Scariest moment on a highway

[Flint1979]

Don't know if there is a thread for this. But just about a half hour ago not even a half hour ago as a matter of fact I was driving on M-13 on the Southeast side of Saginaw. I was heading southbound stopped for the light at M-46. As the light turned green I took off and got back up to the 40 mile an hour speed limit and in the right lane with the lane ending at Birch Street a block south of 46 a Dodge Ram pickup truck punches it runs over the curb and cuts me off, with the red light at Webber I got his license plate number. After that light turned green he absolutely punched it taking off and then slammed on his brakes but I was a little ways behind him and able to stop. Then he hops in the turning lane and at that point I went back around him. Then I noticed he was coming up fast behind me again. I went through the traffic lights at both Gallagher and Hess and punched it getting up to around 80 miles an hour and he did the same thing. As I approached the Washington and East Road split on the very southern part of Saginaw he waved a gun at me to which I punched it even further and got up to around 90 miles an hour and he took off going down the other street. I then called the cops and told them what was going on. So after I lost him I did a loop and came back around to that same area as I was passing the corner of Washington and Sheridan I saw him pulled over by a Michigan State cop. Sure made me feel better but at that moment man that was scary.

[Max Rockatansky]

The second or two I had before I realized I was going to get run over (the driver ran a stop sign) by a Ford Mustang on CA 75 in Coronado back in 2010 were pretty scary.  After I got launched south on C Avenue it took a couple seconds to wake up.  I was kind of surprised I could move and got out of the road as fast as I could.  It definitely shattered the theory they running during the middle of the day was somehow safer than in the dark. 

[zachary_amaryllis]

driving up a long hill on an icy road (just east of sh-257, on sh-14, for you colorado folks) in my old toyota minivan.. and the trans decides 4th gear isn't doing it, and suddenly downshifts, whereupon i do about a 720, ending up facing back uphill in the wrong lane with a truck coming.

definitely a 'check ur shorts' moment.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

A fatal head-on crash happened in front of us when I was 12. It was on US 218 north of Waterloo, IA, before that section was four-laned. We were nearly hit by the at-fault vehicle as it was propelled back toward us; both drivers were killed but as I understood it a passenger survived in the other vehicle.

I don't think of it often but I believe there are aspects of my life where I have never really gotten over this event.

[hobsini2]

I remember once when I was a teenager, my family was on the way to my grandmother's in Princeton, Wisconsin. We got to Montello, the city before Princeton. As we were passing the movie theatre on Wis 23, an oncoming vehicle had somehow lost a tire and I literally was watching the tire bouncing down the road. We missed it by about 3 feet. The people behind us weren't so lucky. It crashed into their windshield.

[thspfc]

This was in August. I was on US-51 going south near Hazelhurst, WI. Not 200 feet from the old T-Bird Bridge, several cars, one of which was towing a camper trailer, collided somehow. IIRC it was a black Silverado and two black F-150s, as well as the trailer, that were heavily damaged. I was there roughly 2-3 minutes after the crash happened. That stretch of US-51 is very busy in the summer, so there was already a line of 10-15 cars ahead, but the police were not there yet. Traffic was at a standstill for a good ten minutes until the police got one lane clear. After that we were through in four or five minutes. I will never forget the expressions on the faces of those involved in the crash. Six people were transported to the hospital, but thankfully they were all right. My prayers to them.

[MCRoads]

On a field trip for school about a year ago, we were getting on 25 NB from Northgate Blvd. The driver stopped on the ramp. To this day, I don't know why he did. Traffic was slower than average, but not stopped. It might have prevented many injuries though, as a tank truck going full speed crashed into several cars, and another tank truck. Iirc a car was crushed between the trucks, and the passenger died while the driver had to be airlifted to hospital. That was really fucking scary.

[thspfc]

Hey Flint1979, are you okay after that? I know that if I was in that situation I would be terrified.

[CoreySamson]

I remember a couple years back I was on 288 a couple miles out from Houston and traffic was pretty heavy; it was basically bumper-to-bumper at 70-75 mph. A few car lengths ahead of us, a truck was hauling a small trailer clearly not meant for the freeway. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the trailer fishtailed really hard. Somehow in the heavy traffic no accident happened, and no one was hurt.

