Classic Motoring Embarrassments

Altea Ego    on 18 August 2003

Driving license just aquired, borrowed an auto for the first time went round to get it, Climbs in, drives round to GF place, drive to coast, lovely day. Get back to car - wont start, try phoning man whos car I borrowed, not home. Half hitch and half train 100 miles home with now peed off soon to be ex GF.

Established the next day I had left the autobox in drive............

LongDriver {P}    on 18 August 2003

On the winding A689 between Alston and Carlisle, I was travelling through a small village called Slaggyford in May 1991, driving my then pride and joy, an F-reg Ford Orion 1.4L (the version they finally got almost right, just before they changed them) in burgundy, with the 175/70 tyres...anyway I digress...

The weather was dry/sunny and the road was dry...I rounded a bend at around 40mph to find that there was a stream of water flowing across the road.

I instinctively did the wrong thing and applied my brakes....

In front of me was approximately 50 yards of the lushest green grass you have ever seen...at the end of which was a smal stone cottage, with (what I later found out to be) a coall cellar/outside toilet in a stone lean-to on the end...

As I had applied my brakes as I hit the stream of water,as the car was a Ford, I proceeded to leave the road at a tangent to the bend and porceeded across the lush grass.

As I crossed the grass, the steering and brakes were of course completely useless, so I attmepted to slow down by changing into second gear as I careered towards the cottage.

All was to no avail and I impailed by Orion square onto the end the foot thick stone wall of the outside toilet at probably 35mph (in a Top Gear Renault Megane type way).

Ouch! I thought as my left hand (being on the gear stick) punched straight through the stereo and ashtray in the dashboard.

The impact energy went through the windscreen pillars and up into the roof, as well as pushing the front wheels and engine virtually into the footwell. As a result, the roof lifted by around a foot and the front doors sprung open.

I climbed out and was OK, apart from a very b***** hand, which now appeared to receive Radio 1.

I walked to the front door of the cottage and knocked on the door...it was answered by a little old lady. I asked if I could use her phone as I had just crashed into the end of her house.

"Oh, I thought I heard a noise!" said the old lady...

The house escaped unscathed...the little old lady later told me that she had lived in the house for over 50 years and I evidently wasn't the first to try and demolish her outside loo...

How embarrassing!

Hugo {P}    on 18 August 2003

Well Come on now LD,

If you were really that desperate to use the loo you only had to ask! ;)

H

Roger Jones    on 20 August 2003

It must have been about 1972. I was in a crawling queue of traffic through roadworks. I glanced right for a split second and collided with the car in front, with exquisite precision: no damage to his car but the glasses in my foglight and spotlight -- those were the days -- had been neatly smashed by the overriders on his back bumper. We both had a laugh.

oldtoffee    on 20 August 2003

Back to the seventies for me too although it is still vivid in my mind. Embarrassing certainly, funny NO!

In my friends “yellow” Fiat 500, we came up behind a 4 vehicle funeral cortege. Despite my urgently expressed concerns over respect for the dead and the car’s limited accelerative abilities, my friend decided that he could safely pass the lot. Down a gear, moves out, lots more noise, negligible speed increase. Halfway point, a car appears travelling towards us considerably faster than us. Squeeze in between vehicles 2 and 3 to create a bumble bee effect. What followed was the longest two or three minutes of my life that only ended when the cortege turned off for the crematorium and I could no longer feel eyes boring in to the back of my skull. I still cringe.