What’s your craziest crash in a vehicle story?

[ChargerChallenger]

I am posting this since I just saw my car in an article I crashed back in 1984. I know it sound crazy and doubt it’s my car but the color of the car and the difference in the color from the front end to the back end brought back memories. In the fall of 1984 I purchased at the age of 21 my first brand new car a Volkswagen GTI. And I had just recently sold my 1981 Chevy 1/2 ton lifted and customized truck which I had a lot of fun with. Back in the day my friend and I would be out and about after work doing truly crazy things and yep drinking as well. We would grab signs and Throw them in the bed of my truck and go over to friends houses like 1-2 in the morning and rename their street, put a stop sign at the end of their driveway, no parking sign in front of their house, put newspaper stands in their front porch.....and other things I just can’t share. One of my best friends was away at college while I didn’t go to college and stayed back home Working. When he returned for the holidays he heard all of these stories and got the idea we could do these types of things in my new 1984 Volkswagen GTI. And truly that summer I was doing these things I told my other friend at the time we have to stop because we will eventually get into a lot of trouble. He was an alcoholic for the most part he’d drink all night long day in day out and even to the point one night I dropped him off and he takes his motorcycle out and crashes and should have died. Intensive care and in coma for a month. Back to my friend now wanting to do these things in my car which I am like uhm not a good idea. Well we finished off a 1/5 of Jack Daniels straight and holy moly we go ice skating and the antics begin yikes yikes yikes, Now a few hours later i am driving around yeah totally crazy I agree and just nuts what was going on in the 70s and even early 80s. But my friend sees a no parking sign and newspaper bin. He’s like come on let’s do it and I’m not clear minded and yeah sure stuff it in the car. ,now we are driving down the road with a no parking sign hanging out the passenger side window with the actual sign position right behind my head rest. The rest of the sign is hanging out like a long baseball bat just waiting to clip something. And on this night my friend convinced me to take the backroads so the police don’t notice us driving down the main drag with a sign hanging out and newspaper stand in the hatch. Well sure enough I’m down a 2 lane road I’m not familiar with and it’s not lit and I clip a road marker with the sign hanging out the window and it whacks me in the head and knocks me out as we are doing about 45 mph. I fall over into my friends lap as he about poops his pants as the car is now driving on its own (this was the beginning of autonomous driving) and the car goes off the road runs over the fire hydrant and then slams into the trees and Stops as my friend hits the windshield. He gets a little bruised up and now he’s grabbing the no parking sign and putting it away from the car. He then takes the newspaper stand out of the car and places it in the grass as well. And I am knocked out and have no clue any of this is going on. Apparently the ambulance arrived first and pulled me out of the car. Then the police arrived after I was out of the car and in the ambulance. This is where it gets strange since to This day have no recollection of the events after waking up in the police car back seat handcuffed. They claim I was walking around once they got me out of the car and took me in the ambulance and refused medical help and even signed a paper saying don’t take me to the hospital. i went to jail that night and threw up all night Long and figured it was the Jack Daniels. The next morning my sisters picked me up with my 1 year old nephew. While driving Me home I threw up out the window all the way home while my nephew laughed the whole way home. It wasn’t till the following day my sisters and brother took me to the emergency room to only find out I had a major concussion and lucky to be alive today. I could have died in that jail cell Back in November 1984. About 1 week later I could not even dress myself due to my spinal cord was impacted during the crash as well. My mother had to help me get dressed and felt like paralysis was setting in which border line was for about 3-4 days. Long posting but us 60s,70s and even 80s era here growing up know it was crazy car times getting away with drinking and driving. And yes I have more of those stories for another time.

 

[Decay]

Is this where Hick chimes in?

 

[GdBye]

Great story! I'm from that generation and did some crazy stuff too but nothing that dangerous. I've had a hood fly up and break out my windshield in a 61 Dodge Valiant at 80 mph in a 35 zone going through a narrow bridge. Hood was wired shut with a coat hanger of course. Talked a cousin into riding on the hood of my car while speeding down the highway. It was safe though because he was hanging onto the windshield wipers...