My scariest moment as driver was probably driving in Austin for the first time. On I-35. In a work zone. At night. With 70 mph speed limits. And everyone else was speeding. I think pure adrenaline got me through that.

[Max Rockatansky]

A more conventional story I have behind the wheel was on CA 89 a couple years ago.  I was heading south towards US 50 by way of Emerald Bay.  My brakes ended up overheating and the peddle was hard as a rock.  I had to resort to engine braking to get my car slowed enough that I could park somewhere to get everything cooled down.  Trying to find a parking spot at Emerald Bay once you're past the State Park Parking lot is virtually impossible given the sheer cliffs.  I managed to pull over East of Emerald Bay and let my brakes cool for about an hour.  Update; it was 2017 and I even still featured photos from that trip in a Gribblenation article. 

Back in 2011 a herd of about 25 elk ran out in front of me on AZ 260.  I saw the first elk behind a guard rail and stopped just in time before the herd ran onto the highway.  The guy behind almost crashed into the back of me but it was still better than being obliterated by several large animals. 

[Flint1979]

Hey Flint1979, are you okay after that? I know that if I was in that situation I would be terrified.

Yeah I'm fine. I just continued on M-13 south and he took the split to stay on Washington so I was fine after that. I went back around to see if I could locate any cop in the area and found him pulled over by one that made me feel a lot better.

[thspfc]

Hey Flint1979, are you okay after that? I know that if I was in that situation I would be terrified.

Yeah I'm fine. I just continued on M-13 south and he took the split to stay on Washington so I was fine after that. I went back around to see if I could locate any cop in the area and found him pulled over by one that made me feel a lot better.

That's good to hear. 

[Flint1979]

Look at Saginaw, Michigan on Google Maps and look at the curve I had to go around at high rated speeds (M-13 between Hess and Gallagher Streets).

[catch22]

When I was 10, my parents rented a small travel trailer and we set off on a camping trip to northern Michigan.

We were headed north on old US-27 (Straits Highway) approaching Indian River from the south (no I-75 back then).  There's a long downgrade with a sweeping right-hand curve at the bottom as the road descends to cross the the Sturgeon and Indian Rivers and enter the village of Indian River. About halfway down, my father announced that we had lost our brakes. Near the bottom at about 60 MPH, he had to move to the shoulder to avoid left-turn traffic at the entrance to Burt Lake State Park. He managed to keep us upright somehow and the soft gravel shoulder let us slow down and coast to a stop as we rolled into town, but it was a very scary ride for a few seconds.

[kphoger]

I just had a scary moment on my way home from work.

The snow and ice from today had mostly been cleared by the time I left work, and traffic on southbound I-135 was flowing at a normal 60+ mph.  As I was somewhere between 29th Street and 21st Street, driving in the left lane of three lanes, the car immediately in front of me apparently hit a patch of ice and spun out.  As it spun around, its front end collided with that of the car next to it, and it came to rest about a foot away from the median barrier.  The other car ended up inoperable as well, resting diagonally in the middle lane.  I stopped in time, pulled over into the slush on the left shoulder, and dialed 9-1-1.  By the time I was finished giving my location to the dispatcher, a motorist assist truck was already parked behind me, diverting traffic into the right lane.  (Perhaps he was already on the highway, heading back from the scene of another accident?)  I stepped out onto the highway, reported vehicle and license plate details to the dispatcher, let the motorist assist man know I'd called 9-1-1, and also let him know it all had happened so fast that I couldn't provide any details as a witness about the chain of events.

I sure am glad I wasn't 40 yards farther ahead than I was!  Especially since I'm in a loaner car from the mechanic shop...

[US 89]

Scariest moment when I was driving would have to be the time I was coming down I-80 in Parleys Canyon east of Salt Lake, at some point within a year of getting my license. 3 lanes each direction, but the right lane is an exit-only lane to I-215 so most trucks camp out in the middle lane. I was in the left lane, passing a truck going just barely under the speed limit. Being a (relatively) new driver, I didn't want to get much over the speed limit on that pass, but as I'm working on the pass this pickup truck decided to ride my ass as close as he could. It didn't help that the semi wasn't doing that good a job of staying in his lane.

