Car wrecks and trauma

[Dio]

Do you at least get some meat or jerky out of the deal?

Around here if its edible the trooper will write up a tag and you can take it home. I got 90 pounds of good venison from one I hit. I was going downhill at about 55 when the thing just stepped right out there. Totalled the car: folded the hood like a playing card, laid the radiator back on the engine block and split the transaxle wide open. I was fine; more mad than anything.

I imagine this thread remains the incorrect location to make deer in the headlight jokes. . .

[Buster's Uncle]

Well-put.

[Rusty Edge]

When I lived in Appalachia we concluded that the advantage of bumper whistles were that they often made the dear lift and turn their heads towards you. This makes it easier for you to see one and be alerted to their presence.

But deer are still deer, and how many of them there are, and whether they'll cross the road completely, halfway,  not at all, or cross and retreat back, WHO KNOWS?



I had a couple of errands today. I was really suspicious of one person following me talking on their phone. I needn't have been.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hard to walk off, sometimes...

I showed up for work that night, BTW, and kept showing up.  Had to rinse a touch of blood off my arms when I got there, but none from a scratch big enough to see.  If I had gone home, I REALLY would have fallen apart w/o distractions.  I was okay that night until it hit the dead time around 3am. 

Spent the whole shift convincing regulars I'd really had my car totaled on the way to work by reaching and pulling out a speck of safety glass from my hair in back to show them.

[Dio]

I have never been in a serious car accident. The closest I have come to being in a serious accident was the time that the remnants of an individual's car tire came flying towards the wind shield while on the 405 freeway.

[gwillybj]

I apologize for placing my deer story here. It was a very real situation that could have been a lot worse (if there was a lot of traffic, for instance). Even so, it was nothing compared to the vehicle to vehicle collision BUncle was in.

[Buster's Uncle]

Nothing to apologize for.  It's on topic, fit the flow of conversation, and absolutely no harm done.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, as for aftermath...

Our car was totaled by the insurance adjuster. Buckled unibody. We were asked by my brother-in-law what model hit us, and we agreed we didn't know. it was a 2-door black car with a demolished front end and blown airbags. Maybe Japanese built.

Possibly the driver responsible ( funny word juxtaposition, for a an uninsured driver ) was asleep or texting, because we think he had options as far as steering into adjacent lanes, and there were no apparent skid marks.

Here the law is pull over or slow down when you see an emergency vehicle roadside. I came around the curve and there was a police car with flashing lights, maybe assisting a disabled motorist. I slowed down, my wife criticized my driving, saying I was risking a rear-end collision.

Tonight I was waiting at another major intersection, and when the light changed I was getting nervous when the guy ahead delayed and then drove away at 10mph on a 30mph street. I was thinking o0O(HURRY UP! GET ME OUT OF THIS INTERSECTION!!)

So, we're both still paranoid. Physically we are recovered.

[ColdWizard]

Took me years after getting rear-ended to not check my rearview mirror when stopped.

Also, the deer in and near my current subdivision stop and look for traffic before crossing.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's not all the fear of it, either -men are programmed all their lives to not let fear of death get to them too much- but a disgust at the doggon whole world, too.  I was minding my own business, prudently hanging back and not passing a very slow drunk driver who wasn't keeping in the lanes at all about a half mile to my exit.  I was actually watching a fool with no more sense than to try to pass getting forced into the median when BOOM!

-Just like that, I wasn't a car owner any more.

You not only can't keep your SELF safe from the world, you can't even defend your STUFF from the fools.  That is really hard to live with, being reminded so forcefully how impossible it is to keep yourself and your property safe from the caprices of fate, and stupid people.

[ColdWizard]

Stupid/ignorant/apathetic/inconsiderate/willfully obtuse/incompetent people. I'm most of those things at any given point during the day but I try hard not to be any* when operating two tons of glass and steel. Because it's two tons of glass and steel.


*Possibly excepting inconsiderate; because [fuddle-duddle] your last minute dive across multiple lanes and [fuddle-duddle] you. Pull a legal u-turn at the next available light (or a right and then a u, or multiple rights, etc etc etc).

[Buster's Uncle]

That's pretty exactly it.  Operating over a ton of mass at lethal speeds, I try very hard not to be anybody else's problem on the road.  It's not just safer, it's polite.

If everybody did that all they could in everything, half of our civilization's problems go away -poof- just like that.

[Rusty Edge]

Perhaps you share my dream-

I imagine a world in which driving would be transformed form a stressful, competitive, dangerous  process to a relaxing, cooperative, safe one. How? By drivers simply communicating their intentions beforehand with

.....

TURN SIGNALS!

[ColdWizard]

No. My dream is where I'm the dictator of some land area large enough to have roads and I implement my three strikes driving policy. Wherein three infractions (failure to signal, failure to yield the passing lane, failure to keep up with the flow of traffic, etc) results in the offender being summarily executed on the side of the road and the vehicle going to the person at the top of the free car list. More serious violations (drunk driving, texting, etc) can result in summary execution in their own right.

[Buster's Uncle]

WTD happened with turn signals?  People were doing that, mostly, up to late 1985 when I went off to four year college for more than four years, and didn't do much driving - when I graduated at the end of 1989 and reentered the world, people had stopped signaling, mostly, for ANYthing.