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Post by ♫Milø on Nov 13, 2006 17:13:52 GMT -5
I just got in my first car accident. x.x;
Scary stuff. I was pulling out of my driveway and I didn't look one way and hit a guy on the side of his car. Luckily I wasn't going fast at all. No one was in the passenger side of his vehicle, luckily.
I'm still a little shaken up. But everything's cool. My mom's a little pissed. >.>
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Post by Ashuku on Nov 13, 2006 17:20:53 GMT -5
Car accidents suck. At least this one wasn't bad.
Just dont be like my friend. Someone backed into his car, and the day he got it fixed he was at his house, and hit his dads truck, backing up.
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diablohead
Active Member
Sequential Illustrator ಠ_ಠ
Posts: 249
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Post by diablohead on Nov 13, 2006 17:22:26 GMT -5
Well all I can say is take more care, because you forgot to look.
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Post by Ashuku on Nov 13, 2006 17:27:18 GMT -5
At least you didn't hit a little kid.
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Post by Robert on Nov 13, 2006 17:35:28 GMT -5
I had mine a few months after getting licensed. It was a stupid error on my part; I didn't accomodate for the effects of rain making pavement slippery and simply moved too quickly behind another vehicle on the worst slope of a major traffic artery... it was just a whole lot of carelessness. I managed a minor rear-ending, which interestingly only dented the car in front of me but caused my car's front-end components to shatter, primarily the bumper and grill. No one was seriously hurt or anything, and even the other drive commented that she "felt bad" because my car looked a lot worse than hers.
Oh well, that was a long time ago now... I've done other bad things that didn't involve other vehicles too during my early months. I once drove too fast into a left turn lane that turned out to be unexpectedly short (and in an attempt to dodge a sudden concrete divider that appeared, swerved out of the way and dented the rim of my tire off of it.)
A similar occasion was driving on an unknown road in the dark and rain and suddenly finding the road curving almost 90 degrees. My attempt to stop put the car into a minor spin which again smashed a front wheel into a platform. That time, however, the local fire marshal just happened to be following me and then began to follow and tailgate me (I didn't realize that's who it was) until he could signal police to pull me over. Fortunately, the police took sympathy on me and didn't even give me a ticket... but they did give me a lecture that ended with an interesting statement that stuck with me forever -- "You were being overly cautious." I don't really know why they said that since it seemed I was being overly careless, but I've found in many other points in my life I'm "overly cautious", so it sort of became my de facto self description.
Since then, with all these past experiences, I have a heightened sense of care when driving. If I can't see around a curve, I slow down. If it's posted that something requires a reduced speed limit, I slow down. If it's raining, I increase following distance to other vehicles, and fuck all if someone behind me thinks I'm going too slow under a condition I perceive to be dangerous. I also avoid backing out any time it's reasonably possible, unless I have large visibility on the road I'm about to enter which clearly shows no one's coming from anywhere close by.
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Post by Sz on Nov 13, 2006 17:53:24 GMT -5
I haven't wrecked apart from a lot in racing sims.
Which is to say I've come close a few times, and even hit a tree squarely at about 4 mph (stops the car suprisingly well) when I was first learning to drive and hit the gas instead of the brake... incidentally, I've braked with my left foot ever since... but that's by far the closest call. I've had a few bad mental lapses, going when it wasn't my turn at 4 way stops, etc, but that isn't interesting and you don't want to hear about it, so I'll segue into...
Generally when I drive, I do so predicting that the people around me will do the dumbest thing possible. Occassionally they do (pull out in front of me when I'm 20 feet away going 40, slam on the brakes for no reason when I'm following them), but because of this rational paranoia (sic), I find myself prepared for the most part.
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Post by Ashuku on Nov 13, 2006 18:03:43 GMT -5
Left foot breaking isnt a very good habit to get into. If you rest your foot on the pedal it wears down your break pads faster.
I almost hit some dude going through some round-a-bouts here in my town. People are idiots and dont know how to drive through them. There are yield signs through them, and for some reason EVERYONE thinks yield means stop. Even when there is obviously NO traffic on the things.
And thats why I almost hit someone going through them. A dude slammed on his breaks in front of me (For no reason) and I probably got about 3 inches away from rear-ending him. There was no car comming that he needed to stop for, as well.
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Post by Eric on Nov 13, 2006 18:23:25 GMT -5
Friday night, I quite nearly got smacked to death by a driver running a red light at about 70mph. Luckily I saw in time that he definitely wasn't stopping and was able to stop short of his dumb ass.