At any rate, my brain was so busy keeping track of my speed, the truck to my right, and the asshole behind me that I wasn't paying that much attention to where the road itself went and almost failed to notice an upcoming bend to the right in the highway. I crossed the left rumble strip and barely managed to swerve back into my lane, avoiding the concrete barrier in the median.

As for when other people were driving...several options. Could be the time my dad hit black ice and lost all traction on I-80 heading up Parleys Canyon.

[Dirt Roads]

It didn't seem so scary at the time, but when I was in college I was driving a bunch of folks from the Charleston area down through the construction zones for widening the West Virginia Turnpike.  As we approached the nearly completed Pax tool booths, the two-lane veered off hard to the west side and there was an extra tall Jersey barrier along the southbound lanes.  I was following along behind a semi-truck whose back bogie just barely touched the barrier in the right-hand curve while travelling about 45 mph through the S-curve (posted at 30 mph, IIRC).  Anyhow, the front of the trailer stayed with the cab (wheels down) and the back end near me twisted counterclockwise (wheels up).  By the time everything scraped through the left-hand curve, the cab had flipped over (wheels up) and the trailer flipped over again (wheel now down), and everything skidded to a halt. 

There was enough room for me to slide by and pull in front of the cab.  I was the first to get to the driver, who was fine.  The driver of the car behind me got out and I had him start flagging traffic past the wreckage once I found out that there was nothing hazardous.  Of course, the truck driver then asked me to help him get out.  I simply reached up and popped the seatbelt loose and he dropped onto his head.  He got a small scratch and was fine, but I was greatly embarrassed (and sick as a dog) the rest of the trip.

[sparker]

Got a couple of them.  Back in '98 I was returning from my relatives' place in Broken Bow, OK after dropping off my dad and was heading home to SoCal; this was a couple of days before Christmas.  Hit a patch of black ice on WB I-30 in Mt. Pleasant, TX and did at least 4 full spins in the (thankfully very wide) median before coming to a stop.  Had to compose myself for a couple of minutes before very carefully edging back out onto the carriageway.  Fortunately I was alone when it occurred.  The other requires a stint in the "wayback machine"; spring break 1969, heading north from Riverside to the Bear Valley ski area off CA 4 (now accessed by CA 207); was NB doing about 60 on CA 59 a few miles north of Merced when a threshing machine pulled out from a driveway right in front of me.  There was a car coming from the opposite direction about a half-mile distant -- so my only recourse was to pull into the oncoming lane and speed up to about 75-80 to pass the thresher and get back in my lane -- essentially scaring the shit out of my passenger, a very nice young lady -- another UCR student -- who was a last-minute "bummed ride" to the ski club outing.  Suffice it to say any potential romantic notions went right out the window with that incident.  All I can say is I'm glad I had recently dropped a 327 engine with 6 progressive barrels of Weber carburetion into the car a couple of months earlier.  My first -- but certainly not the last -- interaction with farm equipment on a rural highway (a bit more wary after that!).

[BridgesToIdealism]

I've had several close calls, and I've only had my license for 2 years. The number of times that some idiot driver has randomly either cut me off or attempted to cut me off on the highway is too many to count. Drivers from Metro Boston (and that seems to include southern NH) just don't seem to know what it means to be safe and polite. There's a reason why I will never drive inside Route 128, at least for the foreseeable future. If I ever need to go inside Route 128 from Salem NH I'll be taking the MBTA.

However, probably the scariest moment thus far was in Manchester, NH on South Willow Street (technically part of NH-28, but I don't think it's signed in that area). Near the Mall of New Hampshire and Interstate 293, the road is three lanes wide, but is clearly wasn't meant to be three lanes, because these are three extremely narrow lanes with no shoulders. The narrow width of the lanes reminded me of the old Goethals Bridge. Anyway, I come up to a traffic light and prepare to make a left turn. The leftmost lane is becoming a left turn only lane, so I attempt to enter said lane. However, somebody in the middle lane is seriously straddling the line and partially blocking the left lane (there's really no room for error in this section because of the ridiculously narrow lane width). When the traffic ahead of them started to move, this person didn't move. Because they were just sitting there impeding the flow of traffic, I maneuvered around them, coming very close to hitting the center island. But then they randomly decided to floor the gas and swerve into the left lane, almost sideswiping me. My right-hand side mirror was hit, but fortunately not damaged.

