These Are The Stories Behind Our Readers’ First Car Crashes

You can usually find a self-proclaimed World’s Safest Driver who insists they’ve never once made a single mistake behind the wheel, but the sad reality is that people aren’t perfect, and at some point in our lives, most of us are going to crash. Since we’re forced to drive everywhere all the time in the U.S., if you haven’t crashed yet, it’s probably only a matter of time. Especially if you’re a relatively new driver. As it turns out, when you don’t have a ton of experience doing something, you aren’t usually the best at it.

On Friday, we asked you to share the stories behind your first crashes. Some of you were the stupid idiots whose crashes were your own doing. Others were the victims of stupid idiots who should have paid better attention. But thankfully, you’re still here to share your stories, because far too many people aren’t as lucky. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular responses below.

I was in my late teens, and I was ready to turn right onto a two lane road with the most superior car ever built, a 1998 Pontiac Grand Am. As I did, a person from the other lane did a U-turn and hit me as I as turning. Cosmetic damage, nothing serious fortunately. I pulled over to the side and hoping to get some information, but the driver just screamed out their window “KEEP DRIVING!” I yelled that she needed to pull over so we can trade information, and she just kept screaming “KEEP DRIVING!”. It was then I learned after the fact that some people don’t have car insurance or don’t want cops involved.

Suggested by: Alf Enthusiast

They were minor, but I had 2 in one day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Trust me — you never, ever want to be in a situation where the insurance guy calls to ask about an accident, and you reply “which one?”. And then he quotes the date, and you have to repeat that same question.

Suggested by: Polysyllabic

I was 18. I was driving my 85 CRX. As I approached an intersection, I had to go around a left turning dump truck. At the time, the road widened to 4 lanes from two with no turn lanes right before this major intersection. I checked that I was clear and began heading through the intersection. A car then turned left on top of path. No time to stop, I’d actually just started accelerating to get through the intersection. I slammed into the side of the car at a pretty high speed. I vividly remember it felt like time slowed down. We spun around as one unit. My big gulp Mountain Dew was suspended on the ceiling airborne. The front of the car crushed in and twisted up at an impossible angle. We swung around and slammed into a Camry at the adjacent part of the intersection. The force ripped the front clip off the Camry. Then we stopped moving and my big gulp an ice began raining down on me. I freaked out thinking I was being burned for a minute. Jumped out of the car limping because the dash had smashed into my right knee.

The other driver was no injured. First thing she said was: do you think this will make my insurance go up? I won’t repeat what I said to her.

Aftermath: I had the car flatbedded back home. I loved that car. Bought it with 180k and totaled it with 338k miles. My mom had to sell it for scrap when I wasn’t home. I got what I thought was a juicy settlement but learned the hard way that includes paying for medical care. Spent a chunk of it on pt for my knee.

Suggested by: R C

My mom bought a 1985 4Runner new to go off-roading with my uncle who also had a 4Runner. While my mom daily-drove the 4Runner, off-road driving was usually left to my stepdad. When I became a teenager, I was allowed to drive the 4Runner around the places we camped in the desert, learning to use the clutch, shifting, starting and stopping on hills, etc. I got as much seat time as I could on these trips, but rarely got out of 2nd gear.

Then one year a trip to Death Valley was planned for the day after Christmas. My stepdad could not attend due to work. We planned on entering the park via maintained dirt roads. The fact that my stepdad wasn’t there, didn’t cross my mind so much. I just figured mom would drive the whole trip. However, when we pulled off the pavement, mom asked if I wanted to drive. YES!

The road was maybe two lanes wide and well maintained, thus my uncle cranked up the speed. I was in 4th gear doing 50mph to keep up. The road began to rise up a hill. I lost sight of my uncle when he crested the hill. When I crested the hill, the road made a left that probably should have been negotiated at 20mph max.

I hit the brakes and downshifted in an attempt to negotiate the turn. Rear end came around and the right rear tire caught the soft shoulder while it was sliding sideways.

I had a knot on my forehead and she had some cuts from glass.

Based on the debris field and the distance, we figured that we’d rolled over 3 times.

I turned 14 the following April.

Suggested by: soloyosh

My very first accident happened in the mall parking lot. I had seen a line of cars going to the mall in the right lane so I decided to get over to the left line and just make U-turn or park further away. When I did that, I hit the side of the car that I didn’t see that moment. The accident wasn’t bad itself as the person at first was very understanding of my age and being my first accident. The worst was I get a knock on my door a year later stating that the driver that I hit wanted more money and was taking me to arbitration. She had complained that she was so much pain. Luckily I had a picture proofing that the accident wasn’t as bad as it looks and also she had known to sue people. In the end, she won the case and I am still mad about the incident.

Suggested by: Joe Brown

There was a 45 mph zone with an entrance to a subdivision that was really wide. Anyone with a rear wheel drive car would turn in too sharply and floor it and take that turn “Dukes of Hazard” style. I had a couple friends in the car and I wanted to show them how to really do it. After fishtailing quite a way into the subdivision and getting worse and worse with each over correction, I finally spun and came to a stop backwards. We all started laughing and stopped screaming… just in time to slam into a curb and jump into someone’s lawn.

