So, I accidently rear-ended a guy early this morning on the way to school…hard enough to open my airbags…damnit, this sucks.
oh snap…
that sucks, because airbags are a BITCH to get fixed…
sorry to hear that.
your fault or his?
i’m assuming by the context it was yours…
And now he can’t give me rides anymore. Inconsiderate jerk.
I almost ended up in the car with him too…I was going to get a ride with him this morning, but my parents are asleep, and I didn’t want to wake them up just to ask them that…turned out to be good for me.
I would hope so.
Mine legally…but the reason for the wreck was that the guy in front of me suddenly slowed down/stopped, I don’t really remember, and I my reaction time wasn’t quick enough and even after slamming on the brakes, I still hit him at 25-30 mph.
I always wondered how it felt to have the airbags fly out at you.
That blows hard. I’m really sorry.
yeah…
sorry dude.
you probably ended up following too close…
i’m sorry if i sound too critical or something, it’s just another should have, would have, could have.
In all fairness, I’ve never noticed him following dangerously close…doesn’t mean it didn’t happen this time, but…
What happened? Did he get his license suspended or anything?
No, but the car is in the shop.
Thats going to bump up your insurance a little.
Atleast your okay.
yeah.
that’s the most important thing.
Better the car needing to be in the shop then you having to be in the hospital. Howd the other guy do?
Hope it doesnt make too much of a dent in your insurance, if you have any. Men already have to pay a lot for it, just cause we are guys, which I think is really dumb. My friend, Talee, she only has to pay 40 dollars a month for her insurance. Lucky girls.
Ouch.
Crashing sucks. I had one car crash, but it was only in the 5mph range (and on a military post, too ;))
On the plus side, now when you drive you will probably be a lot more alert.
No, you’re right, I probably was following too close. Honestly though, this crash is probably good in the long run, just because I was getting so comfortable with driving that I wasn’t taking it seriously enough.
I definitely will now, though… :o
Trust me, it’s actually pretty freakin’ intense.
The important thing is that nobody got hurt. Only after that can you be sad about the damage/expense to your car. And insurance premiums. And driving record. Ouch. All that being stuff you can’t change, the first step in the right direction from there is to learn as much as you can from your mistake.
Yes, your mistake. There are plenty of bad drivers out there, but what was the guy in front of you doing? Probably not trying to fool you into rear-ending him and probably slowing-stopping for a reason. Maybe a cat ran in front of his car. Stuff like that really happens, and usually when you’re least prepared.
You don’t really remember. Sorry, this may sound a little harsh but I used to work in this business (driving school). Every person relating an accident from the “causal” side, even passengers, seems to blur or ignore the errors made by the driver. If you can’t be objective and see any mistakes you may have made, you’re not going to gain anything from this event and will be more likely to experience it again someday.
The younger you are, the more driving mistakes you’re likely to make. This is not an annoying “rumor” told by older people to new drivers, it’s a hard, cold fact you can look up and is not subject to point of view or controversy. It’s interesting to know how disproportionate accidents are for people under age 20. Part of it is lack of hours behind the wheel, and part is what I call “youthful exuberance.” Exuberance (hope I’m spelling that right) includes a general attitude of all being well with the world. The car in front of you won’t do anything stupid because they are statistically a much older and more experienced driver than you. But it doesn’t work that way.
When I took Drivers Ed (I’m not saying what year but I was 16), part of what we did was drive simulators. I thought it was stupid to sit there and pretend to drive to what was happening on a movie screen. And to a certain degree it was. They do it because it’s cheaper than spending more time in real cars. But it has one real nice advantage. You can do stuff in the movie you wouldn’t ever try in the real world. I used to laugh at the movies where you would drive down a busy street and be confronted by one hazard after another. Parallel-parked cars opening doors, pulling out, people stepping from between the cars, the dreaded ball rolling into the street, etc. But sometimes those things happen, and sometimes they actually happen three at a time. If you’re too fixated on the first thing you see, you’ll miss the others. Got to scan all the time.