Seriously, Delaware drivers are the most retarded drivers I've ever seen. Here are a few of my gripes from the past two months that happen on nearly a daily basis: - If you are trying to merge onto the highway from an entry ramp, people never want to let you in. In fact, they usually just assume run you right off into the ditch. So basically you have to force your way in and hope they slam on the brakes so you don't hit them. - Buses. School buses especially. These drivers are some crazy bastards. They maneuver like they think they're driving little Beemers or something. They also have a penchant for running your ass off the road/out of your lane/etc. - I see at least one person a day who is reading a book or newspaper while they are driving. I'm not talking stopped at a light, I'm talking in motion. WTF?? - Also, everyone talks on cell phones while driving. No exceptions. This is bad in Chicago too, but it's still worse here. - Gaper delays are unbelievable. Example: People were literally going from highway speed to a complete stop today, just to stare at some car that had slid off into the ditch in the median. The backup from everyone doing this was at least 5 miles. After we passed up the accident, normal speed resumed immediately. Idiocy. - Anyone who isn't a wacko speed demon is the kind of person who randomly sees phantom traffic in front of them, causing them to hit on their brakes even though the road is completely clear ahead. - Whenever Delawareans go to pull out onto a main road from a side street or a parking lot, they stick themselves out way too far, and I have to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting them. - Compounding the frustration of sharing the roads with these morons is the fact that the roads themselves are built and striped in absurd configurations that just invite traffic jams to happen. Also, flooding occurs whenever there is more than a few drops of rain.
Sorry, got off on a rant there! This place just sucks so much, I can't help it. My auto accidents include (surprisingly none of them have occurred in Delaware): - On about my second day of driving ever, I backed my car into the front bumper of our old van because I wasn't watching behind me. This wasn't a big deal, but it was my first mishap and gave me that whole sinking "omg I'm never going to drive again" feeling for a few hours.
- While coming into a right turn lane at a red light, I could see that the intersection was mostly clear, and I expected the line to keep moving on the right-turn-on-red-after-stopping principle. Unfortunately, someone decided not to do this, causing a ripple effect down the lane. I couldn't stop in time and lightly rear-ended the car in front of me. I don't know if they even noticed it or not, but they just drove right off, so I left it at that.
- Driving down a very narrow side street in a kind of ghetto neighborhood in Chicago, I encountered a vehicle traveling in the opposing direction. There were cars parked on both sides of the street. I thought there was enough room for both of us to pass without anyone having to pull over, but I was wrong, and I scraped the passenger side of my car against some POS ghetto van that was parked on my side. Nobody was around and the other driver didn't notice, so I just freaked out and left the scene. Oops. Luckily, my car wasn't scraped up too badly, but my dad still noticed it. I made up some story about how it was like that after I came out of a store and someone in a parking lot must have swiped me. The worst part about this story is that I had to take this same street and pass by the ghetto van every day to get to work, reminding me of my dumb mistake.
- Finally, the incident in suburban Pittsburgh which is infamous among certain attendees of LemoCon, in which I was forced to swerve out of the path of an oncoming semi which came barreling down under an old railroad viaduct without warning. This was not my fault. There was no collision, but the curb I had to ride up on in the process of swerving turned out to have an epic chunk out of it or something, because I completely blew out my right front tire and made a pretty good nick in the rim. It was a deafening "thud", pretty ugly thing. We had to limp the car (now riding on the twisted, mangled remains of a tire) up the hill out from under the viaduct, just to put the donut on. Luckily the rim wasn't damaged past the point of driveability, and our good friend Sammybeany referred me to a place in town that gave me a spectacular deal on a new tire, and all was well again with the world. :[
- Oh yeah, and there was this one time several years ago when I was joyriding at night through a hilly area. It had been raining and the roadway was slick. Well I was on my way back home, and I didn't remember the route entirely, and ended up having to make a sudden turn to stay on course. Quite an epic spin-out ensured in which my car ended up stopped in the middle of like a 5-way intersection. Luckily these were all small roads, and it was so late at night that absolutely nobody was out driving, otherwise I certainly would have ended up pretty dead. That little incident scared me into driving a lot more conservatively during precipitation.
Somehow, all of this stuff has ended up being "off the record", and so I haven't had my insurance rates jacked up. Thankfully. I'm actually a pretty good driver now, really! Just learn from your mistakes...