 

[Confuzed1]

Was only like 14 years old, riding in the back of a tank....a 1963 Chrysler Imperial. Was coming up to an intersection and there was a sheet of ice right before the stop sign. Car slid right past the stop sign and I could see a semi truck flying past the front of us....we ran into the rear wheels of the trailer which sent the car spinning and I bounced around all over the rear seat...then we slammed against the curb.

-Only damage to the Imperial was a dented fender, and the semi kept on going....we continued on to where we were going...I'm 1000% certain that any other car would have gotten totaled.

 

[Lize]

In my youth I lost the back of a front wheel drive in heavy rain on slippery road. All over the road and fortunately nothing coming the other way, managed to get it back into a straight line and on the right side of the road.

At this point I should have floored it but didn't and the back wheel rubbed the kerb and round I went onto a grass verge, did a 360 spin with complete side hit of a dry stone wall in the middle of it.

Limped it off the grass and onto a side street to change the tire as alloy wheel was smashed. Couldn't get the nuts undone and had to knock on a house door to ask for assistance. He turned pale when he saw the car and couldn't stop asking me if I was OK.

Drove the last few miles home and had to make some adjustments to the back wheel arch to stop it rubbing on the tire.

Was quite an expensive repair with new rear quarter on gas cap side, new rear bumper, repairs of front fender, passenger door and front bumper. Seem to remember a light cluster being involved too. New wheel and 2 x tires owing to the rubbing of the spare .

 

[Beast707]

Damn man! Only been in 2 accidents 1. Lady pulled out in front of me doing 20. 2. Doing 70 on my Fatboy got cut off and in a coma for a week. Got lucky wasn't my time yet.

 

[Grape Ape]

Well, when I was 16 years old, my 1st car was a 1967 Firebird 400. On my 13th day of driving with my newly acquired license, I was headed to a friends house. I was headed down a two lane road and decided to pass a pickup truck that was going too slow for me. So as I pull along side the truck, I see a Mustang GT headed toward me. I got spooked and thought I didn't have enough room to make it around the truck, so I let off the gas and moved back behind him. I was running 120 mph when I made this decision. It was a colossal mistake. The truck was moving way slower than me so I thought i would touch the brakes and be fine. The only problem was I hit the brakes quite a bit harder than planned. This car had drum brakes on all four corners. Needless to say, they locked up and I spun around in the road. Now it starts getting interesting. When I started to spin everything started to move in slow motion. I could see the trees go by, the nice blue sky, even the cars behind me. At this point I'm holding on with both hands on the wheel and both feet planted. I the felt the car travelling backwards. As it went off the road, I could hear gravel hitting the undercarriage. This just increased my speed. Somehow while this is going on I managed to miss 4 mail boxes and a power pole. Then I feel a sensation of flying. The car hit a rise in the yard I was going through that sent me airborne. Just after this I crash landed in a very large hole beside the yard I went through. The car was pointed facing the road and the rear end was about one foot away from a tree that I could not have put my arms around. I did however crash into several small trees there. The slow motion stopped right after the leaves from the trees flew past my face. It scared the crap out of me! I ran up to the house I was at and asked to use their phone to call my dad. After I was off the phone, the guy in the house said " Boy you sure took a wild ride. When all the noise started, I looked out the window and there you went flying through the air." The house was up a hill from where the car landed. I was about 20 feet in the air for him to be able to see me flying. When my dad got there I handed him the keys and told him I didn't want the car anymore. I walked away without a scratch on me. A few weeks later he gave the keys back to me and we started tearing it apart to fix what I had destroyed.

 

[parttimer]

When I was 17 I was driving my bosses 1994 Ford Probe GT. Flying, trying to see just how fast it would go, I crested a hill to see a lake of water covering the entire roadway. I think I was in the 120 to 130 range when it registered this was going to bad. Pressed in the clutch, for whatever reason and started to brake. At that point I looked out the drivers side window to see me parallel with the road now. Next thing I was climbing out of a ball of scrap. I had hydroplaned, cut a phone pole in half about 8 feet up with the rear driver quarter and hatch area. I managed to locate the nearest house and start walking. Some people stopped to help, squad came, troopers came, my family came. At the hospital the trooper said you must have been flying, how fast were you going. Me, 65 or so. Got a ticket for failure to control, car was totaled. I got a few bruised ribs.