Anyway, back to your situation. Sounds like your scanning was off, or momentarily interrupted for whatever reason. Beware of phones, adjusting the radio, playing with the AC controls, etc. The car in front of you always decides to do something as soon as you look away. You don’t need me to tell you that, it’s one of Murphy’s famous laws.
Unless you give us more information, your accident situation seems pretty cut-and-dried. The car in front of you slowed or stopped, presumably pretty suddenly. You were either too close, or a good distance back. Whichever one, you didn’t notice his change in speed until it was too late. If you actually hit him with a 25-30 mph speed difference, that’s pretty hard and it’s a blessing that nobody was hurt. It also means there was a LARGE lapse in attention to the road for that to be possible.
Yes. Slowing down and stopping are not illegal. Slowing to turn without using a turn signal is, but it’s still your responsibility not to hit him. People do that all the time. Most drivers in CA seem to think turn signals are for somebody else. Did the other driver make skid marks (before you hit him)? If not, he probably wasn’t laying on the brakes too hard. The question is where were you when his brake lights first went on?
Reaction time seldom makes the difference in an accident (until you’re really old or unless you’re really drunk). Reacting, for a healthy person, is the smallest part of the accident-prevention process. It takes much longer for your foot to get on the brake and for the car to stop. But before one can react, one must perceive. You have to be paying attention before the reaction can happen.
Of course the correct reaction is not always to stop. In fact it usually isn’t in the fast-paced driving environments of Long Island, where I taught. I once avoided a head-on collision (my fault) by flooring the gas and turning quickly. I was making a left that was normally illegal but was allowed due to construction. Being allowed made me temporarily forget the fact that I still needed to yield to the oncoming car! Which had a police car behind it. I got a ticket and I deserved it, but at least there was no accident.
Anyway, the most common cause of all accidents (and failures on driving tests) is not-seeing stuff. Somebody backs into a garbage can. They don’t hurt it, it just touches the car. How come the student doesn’t understand the ramifications of this? What if it was a tricycle with a kid on it? Same for the car in front of you. What if it was a woman pushing a stroller? Obviously you don’t want anything like that to ever happen again.
That’s good. But most people don’t really know what “too close” is. For starters, it’s at least having enough room to never touch whatever’s in front of you. Plus more, to make it comfortable. In most urban or semi-urban driving environments, that distance usually needs a little bit of balance with leaving too much space, and having other cars constantly invade it.
My car has what Toyota calls Laser Cruise Control. You set it and it maintains a reasonable following distance to the car in front of you, or a maximum speed that you select. It works great, and has taught me, a very experienced driver and former teacher, to leave more space. Three seconds? It may seem like a lot but empty space will never hurt you. If someone mentions car-lengths, that’s 1960s methodology and should be ignored. Car lengths vary widely (smaller than they were in the 60s), and nobody can estimate car lengths accurately anyway. And they don’t adjust for speed. Anyone can count seconds.
Anyway, hope that wasn’t too harsh. There’s nobody reading this that hasn’t made mistakes when driving. If they say they haven’t, they’re either lying, or don’t have a license yet. Learn from them, and be a better driver for the rest of your life.
A friend of a friend (and his friend) were driving back into town from Okeechobee and hit a 10’ gator that was walking across the road. Apparently they tried to swerve out of the way, but still hit it hard enough to spin them off the road and into a tree. The passenger (who was also the owner of the vehicle) is currently paralyzed from the waist down.
This has been one tough week :o
Wow, that reeeely sucks. That sort of thing is much more flukey (especially outside of Florida) but just goes to show that anything can happen in the road.
Was there anything to learn from that accident? Were they wearing seatbelts? I have no idea how to respond to an alligator in the road, and I’m assuming this was at night so very little warning…
Being papalyzed could possibly be the worst thing that could happen to you. Either that or being blind. You couldn’t do crap either way.