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Post by Robert on Nov 13, 2006 18:28:14 GMT -5
Let's combine a few quotes here: Generally when I drive, I do so predicting that the people around me will do the dumbest thing possible. Occassionally they do (pull out in front of me when I'm 20 feet away going 40, slam on the brakes for no reason when I'm following them), but because of this rational paranoia (sic), I find myself prepared for the most part. I almost hit some dude going through some round-a-bouts here in my town. People are idiots and dont know how to drive through them. There are yield signs through them, and for some reason EVERYONE thinks yield means stop. Even when there is obviously NO traffic on the things. And thats why I almost hit someone going through them. A dude slammed on his breaks in front of me (For no reason) and I probably got about 3 inches away from rear-ending him. There was no car comming that he needed to stop for, as well. It is one thing that is definitely true about driving (at least in the US, I'll let others come up with their own figure) -- 99% of the time, everyone is playing by the rules, and things are in order. But yes, once in a while, someone does something completely unexpected. There's one thing in being in an accident because someone ran a red light. That is very clearly outright rule breaking, very dangerous, and very much their fault if something goes wrong. However, stopping at a yield sign? This actually isn't as horrible as you make it out to be. The idea behind a Yield sign is you don't have to stop if you're absolutely sure you're safe to proceed. Basically, a wussy stop sign. However, if a driver for any reason feels they need to stop, you have to be prepared for that. Nothing says that someone isn't allowed to stop at a Yield and check things out for themsleves. Granted someone might be driving "overly cautious" that way, but in this case it's your responsibility.
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Post by Sz on Nov 13, 2006 18:40:39 GMT -5
1) Too late 2) You're roughly the 500th person to tell me this (congrats) 3) I've played too many racing games in my day to rest my foot on the pedal! 4) I drive a Jeep mostly anyway, the pedals are obscenely stiff... which is good. You should have to actually try to hit the pedals in a car. Alas, it doesn't always work this way. 5) Corollary: The Jeep doesn't have anti-lock brakes, and generally despite this I don't have to pump them. If there is one area of total unconcern re: driving for me, it is that I'm going to use up my brakes. I would have to use them first.
People seem to hold some iron-bounded belief that braking with your left foot is going to cause all sorts of bad things to happen. I'm not sure why.
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Post by Robert on Nov 13, 2006 19:17:34 GMT -5
People seem to hold some iron-bounded belief that braking with your left foot is going to cause all sorts of bad things to happen. I'm not sure why. Actually, I think it's less to do with things like wearing down your brakes and more about making sure that, in a panic, you consciously do what you mean to do. If you have it wired in your head that your one foot is all you need to respond with, you're more likely to do the right thing when it suddenly goes to hell, since human brains become surprisingly worthless for the first second or so during a panic situation. And that second may be all you have. For example, another stupid thing I did and forgot about -- also involving a Yield -- I took an entrance ramp onto a highway, assuming I could use it as a normal acceleration lane and pull up to 55MPH quickly. I started to accelerate quickly, only this entrance goes into a blind curve before becoming a straight acceleration lane. Wouldn't you know it, right at the end of the curve, sat a pickup completely stopped for no reason I know. (Talk about people stopping at Yield signs for no reason. ) It was an interesting moment... I think it was all of one second I had to respond. Determined not to rear end this person, I first slammed on my brakes. When it was clear this wouldn't solve my problem, I quickly noticed that there was a grass hill next to the road. I threw the wheel to the right, hit the gas (because locked wheels only skid), and actually managed to dodge the truck by inches and rolled up the hill the complete length of the car before I stopped. Then the truck took off in a hurry, no doubt scared to death, ha. I then put the car in reverse and rolled back down... only to find in the moment I had blown my left rear-running brake line apart. My emergency/parking brake was also non-functional. Of course, stubborn fool I was, and memories of playing Corncob 3D with a plane that had damaged everything flying back to base, I actually drove the damn thing home, using tricks with gear shifting and take the injured bird home. Given the rapid pedal switches to recover from the truck issue, I don't know if I could have done it two-footedly. Anyway, I don't know how true it all is. But that's what I heard about left-foot braking. The only thing they want you to use your left foot for is a clutch. P.S. Don't accelerate into blind curves and be prepared to stop, even if it means slowing down considerably.
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Post by Sz on Nov 13, 2006 19:37:48 GMT -5
Yes, I've heard the "ZOMG you'll panic and hit the wrong pedal!" argument before as well.
