Closest Shave

[Wombat]

Whoa, anybody know what happened there?

[cbman]

Hey wombat I think the UBB threw up on your post as that IP logged should be in the corner and alot smaller

[Wombat]

How about <A HREF="http://userfs.cec.wustl.edu/~rmf2/nearly_hit.mpeg">this</A>guy? Watch it carefully, there's an extra car there.

[Jammrock]

Rags,

You too know the horror of I-80 of Doom!! That highway should be completely blocked of in the winter time!!

Jammrock

[Pace]

http://www.falkirkherald.co.uk/news/story3.html

My house is around 1000 yds from this spot on the road, and I'd came home around 15 minutes before this happened. If the guy had been faster, he could've hit me.

We heard the bang from the house, and the car was cut in 2, and in flames. The only 'good' point was noone else was killed, as is usually the case with careless drivers.

P.

[The PIT]

I would say it's a lack of ability to realise whats the sensible speed for a given situ.
Look how many poeple drive at high speed into thick fog or heavy Rain. How many poeple in the UK now slow to walking pace when they see a snow flake drop from the sky.

[Gurm]

Hmm... closest shave with death? I can think of two. One involved me crossing the street at age 10 to catch the bus, and some guy whipping around the corner in a souped-up firebird at EASILY 100+MPH (in a 20Mph zone). My dad got the license number though. I feel for that poor bastard. Reckless endangerment's big brother charge, whatever that is. He did time.

Second was when I was 16, and riding in a car with a friend. It was his mother's car, an absurdly powerful Oldsmobile, modified and souped up by the dealer. We were doing fine on dry pavement on an exit ramp, not even going too fast... but a little runoff had turned into black ice. The exit ramp was UP onto an overpass. We did several 360's across oncoming traffic before coming to rest on the little strip between the other lane and the open air down to the highway again. If we hadn't stopped, the flimsy barrier wouldn't have stopped us.

Come to think of it, a different time I was with a different friend hydroplaning across two lanes of oncoming traffic, but we were in a Volvo so strangely I didn't feel afraid.

- Gurm

P.S. Run-in with the cops? Don't have 'em any more. There's a reason I bought a $500 radar detector.

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Rags]

Sounds like Gurm has a Valentine One.

Rags

[GT98]

Closest I've ever come to getting killed in accident was when I was stationed in Germany. My friend and I where stationed in Baumholder and we wanted to take a ride out to the local AF base in his 97 Honda Civic that was about an hour or so down the Autobahn. It was raining out during the afternoon but it had stopped. We went merry down Autobahn 6 (avg about 80-100 mph or so) for a bit. There was some water on the road, but nothing too bad. Well we hit a puddle in the left lane and hyroplanned....we started to skid and winded up hitting the left hand guard rail....slide clear across the autobahn to right hand guard rail that got hit by the rear of the car....we went down the side of the guard rail for a good 20 feet or so...I felt the rear come up a bit and prayed that it didn't come all the way up and we flip. The car finally came to a stop dead smack in the middle of the autobahn. Both Airbags went off...and we both got out the car. The car was a total wreck...all 4 tires under the car, and a nice crease in the floor from the pass side B pillar all the way to drivers foot petals. Only thing that happened to me was that my hat got knocked off my head from the airbag and I had a sore muscle in my neck and couple extra grey hairs.

The best part was when the Polizi came and gave my friend a ticket...it was something like 200 DM and between the two of us they only got $20 bucks or so LOL!!! As a side note my friend also had a Honda street bike and he laid that out also! OUCH!

Scott


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Abit BH6 rev 1.0 Celeron 2-566@877mhz,256mb RAM,ATI Radeon AIW,SB Live! with Klipsch Promedia v2-400, Optiquest V95 19in montor, Asus 40x CD-ROM, Aopen 5x DVD-ROM,HP9110i 8x4x32 CD-RW,SupraMax 56k modem,WinME on Western Digital 30GB drive

[SteveC]

It's not speed that kills, it's the lack of ability to handle the speed that kills.