A close second scariest moment would probably be when an accident occurred right in front me, on NH-111 in Windham. At the western/northern end of the 2007-built Shadow Lake Bypass, when traveling eastbound the right lane ends shortly after the intersection with NH-28, but there's no sign indicating this. As such, somebody didn't realize that the lane was ending and collided with someone in the left lane. Fortunately I was a few cars back so I wasn't involved, but I was close enough to witness it in real time.

[sparker]

The number of times that some idiot driver has randomly either cut me off or attempted to cut me off on the highway is too many to count. Drivers from Metro Boston (and that seems to include southern NH) just don't seem to know what it means to be safe and polite. There's a reason why I will never drive inside Route 128, at least for the foreseeable future. If I ever need to go inside Route 128 from Salem NH I'll be taking the MBTA.

Having experienced this phenomenon firsthand several times, I certainly agree with one of the terms used to describe such drivers:  Massholes.  This is not to disparage drivers who (a) are from other parts of the state and (b) who don't display the obnoxious characteristics of these arrogant and self-serving types.  Worse than the reviled NYC driving public (that offending group containing a shitload of cabbies!).  Only matched, IMO, by Toronto drivers on 401!

[jmacswimmer]

When I lost the clutch in a Honda Accord several hours from home:

A couple weeks before leaving for freshman year of college many summers ago, I went to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland with some friends.  On the trip out, the Accord made it over all the mountains on I-68 no problem, and with no warning signs.  On the return trip, however, as I began ascending Keysers Ridge on US 219 and I push down the gas, the rpm's skyrocket.  Initially I slowed down, pulled into the climbing lane and put my flashers on, but as I kept losing speed and the rpm's stayed high with any amount of gas, I had to pull onto the shoulder.  After taking several minutes to compose myself (and call my dad for advice), I crept up the rest of the ascent on the shoulder at <5 mph, and upon cresting the summit I simply coasted downhill in neutral, crossed I-68 instead of merging on (if I couldn't make it up Keysers Ridge on 219, there was NO way I was making it over all the mountains on 68), and parked at a McDonald's on the other side of the interchange and waited for a tow. 

(Here's a visual aid for the above.)

[1995hoo]

A few years ago, back when I-75 was still under heavy construction, we were exiting southbound I-75 at Exit 193 (Jacaranda Boulevard) in Venice, Florida. I had just started down the off-ramp when a car came towards me going the other way, i.e., the wrong way. An elderly man was driving and an elderly lady, I presume his wife, was in the passenger seat. I started laying on the horn, flashing my lights, trying to do anything I could to get his attention short of stopping my car and getting out (for fear someone would come off I-75 at high speed and hit me), but nothing worked....eventually, somehow, he realized his mistake and turned around before reaching the Interstate mainline and before getting hit by another exiting vehicle. Had he made it onto the I-75 mainline, it would have caused an almost instantaneous fatal crash and probably a pile-up, as at the time the road was being widened and there was no room for error due to Jersey barriers on both sides that took away shoulder access.

[doorknob60]

Not on a highway, but I was on a two lane, one way street near downtown Boise. I was in the left lane, and a pickup was in the right lane next to me, and just slightly ahead. The pickup decided to turn left onto a street, right in front of me. I just barely missed it fully slamming on the brakes. I was going no more than 30 MPH (I can't remember if this was before or after they changed the limit from 30 to 25) so it would likely have not caused major injuries (if so, it would have been to the pickup driver due to position), but scared the shit out of me. I guess they thought they were on a two way street, and that the lane I was in was for oncoming traffic?

Also I remember a somewhat close call with a red light runner also near downtown, a year or so later, but it wasn't as close as the above. That one is what prompted me to buy a dashcam though.

[paulthemapguy]

Skip to 5:08 in this video I haven't deleted because of how close I got to a head-on collision with a tractor trailer veering out of his lane.  This is Gougar Road in New Lenox, IL

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-uuzswzqntwaTI1RXVvcnBuckU/view?usp=sharing

[Big John]

On 2-lane WI 26 in Dodge County (I should know better). I slid on a patch of ice, Barelt escaped hitting a semi going the other way.