 

[MiHiHemi]

Driving down the home stretch at 16 one night, in my parents ’65 Mustang, after helping build our homecoming float.

Got a bad case of the hiccups so held my breath hoping it would go away. Blacked out, hit the corner of my parents house, knocked my brother out of bed then skipped off into the neighbors bay window...nope, not drinking either.

 

[stonewall]

LOL No car stories. I managed to get home back in the day, My copilot never failed me. I did put a super sport bike into a sweeping curve road ditch at 70 mph. I hit some gravel at the edge of the chip seal with it leand over and she went down like a ton of brick. The ditch was about six feet deep and about that wide. I had on full leather gear and helmet, And didn't get so much as a scratch. I did get a nasty gash in the side of the helmet where it hit the ground and rocks. When I finally got it stood back up on it's wheels, I had to ride it down the ditch a ways to a culvert, that the dirt was tapered enough to climb back up out of the ditch.The bike was still running ok ,but was messed up pretty bad. turn signals were hanging on the wires. It was the most violent few seconds in my life. It's hard to explain, the force was unbelievable.

 

[Bowtie Guy]

15 years old I borrowed a car with a very short friend
It was a 1970 ish Ford Meteor ( big ass car )
He drove around for 15 minutes
Cops drove by us & starred us down
He got nervous & pulled over in front of our Church
I said "my turn"
I revved er up ( not sure what was under that hood )
I turned the corner at the Church full throttle
Lost her in the gravel
Went 50 feet hit a ditch sideways & flipped the car on its roof
An impossible feat for a car this size at such a slow speed & the ditch was 1 foot deep
Roof was crushed into the seat ( I still will not wear a seat belt to this day )
Buddy was crying
We were disorientated
Finally got out
Neighbor kept us until police showed up
I ll never forget "Which one of you was using the pillow"
Off to the police station
My dad slapped me upside the head in the staff Sargent s office & the officer smirked
Then I got to pay half for the guys replacement car

We were the talk of the town & chics dig trouble makers

 

[The Max]

Have to go back to last century. around Christmas time. Brand new 1974 Ford Gran Torino Elite and me a new driver less than a couple of months. Going to the girlfriends house and it has just rained. Proceeding along a residential road, going a little over the speed limit. A vehicle, they had the stop sign, went thru the intersection and into the middle of the road and stopped. I tried to avoid them, went to the left, lost control, went over the curb, over the sidewalk and onto the slippery grass. felt like the car sped up and I was heading straight for the people in the house decorating their tree!. Somehow I spun away from them and hit their beautiful fountain in the middle of their lawn. what a mess, grass and mud all over the place! Got out of my vehicle to approach the stunned people in the vehicle sitting in the middle of the road and they took off after I destroyed my car. Luckily when the police arrived. the people in the house told the police what happened and no tickets were issued. But explaining to my parents was a low point in my life.

 

[Marc W]

That’s easy! I raced Pro Stock Motorcycle in the NHRA. I retired when I lost control at the finish line and went over the bars and landed on my head somewhere in the neighborhood of 150mph. Didn’t go back to work for four months.

 

[Stormtrooper1320]