But what's to say you won't hit the wrong pedal with your archaic right foot braking? ;> My point is that if you can be "hard-wired" into shifting your foot positions, I can certainly hard-wire it into my mind that right = go and left = stop. This is a binary relationship, I'm not going to hit both at the same time because that's not how it works, and at some subconscious level I've learned that.
There's also a bit of confidence that comes from knowing that I can alter my current speed in a consistent left foot/right foot manner.
Anyway, random thought (it's true, too): gas = traction control steering/brake = stability control
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Post by Robert on Nov 13, 2006 19:48:20 GMT -5
Yeah, I dunno. It probably made more sense when all vehicles had a clutch. Either way, it's still the current standard to operation, and most likely, if a driving instructor is paying attention, they'll require you to operate that way. But really, I have no particular good reasons other than your "binary relationship" could potentially have you hit both pedals simultaneously for ridiculous results and at least the "right foot only" version prevents that from happening. Someone needs to find a website declaring the rationale behind this because at this point I have nothing to argue.
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Post by Sz on Nov 13, 2006 20:03:29 GMT -5
Yeah, I dunno. It probably made more sense when all vehicles had a clutch. Either way, it's still the current standard to operation, and most likely, if a driving instructor is paying attention, they'll require you to operate that way. But really, I have no particular good reasons other than your "binary relationship" could potentially have you hit both pedals simultaneously for ridiculous results and at least the "right foot only" version prevents that from happening. Someone needs to find a website declaring the rationale behind this because at this point I have nothing to argue. I'm sure there at least was once a good reason (I'm not sure it was clutch related -- a ton of race drivers brake with their left foot), possibly soft pedals where it was easy to accidentally ride the brake, possibly a simple lack of coordination on the part of most people (it probably is more natural for people to brake with one foot, especially if your legs aren't absurdly long like mine) that led to the single foot approach becoming common practice.
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Post by ♫Milø on Nov 13, 2006 20:20:19 GMT -5
Sounds like you guys have been in some pretty scary stuff. Luckily this is only my first accident so someone told me that my insurance rates won't go up too high. But still.. I think I'll be walking to work for a while.
Plus, now pulling out of any intersection has me scared. I had to drive the car back to my house (after the accident, party 2 and I pulled our respective vehicles into an intersecting street as to not block traffic) and I was so afraid to pull out of the intersection.
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DiscoChao
Behind The Logo Team
OMG The fun in not you!
Posts: 204
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Post by DiscoChao on Nov 13, 2006 20:25:18 GMT -5
Accidents are bad. Congrats on being alive. Lucky for me, I don't drive.
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Post by Mystical Thief 001 on Nov 13, 2006 21:09:58 GMT -5
Sounds...Office Space-ish.
Er--anyway--good that you're not a metal-flesh sandwich.
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Epon
Active Member
Posts: 402
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Post by Epon on Nov 13, 2006 21:24:35 GMT -5
You'll never be able to drive stick. Or atleast have someone teach you!
Look at it this way, you can powerbreak a mean burnout in an automatic!
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Post by 王泥喜 on Nov 13, 2006 22:16:49 GMT -5
Having only taking a couple lessons, It seemed like I was gonna be in an accident-situation at least once every 15 minutes.
Arhg....
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Post by SonKnuck on Nov 13, 2006 22:34:17 GMT -5
hum... Somehow, Sega Genus' accident reminds me of my own first, and only, car accident.
December 10th, 2002, 9:38AM (Don't ask me how the heck I remember the exact time)
There I am, in my car, quietly heading from home to college for one of my final fall semester exam. Starring in front of me, all of the time, never moving my eyes a little. Big mistake, since I ended up in a "fix" looking forward as if there was nothing and no one in front of me. I suddenly realize it and I figure out I just burned a red light! After noticing the light, a notice myself heading straight into the back of a Dodge caravan!
Quickly thinking how to avoid it, no way to avoid on the right lane since there's too many cars. My only solution, since there were no cars on that side, the lane of the opposite direction! Unfortunatelt, Either it was too late or I didn't turn the wheel fast enough since I violently hit the rear of the Dodge Caravan on my right side while breaking of course.
In the end, the entire right side of my car, at the front, was a mess! Almost everything was broken and even the radiator left some debris. What does this mean?
My car: A total lost. The other car: No damages, only the bumper fell down and they simply fix it in under 2 minutes and were gone... I had to wait for my car to be brought home by some other guy since it was in no condition to be drived anymore...
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