Crazy Drivers

[Hollow 1977]

Hi! Welcome to my crazy driver thread. Here you can post about an incident you have had involving a crazy driver,biker, bicycler, pedestrian, etc. We all have had near misses and some of those I am sure could have resulted in fatality for us or them. So feel free to share here.

I had one just recently. I was driving through my development heading toward the exit when all the sudden this van or suv backs up. I had only a split second to slam on my brakes to avoid an accident. Worse yet, before they pulled away I noticed a "baby on board" sticker on their windshield. Not only would they drive like this alone, but they do it while they have kids in the car. I feel sorry for the kids.

 

[Lemonrice]

Suv missed the stroller with the baby in it by about half a meter yesterday. I crossed the street on a green pedestrian traffic light and the jerk didn’t bother to take a look when turning. He didn't bother to stop or even look back, I don't think he even noticed.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Not even a week ago I was driving home from a lab I work in contingently at the moment. I was on the highway in the right lane because my exit was soon. I was going 70 mph, which is the speed limit right on the nose. This Dodge Ram must have decided me following the road law was just too dang slow and started trying to pass me. He started merging over entirely way too quickly. He got so close to me that I had to make an evasive maneuver and almost got run off the road. All of that for what? To get stuck at a red light at the exit? Yeah. Buddy. Glad you're in such a hurry. I've never really gotten anywhere sooner by speeding. You won't either.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I don't have a specific story at the moment, but I live about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta, and I have to say that I have never met a combination of more aggressively terrible drivers and terrible traffic conditions in one place ever before.

Most of Atlanta drivers drive like they don't care if they or you live or die, and its the only place I've ever seen that can paradoxically have gridlock at 90mph.

 

[Philosophus Vagus]

I don't have a specific story at the moment, but I live about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta, and I have to say that I have never met a combination of more aggressively terrible drivers and terrible traffic conditions in one place ever before.

If you ever find yourself 180 odd miles west in Alabama try passing through downtown Gadsden. You'll never complain about Atlanta again I assure you, it might not get up to the speeds you'll find in Atlanta but a toddler on a sugar rush couldn't be a worse city planner than whoever the heck designs those roads and as a result of no one knowing where the heck to go amidst the myriad of idiocy everyone is constantly confused and the natives are all extremely aggressive to make up for all the lost time that the congestion causes. I don't like driving in cities period but Gadsden, however small it may be, is hands down the worst city I've ever driven in. (though Birmingham is also a lot worse than Atlanta...Alabama city planning is just horrible in general).

The worst experience I've ever had with a crazy driver was actually as a passenger. When my brother's car broke down last year I agreed to lend him mine for a few days and drove it up there for him at 5am so he could get to work (I lived within walking distance of my job at the time). Obviously I needed a ride back home though so while he went to work his girlfriend agreed to take me home after she dropped her kids off at school. Little did I know at the time, this woman (who normally is a fairly relaxed, nice person) ended up being an absolute demon behind the wheel. I mean she'd be gunning down the 23-35 mph road going 60+, screaming obscenities at anyone she came up on going the speed limit (or even faster than the speed limit, just slower than she wanted to go), just getting all worked up over things that were her fault (like when her excessive speeds caused people turning onto the road to pull out in front of us because to their perspective when they started to turn she was way to far away down the road to possibly come up to them that fast if she were to be following the speed limit...or anywhere close to the speed limit). And all of this was with her kids in the car, to her it was just another morning dropping them off at school before taking me back home.

Haven't gotten in a car that she's driving since. When I confronted my brother about it later he just shrugged and said "yeah, probably should've warned you. That's why I always insist on driving everywhere." Crazy ****. What really makes me mad is that she somehow has a cleaner driving record than I do, the mind boggles at how (though imo it's probably equally parts the obvious opinion that automatically makes me a 'sexist' for even thinking and the fact that she's probably often going so fast that even when she passes cops they don't have enough time to speed up to catch her before she is out of sight). And back to my first point I guess this might just be how nutters drive when they live in Gadsden for too long.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

Idk man. Atlanta regularly hits top 10 worst traffic in the US lists based on statistics.

Also there was once an intersection that I had to take going to a friends house where 5 lanes go in, and only 4 lanes come out, but for some reason the lines for what the lanes are supposed to do are partially not there and partially look like they were drawn by a drunk toddler. Every time I drove through it I just kind of drove straight and hoped no one pulled into me.

 

[Norjen]

I got hit by a car back in 2006 when going to tech school.

I was crossing a road with 2 lanes + bus lane in both directions, so 4 lanes total. Morning rush hour, a loooong line of cars at the crossing. I stopped at the pedestrian island to check that the 1st car in line is still yielding and letting me cross, and I walked across the road. I failed to see that on the bus lane there was a car speeding past the line of cars, to the crosswalk, who would've hit straight to a group of people walking behind me had the driver not steered away and to the sidewalk, where I happened to be walking.

