...

This one brings back a bad memory...
About same age there was an upper and lower parking lot with huge ancient trees in between at the high school.
Guess about 20' hieght diff with an 45* slope. Couldnt see top to bottom or vis-versa
There where dirt paths the students used to get to lower lot.
Us kids loved taking our bikes up to speed and land about 1/2 down the slope.
One day i praticed go'n further and further till confident could clear the intire length and land on pavement.
I cleared by about 10', but the end of the handle bar barely clipped a tree limb cause'n the front wheel to cock so during landing at a high rate of speed the bike turned.
Lucky i didnt break anything.
But the 1/2 mile walk home push'n the bike with 2 bent wheels and road rash all over hurt like hell.

Back in the younger days I was helping a friend r&r a flywheel on his Opel - teeth were ground off. He drops by my house in his mom's 70 Lemans convertible so we can go to the library to get a manual for his car. I walk by the car and it reeks of gas. Pop the hood and the thread going into the q'jet are stripped. I remember using teflon tape and ??? to temporarily fix it. I told him no guarantees and this really needed to be fixed properly. It held to the library and back to my house. So we proceed to his house. We are stopped at a red light two blocks away and the car stalls. He starts it up immediately. Next thing you see is flames coming up from the hood. The car was totaled. Felt like a pile of crap.

I am glad I am not the only one to have a Tommy Boy momment. In fact it happened just last week. I wanted to save money on my 2000 Sonoma by changing the intake gaskets myself( stupid dexcool). Well I finally get it done and pull the truck out of the garage and our driveway slops down so the truck is pointing nose first. I left the hood popped to check the antifreeze before test drive but forgot all about it. So I am heading down the road feeling proud of myself and then the hood flies up smaks the windshield and scares the crap out of me:eek:. I am doing about 30 when it happens slam on the brakes ease to the left and run over the curb. Well now I have two new creases in the hood from it folding back and the window was already cracked. I figure the intake gasket probably would have cost 400.00 by a mecahnic so 100.00 for a hood, 150.00 for a windshield and 15.00 for a new pack of underwear and I am still come out ahead. Wife did not see the bright side like I did, boy am I going senial in my old age.

25 years later and 4 states away I have finally outlived the legend of wrecking my 65 El Camino. And I am supposed to tell it here? Let's just say I found out driving really fast and a Gonzo state of mind Hunter S Thompson would have been proud of led to much misjudgement. 100mph, stop signs, intersections that jog, fields, clouds of dirt, sudden stop, immovable structure, billyclubs pounding on my house door later, it was just great. The best part was my 3 hue blue color custum paint and striped stand out car sat in that field for 3 days before towed, totalled, impaled, while I was in the hospital, and everyone in town got to marvel at it. Isn't that Tony's El Camino? wow! Is he alive? It was just great, thanks for asking. :)

No kidding.

aint that the truth ,

and the worse part is RW knows some of the places I have been to and how they are in NW indiana ....

the hill on 109th st , didn't know you could get a ford fiesta airbourne and blow the struts thru the floor boards in the back ..( dad wasn't to happy about that as it was his work car but he did have a nice partial rollcage , muffler and rear bumper when I was done .. )

racing down Broadway , then down I-65 only to find a state trooper waiting for you ..

when a curve is labeled 15 mph for a car theres a reason not to do it at 45 on a motorcycle ( damn marl on 117th ave )

if a one cylinder 2 stroke bike is a handfull then why not add 2 more cylinders and 500 cc's ( H2), then learn to walk at 45 mph in 100 foot strides ,at this point realizing wheelies aren't as fun as they used to be ..

telling someone why they shouldn't look down a carburator while a motor is running , then do it , only to loose your eyebrows and all the hair not under your hat and around your glasses and get a nice sunburn .... and find out that a piston feels like and the flame is blue ..

I have been told I should be wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in a round closet somewhere .. Tim taylor don't have a chance around me . I am a trained professional amatuer ..

109th hill.
My bud's 68 Catalina made that jump many times.
Needless to say, went through chassis parts, wheels, tires.