We all piled out, grabbed the hub caps and drove off before someone called the cops. As we got to a friend’s house, one of the rear tires went flat and I was changing it when my dad pulled up. Dad didn’t believe me that I had just run over a nail and I had to pay to have the frame straightened and to get a new (to me) wheel.

The next day at school, people were shocked that I showed up. My two idiot friends had started a rumor that I had died in a car crash and the school was in mourning. Late in the day, a girl (that I had a crush on) came up to ask about me and I was huffy with her because I was sick of fielding questions about giant fires. Ends up she knew EXACTLY what had happened and had convinced her mom to not call the cops when she saw me and my friends were ok. Which is all mundane until you know what her father did for a living.

And that’s how I went into a Senator’s front lawn backwards.

Suggested by: hoser68

I used to commute from Toronto to Montreal every weekend. On my birthday in February, I was driving on the QEW eastbound when a tractor-trailer hit me after hitting the guard rail, bouncing back onto the highway and hitting me. I later found out that the driver was drunk. When I came to my senses, I was in the hospital (after a 3-day coma). I loved that car. It was a total lost as you can see in the posted image. Forty years later, my back still aches from that accident. (Add: For this reason, you will never catch me driving after drinking, even one glass of wine.)

Suggested by: Luc Desaulniers (minardi)

I was only six at the time, but my mother got rear ended at a stop light by someone that wasn’t paying attention to the stop lights. It’s memorable because my mother’s car was a Datsun 510. It was a total loss, but imagine if I had gotten that car to drive once I turned 16?

Suggested by: Robzilla1793

Sat in 30 mins of stop and go on I-95… passed the accident, decided that was the right time to light up as traffic accelerated, in the split second it took to light the cigarette the truck in front had stopped and I hit him at 5 or 10 mph. New bumpers all around and a coolant overflow bottle for me and I never smoked again.

Only other accident I’ve been in was at a right turn onto a busy road, but the adjoining road is angled at such a way you have to crane your neck and almost look out the rear window to see traffic. I was behind a G6, he started to go and the gap looked big enough for us both to go so I started accelerating after checking the gap. Well, he had moved about 5 feet and stopped again, so I bumped him at 5 mph. The G6 looked like it had been hit at 50 mph and my Pathfinder had a scratch on the bumper. Now I don’t check until the car I have watched the car in front drive off to make sure they aren’t just getting closer.

Suggested by: cintocrunch1

Just around the time I turned 18, I was driving a Renault 8S at a fast clip on a winding road. I was coming down a hill and into a right-hander where the road started going uphill. For those who don’t know, the Renault 8 is a rear-engined car with a swing arm rear suspension. As I was going through the turn and the road transitioned from going downhill to uphill, the rapid compression and rebound of the suspension caused the rear wheels to tuck in and the car to suddenly oversteer. I overcorrected, the car swung to the left, and I went over the left curb and a cliff. The car flipped head over tail and fell about 25 feet onto its rear left side. It then rolled and came to a stop on its right side, facing the cliff. The roof was completely smashed down to the seat in the rear. I ended up with my head in the passenger footwell and my legs draping the passenger seat. Except for a couple of bruises, I walked away unscathed. I was not wearing a seatbelt, but since then I have never ridden in a car without buckling up.

Suggested by: David Morales

I was 18, driving a ’76 Camero RS 350 4bbl with no A/C and black vinyl seats. It was a nice spring day, the summer heat hadn’t come yet to Columbia, SC. I was on my way to visit Peaches records on Harding St, just north of Five Points and the famous Yesterday’s Restaurant.

As you drive north on Harding St, coming from Rosewood Blvd, there are a series of side roads that come in at a angle from the right side. The land to the East is just slightly higher than Harding St and I was enjoying the rises as I travelled north. There’s a stop light at Wheat St, which had been red, but was just turning green as I was approaching Wilmont Ave.

The Eagles Hotel California has just come on the radio, and I reached down to turn up the volume. But as I crossed Wilmont, the car rose and fell quickly and I had to look down to find the knob again. Once I had the volume set to 11, I looked up to see the car infront of me, a mid 70’s Dodge Aspen, still sitting at a dead stop. I slammed on the brakes, but there just wasn’t enough room left between us for me to stop completely.

Thankfully the Aspen had bumper guards, and the point of my bumper just gently crushed the left one. I still got a ticket, but went to court and received a 1 day suspended sentence.

Suggested by: GoPadge

I was 17, going to pick my dad up at the airport in my mom’s Subaru Legacy sedan. I was stopped at a red in the right lane on a road with three lanes in each direction. The light turned green, and as a 17 year old, I hit the gas hard and released the clutch simultaneously. I was up to a good 10-15 mph when my peripheral vision picked up a Hyundai Excel swerving around the cross traffic that had stopped for their red, but I still didn’t have time to brake. I t-boned her, which spun me around and pulled me into the path of a Mazda Navajo that hit my left front fender while the Hyundai moved forward to get creamed by a full-size Bronco. I remember feeling my seatbelt stop me, then getting punched in the chest by the airbag, which bruised my ribs. The Excel driver wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, which was actually lucky for her because I knocked her into the passenger seat before the Bronco pushed a good 8-12 inches into the driver’s seat. Of course, she was uninsured, despite the fact that she was leaving a military base.

Suggested by: badrear