Had I been one step further I would've likely been testing how my head fares against a windshield, but luckily I hit the front corner of the car that pushed me aside a bit. I blacked out for a few seconds, and I think I was airborne for that duration since I found myself back in the crosswalk. In the end I walked away with a bruise on my knee and my neck muscles couldn't hold my head properly for a week or so, and the driver got his license taken away on the spot and was later banned from driving for 2 years. He also needed a new side view mirror because I was made tougher than that.

Idk about the rest of the country, but where I live this kind of stuff is quite common. People are not dying left and right only because they know better than to trust the drivers to not run them over, and I see something stupid happening about each time I drive anywhere - most often someone crazy recklessly overtaking multiple cars so that they can be the first to wait in the next stoplights. If these people could materialize their egos, they'd need a dump truck to carry it around.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@Norjen At my university, pedestrian hittings were an epidemic. One semester after one week back there had been seven reports of struck students. I even personally saw one guy get smacked right in front of the dining court after he tried to jaywalk. I was walking down to the bridge to go to one of our shopping areas. I paused at an alley because a car was coming forward. They had made a stop and I made eye contact with them, or so I thought. I started crossing and noticed the car slowly inching forward. I put my hand out and touched their front hood. They still kept inching forward and the car was butting my hip so I actually climbed up and just sat on the front hood and stared at the driver. THAT made them stop. Yes. I can be a bit intense at times and in no way was I injured or even really hit, but it was such a WTF moment. I felt compelled to make a PSA video and went around filming idiotic behaviors on both the parts of drivers and pedestrians. I never thought it would be necessary to inform people how to cross a street...but here we are.

 

[Windows i7]

It isn't just big cities affected by these awful drivers. I live in a small city, and while things are normally ok I do frequently see random stupidity happen on the road. Usually it involves people ignoring basic rules of the road like right of way. Fortunately most people near me are sane.

Also, in 2014 I was in a fairly significant accident involving a Toyota Tundra hitting my Civic on the driver-side door (T-bone collision). The guy ran a two way stop, and conditions were completely clear. $11,000 worth of repairs to my car were paid for by this person's insurance because he was clearly at fault. Not sure how I didn't get injured in that honestly (or even how my car survived that...).

 

[Mr. Detective]

Just this Friday morning when I was driving to work, I almost hit a biker who was going against the flow of traffic.

So, I was at a 3-way stop sign, and I was pulling up to check for traffic to my left. The streets were empty, no pedestrians, only 1 car was passing ahead of me. Everything looked clear, so I began turning right. All of a sudden this dude on a bike just appeared out of nowhere in front my car. Luckily, I was able to steer my car to the right just enough to avoid hitting him. Idiot was riding his bike against the flow of traffic, and to make things worse, he decided that it was a good idea to ride in front my car instead of going behind me, even though I was already pulling up.

I honked the bastard before I drove away.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

It isn't just big cities affected by these awful drivers. I live in a small city, and while things are normally ok I do frequently see random stupidity happen on the road. Usually it involves people ignoring basic rules of the road like right of way. Fortunately most people near me are sane.

Oh, man. So I grew up in one of the most rural counties in North Georgia. It was the sticks. I think because they never had to drive in a real city, lots of people who never left the sticks drove like idiots.

So, where the high school was, there was a 3 lane road in front of it. 1 way had 1 lane, the other direction had 2 lanes. the number of times I saw someone going the 1 lane way use the center lane as a turn lane was INSANE. IT WASN'T A TURN LANE YOU NUMPTY, IT WAS A LANE FOR THE OTHER SIDE OF TRAFFIC. And they would do it right where it came over a hill.

I had a crown vic as a teenager that I had hit a deer in, so the front was all messed up. I kept joking that I was going to just plow into the next person I saw doing that so that their insurance would cover fixing the front of my car.

 

[mariopepper]

I still do not have driver license. Maybe that is why a lot of people still can walk

 

[Mako_Sharknado]

Back in October my foot was run over by a car

The pedestrian cross light and the adjacent turn-only lane both lit up at the same time. There weren't any cars stopped in the lane so I just started crossing. Immediately after, a car that had been coming up the lane went right into a turn, not even slowing down or anything, and cut me off. One of the tires ran over my right foot and I fell over. The car didn't even stop. I scrambled over back to the sidewalk to get out of the street and massaged my foot for a bit. I tried to walk it off but every time I took a step I felt the worst pain I'd ever been in blast my foot. I had to hop over to the gas station nearby and call for a ride

Ended up fracturing my middle metatarsal. Not the funnest welcome to a new city and state