Had a rear brake line go out on 68 FB while t&t at west bound stop sign on 69th & Colorado.
Girl in my h.s. class(what are the odds?) drive'n a Caprice broadsided r/r qtr at 50 mph. Spun me round 360.
When cop got there, she started bit'p all ovr.
Told her to wait in her car and me in his.
Ask "what happened?"
Told'm "lost brakes". Didnt mention was do'n 70 in a 30...
So he gets out, see's my skid marks from standing on the pedal, brake fluild before that, and(thankfully no called about the 60' tire marks east of there on other side of rr tracks)go's over to see she had no skid marks and stopped 50' past hit.
Told her be quit unless she wanted a ticket for speeding :D
I got a "sorry to see a nice car get hammered like that" :(

I was driving a female friends Dads 69 Charger Red / Black interior auto coming out of DC into MD on a heavily traveled highway while in my late teens around 1976 or so.

I power braked at a traffic light, the motor mount broke and the car TOOK OFF.

I got it into N and shut it off but when the motor torqued, the accelator linkage kinked, it messed the hood up, radiator got a fan through it and probably more...thats all I can remember.

So my FB is sit'n in folks back yard get'n ready to replace qtr pnl, wheel hse, and wheel, when find a 70 chevelle week later.
$600 later, tagged, insured, ready to go.

Remember 109th?
Well 3rd nite out, was do'n 120 east bound down 101st???
The one that ends at Randolph st. with farm house dead ahead.
12:30 am and beer. In fact just reloaded at L-store.
Air born over the hill and realized on wrong road!
4 whl drums locked up, started to skid sideways with that BIG tree 10' other side of T intersection.
Let up, got'r straightened, and went down farmers "mogul" tree lined gravel drive".
Started to skid again and qtr caught 2nd-3rd tree in.
Spun car around slam'n into 2 trees head on, then around again backwards into 2 more before stopping.
Bumper and grill into engine. R/R qtr, and whole rear end smashed.
Only injury was my bud's thumb and finger jambed from bracing dash board.
We jumped out, thru the beer into corn feed 10' behind us and noticed a 8 wheel tracter 30'-40' away if hadnt stopped.

Get out of this one???
Cops looked at SEVERAL sets of skid marks, noted we didnt act impaired(we wernt by then!), and mentioned 2-3 weeks before someone had run down the "stop ahead" and "stop" sign and hit that BIG tree head on. They didnt make it.
The signs hadnt been replaced yet.

Father told me to pack up and leave next morning when he got up and saw the chevelle in front yard.
Was spring between junior and senior yrs.
Stayed at same bud's house. They had an extra room, and his mom loved me like a step son.

So...about July, after burn'n up the th400 in same bud's 68 Catalina from run'n the 4x4 trails, we took our old 10 speeds out and proceeded to race each other round the sub's.
Buddy went to wide and hit the front of a parked car.
Knocked out both front upper teeth.
Had to stuff his t-shirt in to keep blood from pour'n out.
Woke his mom at 2am to take'm to E-room cause we couldnt find keys to her car.
Once she was awake, looked like like this :oogle:

I was an EMT for 11 years. My rig was in the shop for something, so we were driving a backup rig on a 90°+ day and 1/2 way through the day the radiator starts to leak. Wonderful. We're 45 miles from base and have to stop every 10 miles or so to top off the water.

Get to a gas station, pop the lever on the cap, let it blow off pressure, take off the cap, fill, and drive. Third time around I pop the lever and nothing comes out. Tapped it a few times, nothing. I know there's pressure because the top hose is hard. My partner (not a car guy at all) goes to take off the cap, I try to stop him and all I manage to do is push him aside as the radiator empties it's contents all over my left side, arm, neck and face. Luckilly I'm wearing sunglasses at the time because the water was hot enough to melt the lenses.

Tore off my shirt so fast you'd have thought I was auditioning for Chippendales. First and second degree burns all over my left side. Two weeks I won't forget.

At least medical help was close to hand:p

RW I have a family member who owns part of the treee you talk about on 101 , hit it with his elcamino ,too the whole right side off tothe frame rail .