I had a nice 1988 Yamaha VMax that was only a few months old. I was coming home from work one night about midnight and had taken the beach road (Ocean Ave for those that are familiar with West Haven, CT), and had just come around to the blind side of a nice curve in the road......only to find out that the City had been laying in new sewer lines and had the road torn up. They must have been near ready to repave the road because all of the manhole covers were sitting on nice, new concrete collars above the gravel road bed. I dodged most of them, but not all. The front wheel of the bike glanced off the side of the last collar that I was trying to avoid. The handlebars were immediately ripped from my hands and the next thing I know.....I was airborne. It all seemed to go by in slow motion. I could see the bike sliding past me in a shower of sparks as it had landed back on the asphalt by this time. I could see me flying through the air. I could see the asphalt coming up for me. All I could think of was that scene from the first Mad Max movie where the one biker flies off his bike and is bouncing and rolling around on the street and the bike comes up from behind and takes him out. Fortunately that didn't happen to me. I hit the ground and rolled around a bit and finally stopped flat on my back. I remember laying there wondering if I was gonna be paralyzed, when my roommate....who had been following behind me on his Yamaha XS1100.....came up and kicks me in the foot and asks if I'm ok. I say that I think I am but not sure, to which he says that what happened to me was both the scariest thing he has ever seen on a motorcycle.....and the coolest. He helped me get the two blocks to our place and then he had some guys we worked with go and get my bike for me and bring it home. While he did that, I took myself to the hospital.I walked into the place and the lady at the counter asks if she can help me. I tell her that I've been in a motorcycle accident. She looks me over and says that I don't look bad and that she thinks I'm ok. I stepped around the counter and opened the torn knee areas of my jeans and tell her to take a look at this. She went a little pale and started screaming for an orderly and the doctor. I got some pretty good injuries to my knees that took quite a few stitches to close back up, road rash on my forearms, and a section of my stomach where my jacket pushed up. I spent two weeks mostly lying around using crutches when I needed to hobble around. My boss wouldn't let me come back to work until I could walk without the crutches. I was on flight crew then, and when I went back to work, had to get a return to work physical and cleared to fly again. The night I went back, I had wrapped my knees up with those really long ace bandages and duct taped the hell out of them. When I pulled my pants down, the doc asked what the hell was going on. I told him that I was in a motorcycle accident and had just had the stitches taken out and since I would be climbing on and off of helicopters I didn't want to bump my knees and hurt them. I then told him I could take all the tape and bandages off...thankfully he declined and then signed my paperwork. My boss wouldn't let me fly for another two weeks, and he made me do admin stuff during that time. I was ok with that. I got the bike fixed and rode it for another 5 years of so.

This isn't mine but this was what I had.

 

[trancein]

hit a deer

 

[BULL]

I was ALMOST one of those cars that you occasionally see that goes off the edge of PCH and lands in the water down below, way down, way way way down below...


My cousin invited me up to visit her in Monterey while she was in the Army's language training center, I was in the USMC stationed down at Tustin (CA). So I made the drive up to see her. We were looking for something to do and she said, let's go drive "PCH". I said, "What's PCH?" To which I get the "It's this really fun road to drive fast on."

Let's go!

So there I am, very late at night (completely dark) driving very hard on this fun little road. I didn't have a REAL sense for what I was on. The cliffs on one side were obvious, the guard rails (in some spots) on the other side were as well. To say that I didn't have a good understanding of where I was at is an understatement??? But as much as anything, I was focused on the turns....

The turns....

Anybody know PCH well?

Anybody know how much of a driver I wasn't when I was 19-20?


U.S. Marine, young, dumb and full of... Lots and lots of testosterone?


The turns...


Didn't make one, understeer, sliding towards the outside, and then for whatever reason decide to make a correction to the inside...

End up in one of the very few soft spots on the inside, cliff-side, high centered on one of the very few spots of dirt... PCH anyone?


Go find a ROCK, place it under the rear-right drive wheel and proceed to kick it in hard enough to shatter my ankle, but still kept kicking it in.

This was enough to launch off of the dirt mound that was high centering the car and drive up through the ditch.

My cousin gets back in the car (she's still white as a ghost, I'm still not understanding why at this point???)

We drive off just as LEO's are arriving, but in enough time that it's not apparent that we were the ones that had driven off of the road.


========



The next day (and after an explanation from my cousin as to why she's freaked out more than what seemed reasonable given the circumstances) we go back and looked at what we DIDN'T do...


PCH anyone???




(Just an example image I quickly found, I don't know exactly where we almost died....)


I have this and another story (amongst many other car-near death stories) from my youth/car days that's very different, but just as bad (and the car was absolutely totaled) that to this day makes me wonder how in the hell I'm alive. Flying as a Crewchief makes you numb to a lot of risk, and I lived on the edge for a very long time. Sometimes it's why I think I still like VMax like the Standing Mile, maximum energy, maximum risk, maximum death potential. Never lift!


Pictures from the same car, end of its life. It's why I hate drunk driving. The second story referenced above, same car.

 

[Stormtrooper1320]

I was ALMOST one of those cars that you occasionally see that goes off the edge of PCH and lands in the water down below, way down, way way way down below...


My cousin invited me up to visit her in Monterey while she was in the Army's language training center, I was in the USMC stationed down at Tustin (CA). So I made the drive up to see her. We were looking for something to do and she said, let's go drive "PCH". I said, "What's PCH?" To which I get the "It's this really fun road to drive fast on."

