arjunajane
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2008
- Messages
- 9,758
Ok, this may be a little longwinded as I need to explain, but bear with me.
There was a crazy storm out of the blue here today (it's Summer), and there were heaps more than usual cars on the road, crazy traffic jams. I was driving home from work and it had been raining heavily - as per usual in these conditions, many drivers were acting like jerks (shout out to Steel's thread!)..
I am sitting at a set of lights at a 4 way intersection, the last set before getting home in a nearly hour long drive in what usually takes 5 to 10 mins.
Please keep in mind while reading, here we drive on the left hand side of the road and the driver sits in the right hand side of the car (otherwise it won't make sense to you, lol)
So I am sitting at the light, facing west, waiting to turn right (north). I am just casually watching the traffic come from the south, who are also turning right (east), so are driving up a hill, around the corner and travelling past my right hand side.
As if in slow motion, I watch a young girl shunt into the back of the car infront of her (God knows how!) - at first I think, oh great a fender bender, and thought it would end there - but the car that's been hit proceeds to career wildly towards me alot faster than I had thought they were travelling - the car is heading straight for my drivers side door, while I watch, and there is nothing I can do as there are cars packed to my front and back. Even if I could move I doubt I would've been able to react. I am sure they are going to hit me, and hard, and I am just bracing for impact - I am so surprised I don't even think to raise my arms in defence...The car mounts the concrete island barrier, lurches toward me, then at the very last second, seriously an inch or two from my face, the driver somehow manages to steer out of it and careers back onto their side of the road and eventually stops without hitting a thing..
Their car is clearly stuffed from the hit to the back plus hitting the island, and I watch the expression on the yourng girls face in the first car, as she throws up her hands seeing what she's caused.
I turn back to the light (still red, this has all of course been just a matter of seconds), and am so relieved/shocked I shout out "F Me! Fing Hell!" (or something like that), throwing my hands to my face, having my own little moment of amazement and just sheer relief.
I turn to my left to see the guy in the car next to me has clearly also witnessed the whole thing, looking amazed and relieved himself, who smiles at me - I hold my fingers close together and say "This bloody close!" and he nods "I know!"..
Then the light turns green, and I shakily drive off...I am home before its even really sunk in...
Now, I feel extremely bad for the person who got hit, and can only wonder at how lucky it was that they managed to steer out of it - if not, they would have surely smashed a number of cars also behind me, after hitting me, because of the angle and force with which they were heading - it didn't seem at first that they were going very fast, but to give you an idea it looked like the car almost rolled when it un-mounted the island, and swerved alot before finally stopping. They would've already been accelerating to go up the hill, but they must have slammed their foot on the accelerator after being hit
I have never had much luck with cars, and have had my share of fender benders and parking lot scrapes
My car has just been to the shop earlier this year and had every single dent, scratch and mark from the last 4 years or so fixed - after a metal shopping trolley flew into it in a storm, we took the oppurtunity to fix everything as well as that damage. I have also had a huge and very heave tree branch fall from a huge Gumtree straight onto my bonnet in the middle of another storm, on the same road of the accident today...I was the only car on a four lane road at the time, and the tree decided to dumb its' branches just on me
So as you can tell I don't have very good luck with cars and storms!
You can imagine my relief today when I (and my car) were spared ..
I just had to share this story, as I felt very lucky. I'm sorry it was so very long!
I wanted to stop to help the other driver, but the traffic was too heavy and a number of people had already made moves to help.
Hopefully they were also just shaken up and not hurt..
If anyone else has any "near miss" stories and are comfortable to share here, I would like to read them.
There was a crazy storm out of the blue here today (it's Summer), and there were heaps more than usual cars on the road, crazy traffic jams. I was driving home from work and it had been raining heavily - as per usual in these conditions, many drivers were acting like jerks (shout out to Steel's thread!)..

I am sitting at a set of lights at a 4 way intersection, the last set before getting home in a nearly hour long drive in what usually takes 5 to 10 mins.

Please keep in mind while reading, here we drive on the left hand side of the road and the driver sits in the right hand side of the car (otherwise it won't make sense to you, lol)

So I am sitting at the light, facing west, waiting to turn right (north). I am just casually watching the traffic come from the south, who are also turning right (east), so are driving up a hill, around the corner and travelling past my right hand side.
As if in slow motion, I watch a young girl shunt into the back of the car infront of her (God knows how!) - at first I think, oh great a fender bender, and thought it would end there - but the car that's been hit proceeds to career wildly towards me alot faster than I had thought they were travelling - the car is heading straight for my drivers side door, while I watch, and there is nothing I can do as there are cars packed to my front and back. Even if I could move I doubt I would've been able to react. I am sure they are going to hit me, and hard, and I am just bracing for impact - I am so surprised I don't even think to raise my arms in defence...The car mounts the concrete island barrier, lurches toward me, then at the very last second, seriously an inch or two from my face, the driver somehow manages to steer out of it and careers back onto their side of the road and eventually stops without hitting a thing..

Their car is clearly stuffed from the hit to the back plus hitting the island, and I watch the expression on the yourng girls face in the first car, as she throws up her hands seeing what she's caused.
I turn back to the light (still red, this has all of course been just a matter of seconds), and am so relieved/shocked I shout out "F Me! Fing Hell!" (or something like that), throwing my hands to my face, having my own little moment of amazement and just sheer relief.
I turn to my left to see the guy in the car next to me has clearly also witnessed the whole thing, looking amazed and relieved himself, who smiles at me - I hold my fingers close together and say "This bloody close!" and he nods "I know!"..
Then the light turns green, and I shakily drive off...I am home before its even really sunk in...
Now, I feel extremely bad for the person who got hit, and can only wonder at how lucky it was that they managed to steer out of it - if not, they would have surely smashed a number of cars also behind me, after hitting me, because of the angle and force with which they were heading - it didn't seem at first that they were going very fast, but to give you an idea it looked like the car almost rolled when it un-mounted the island, and swerved alot before finally stopping. They would've already been accelerating to go up the hill, but they must have slammed their foot on the accelerator after being hit

I have never had much luck with cars, and have had my share of fender benders and parking lot scrapes


So as you can tell I don't have very good luck with cars and storms!

You can imagine my relief today when I (and my car) were spared ..
I just had to share this story, as I felt very lucky. I'm sorry it was so very long!
I wanted to stop to help the other driver, but the traffic was too heavy and a number of people had already made moves to help.
Hopefully they were also just shaken up and not hurt..

If anyone else has any "near miss" stories and are comfortable to share here, I would like to read them.