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Kruzin]

Riding my brand new mountain bike as a teen. Hauling butt down a busy road in rush hour, keeping ahead of a line of 35mph traffic that was about 30 yards behind me. Truck pulled out in front of me. My right inside elbow just hooked his open tailgate. Summersaulted over the handlebars, landed flat on my back in the middle of a traffic lane, with approaching vehicles. Got my tail off the road in a hurry. Took me 5 min and someone else to notice the gash on my inner elbow. Still got the scar from that one.

Flipped my first car. Wasn't wearing my belt. Tossed across to passenger seat. Roof on drivers side crushed to seat level, passenger side barely touched. Got a scratch on my elbow.

[Gurm]

Yes. There can be only one. Valentine One.

I don't care WHAT anyone else says about Bell or Whistler or Cobra or any of that shit... all I know is I know where cops are, how many of them there are, what direction they are relative to my car, what bands they're using and relative strengths.

I can't count the number of times I've passed a radar trap snickering at people, many of them WITH other radar detectors.

On a couple occasions, I have passed radar, and still gotten a warning of radar ahead, so I stayed slow. Others with regular detectors floored it again and were nailed by a SECOND police trap a mile up from the first one.

There is NOTHING like a Valentine One.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[The PIT]

In this country they're looking at digital speed cameras which measure your overall speed down a stretch of road so if your okay for the first section and then accidentaly slip over you're photo graphed and automatically sent a ticket.
The police like this idea as it will make their crime stats look very good.

[cerb]

Yeah, we have speed cameras here now.

At least they're not as sneaky here in Queensland as they are in New South Wales or Victoria. Here they have to be mounted on or near a particular type of car (to start off with they only had them on one model of Mistubishi van, now they have them on Toyota Hilux 4wd's and the odd Ford Falcon, but nothing else. It's a dead giveaway seeing one of these three type of car sitting on the side of the road), and the car has to be visible for at least 100 metres (or is it 200m?). If you're unfortunate enough to speed past one, you may see the flash go off, otherwise the first you may know is to get a nice expensive little photo of your car in the mail.

In Victoria, I saw a story on a current affairs program on residents complaining about speed cameras - one lady got booked three times in one morning by the same camera because they had hidden the camera so well that she couldn't see it. Those three tickets meant that she had lost her license. To me that just seems like an attempt at revenue raising, not an attempt to slow people down.

I don't know if the speed cameras here are laser or radar, though, so I don't know if radar detectors work on them. They do the job though - in the past you had to sit at least 20km/h over the speed limit to keep up in the fast lane. Nowadays, if you go 10km/h over, you're overtaking most people.

[XHotKolaX]

I have 2:

1st time was when I was 12 or so. Rockville Pike-West Deer Park Road intersection. It's pouring, my sister and I were in the middle of crossing the road. My sister keeps going but I see 2 cars going down the road at too fast a speed. I grab and pull my back a few. The car in front does a nice fish tail after a nick with the median a few feet from where we were standing. The car behind it flies into the one in front and the both tumble up the road. I yell out, "cool!" thinking a movie was just shot and continue crossing the street to go home.

2nd one was last year. I got my brand new Toyota Celica GTS '00 and thought it was the greatest thing. Actually I doubt it accelerates faster than a corolla, but it certainly handles and brakes MUCH better. And it plain looks nice. So..some road that looked like G-W parkway(same colored rocks as borders) I think to myself, how fast can my baby actually go? I hit 100 and then there's a 180 turn that I somehow did NOT see. (heh, everything is blurry, I swear!) The recommended turning speed was 20mph. I put on the brakes as I was going in, turned the steering wheel way right, and put on the parking breaks while yelling several curse words. I somehow made it thru' the turn with only the front left wheel blowing. It wouldn't have been that bad, but on the left side there was a "cliff" leading down to the potomac river. If I didn't make that turn..it would've sucked.

I limit my speeding now=) Slightly..