Let's go!

So there I am, very late at night (completely dark) driving very hard on this fun little road. I didn't have a REAL sense for what I was on. The cliffs on one side were obvious, the guard rails (in some spots) on the other side were as well. To say that I didn't have a good understanding of where I was at is an understatement??? But as much as anything, I was focused on the turns....

The turns....

Anybody know PCH well?

Anybody know how much of a driver I wasn't when I was 19-20?


U.S. Marine, young, dumb and full of... Lots and lots of testosterone?


The turns...


Didn't make one, understeer, sliding towards the outside, and then for whatever reason decide to make a correction to the inside...

End up in one of the very few soft spots on the inside, cliff-side, high centered on one of the very few spots of dirt... PCH anyone?


Go find a ROCK, place it under the rear-right drive wheel and proceed to kick it in hard enough to shatter my ankle, but still kept kicking it in.

This was enough to launch off of the dirt mound that was high centering the car and drive up through the ditch.

My cousin gets back in the car (she's still white as a ghost, I'm still not understanding why at this point???)

We drive off just as LEO's are arriving, but in enough time that it's not apparent that we were the ones that had driven off of the road.


========



The next day (and after an explanation from my cousin as to why she's freaked out more than what seemed reasonable given the circumstances) we go back and looked at what we DIDN'T do...


PCH anyone???



View attachment 20876
(Just an example image I quickly found, I don't know exactly where we almost died....)


I have this and another story (amongst many other car-near death stories) from my youth/car days that's very different, but just as bad (and the car was absolutely totaled) that to this day makes me wonder how in the hell I'm alive. Flying as a Crewchief makes you numb to a lot of risk, and I lived on the edge for a very long time. Sometimes it's why I think I still like VMax like the Standing Mile, maximum energy, maximum risk, maximum death potential. Never lift!


Pictures from the same car, end of its life. It's why I hate drunk driving. The second story referenced above, same car.

View attachment 20877

PCH you say?? Up by Monterrey you say?? Never heard of it

We used to go camping on the back side of Ft. Hunter Ligget, which if you follow the highway all the way out drops you on PCH below Big Sur. We used to take drives north on PCH into Big Sur and Monterrey to do sight seeing. And yeah.....it's fun to drive, but you can get into trouble fast too. And the majority of it looks like the pic you posted, and in many, many places there are no guard rails at all, so it's off the edge you go.

Always wanted to stay at this place called the Lucia Lodge, which in on the very narrow side of a cliff that faces the water, just never made it happen. It's one of those old places that's been there forever. Beautiful area up there.



Is that an '85 Cougar?

 

[ACMAVRO]

Guy crossed over and head on collision with an F150 at 45mph me in the passenger seat of a Toyota Tercel. Head went through the windshield, buddy driver went through the steering column. Young, dumb and no seatbelts obviously. Still picking glass out of my head. That was about 17 years ago.

As a teenager I also nearly totaled my moms c4 z51. Guy tried to cross line of traffic and didn’t see the low vette. Pulled out and hit me, blew the back left tire and forced me in to oncoming traffic. Shattered the fiberglass on front and rear drivers side. Never ran right after that and she had to sell it😢

 

[BULL]

PCH you say?? Up by Monterrey you say?? Never heard of it

We used to go camping on the back side of Ft. Hunter Ligget, which if you follow the highway all the way out drops you on PCH below Big Sur. We used to take drives north on PCH into Big Sur and Monterrey to do sight seeing. And yeah.....it's fun to drive, but you can get into trouble fast too. And the majority of it looks like the pic you posted, and in many, many places there are no guard rails at all, so it's off the edge you go.

Always wanted to stay at this place called the Lucia Lodge, which in on the very narrow side of a cliff that faces the water, just never made it happen. It's one of those old places that's been there forever. Beautiful area up there.

View attachment 20878

Is that an '85 Cougar?

'83 5.0

 

[Stormtrooper1320]

'83 5.0

I knew it was in that 83-86 year range. I had an 88 XR7 5.0. I loved that car and kept it until 2004. I wish I still had it.

This was not long after I originally bought it.