What was your most terrifying car ride?

[rah]

Driver or passenger.

Since I'm older, I've had a longer time to accumulate more incidents.

I've hit black ice on a bridge and totally lost control doing about 60.

I've been in a car that ran straight into a tree.

I've been in a car that flipped over and landed in a ditch.

I've been in a car where two of the tires slipped over the edge of a cliff but fortunately the car didn't over and plunge 200 feet.

But the most terrifying one was riding in a full dump truck going 50 miles an hour and realizing the breaks did not work.
Which is funny since we were reasonably safe because it was one big ass dump truck and it was unlikely we would be drastically hurt, but we knew that if we hit anything, they were dead. So the fear of hurting others was larger than our fear of being hurt.

What was your most terrifying trip and what made it so?

[Jon Miller]

I fell asleep once. I know part of the problem was that I was very ill, not sure about it though. Very scary.

There have also been a few times when big trucks have tried to merge with me on late night trips.

JM

[Lorizael]

A few instances spring to mind.

Pretty early on after getting my license, I was driving home (in my parents' car) and slammed on the brakes to stop at a red light. (I probably wasn't paying as close attention as I should have been.) I skidded over a patch of ice (or maybe just a puddle...?) and did a complete 180, coming to a stop on the other side of the road. There would have been an accident had there been any traffic on the road. As it was, I sat wide-eyed and breathless for a few minutes and then very slowly, very carefully turned around and drove home.

During the road trip with my ex, we came upon some tiny Texas town in the middle of the night where the only way into the town from the highway was over an unlit, one-way, (draw?)bridge covered in construction signs. We were pretty confident going over the bridge would result in a collision or dramatic plunge and may have held hands and said our goodbyes going over it. Now that I think about it, there were a couple terrifying car moments during the road trip, like when we were chased off of Area 51 and as we barreled down a poorly maintained mountain road outside of Yellowstone.

Also once drove through an awful blizzard along the (winding, under construction, poorly lit) Pennsylvania Turnpike visiting my second girlfriend in college, which involved sustained terror for like an hour.

[rah]

I sat wide-eyed and breathless for a few minutes and then very slowly, very carefully turned around and drove home.

Always a interesting moment.

I remember once getting into a fight with my girl friend while driving on a local expressway doing about 60 and she reached over grabbed my glasses and threw them out the window. What kind of idiot, does that to someone driving them. (I am quite blind without my glasses)

[Giancarlo]

As a driver I have been part of some close calls, like someone switching on the freeway without looking but I tend to notice those things. My prior job trained me on defensive driving (always keep your eyes moving). With that, I noticed the guy switching without looking and got out of the way.

The most scary time was as a passenger with my friend. Nothing was his fault... But we saw a big rig basically jack knife on the free way losing complete control. He had to hit the brakes hard and luckily there was no one behind us for quite some distance. My friends fast reactions narrowly saved us from being in a potential disastrous accident. My heart was racing fast. It was almost as scary as the time I was on a 12 hour flight and the plane lost about 500-700 feet in altitude rapidly.

[Giancarlo]

Always a interesting moment.

I remember once getting into a fight with my girl friend while driving on a local expressway doing about 60 and she reached over grabbed my glasses and threw them out the window. What kind of idiot, does that to someone driving them. (I am quite blind without my glasses)

Was she your ex after that? Because if I wore glasses and someone did that to me, I would kick them out the door. You could have been in an accident.

[rah]

The only thing I remember from drivers ed, from almost 50 years ago, was the instructor telling people to look to their right and then look to their left and saying, one of them would be in an accident before they were 25.

[rah]

Was she your ex after that? Because if I wore glasses and someone did that to me, I would kick them out the door. You could have been in an accident.

We broke up not long after. Would have been shorter but she gave great head.
Fortunately we did not get into an accident.

[Giancarlo]

The only thing I remember from drivers ed, from almost 50 years ago, was the instructor telling people to look to their right and then look to their left and saying, one of them would be in an accident before they were 25.

I got hit by a guy in my old Corolla 1999 when they ran the red and took off very quickly. I was doing a left turn (no green arrow was at that intersection at all). I couldn't even get a partial plate number.

Now with my new car I have a dash cam in the front.. And back. The limitation is it doesn't record from the side, but it can help otherwise greatly. And using defensive driving I never been an accident once since I bought my new car. I also try to avoid intersections without arrows and check to see if anyone is speeding through a red.

The trick to avoid the most common accidents is be very careful at left turns when an arrow isn't an option. The other is to not slam the gas when a light turns green. Some losers speed right through because they can't wait. I hate LA sometimes.

[Giancarlo]

We broke up not long after. Would have been shorter but she gave great head.
Fortunately we did not get into an accident.

To revise my sentiment I would have left them on the side of the road lol.

[Dinner]

It was in Iraq.

[Ming]

Like my brother, I've had my fair share of hairy moments...

But the worst was driving back from a Wedding in Champaign to Carbondale, Il.
I was going about 90 miles on I57 in my Datson B210 when I blew a tire. The car jerked to the side of the road and I was driving on the gravel shoulder with a 40 or 50 foot drop off inches away... I was able to take back control and get it back on the road, and started slowing down. Both my friends and I thought the the worst was over...
And then a semi tracker trailer blew by me at a very high speed, and my car got caught in his back draft. The car flipped end over end to end three times, ending up with the roof facing down. While the car was totaled, I was the only one to really be injured... a fractured skull. We were very lucky in that respect.
And to add insult to injury, it was a very old car and the insurance claim barely covered the towing, but my friend, who was a photographer, lost his camera, and got paid back about three times what I got.

[The Mad Monk]

I've had a few interesting moments, like when I lost my brakes a few months back, but there was only one time I had the coppery taste of true terror while in a vehicle.

I was driving and dead tired on the Garden State Parkway, so I decided to "crash before I crashed" and drove into a service area, pulling into a parking space on the side of the snack shop. I promoptly nodded.

While asleep, I dreamed I was still driving on the parkway, going about sixty.

Half asleep, I opened my eyes, and saw the brick wall of the shop directly in front of me.

...

If I could have slamed the brake pedal through the floor, I would have.

[Lorizael]

It was in Iraq.

Not very evocative, but probably wins the thread.

[Berzerker]

lets see, driving over a pass up at Yosemite at night and in light snow I went around a sharp turn with no guard rails and the rear end swung out doing a 180 - the drop off from the road was maybe 2,000 ft. Thank god the brakes grabbed hold or I would have been sliding off the road and down the cliff. I sat there a few seconds inspecting the cliff I nearly went over before continuing very slowly, a few seconds later a passenger bus went by me. Good thing I got moving or he might have hit me

I fell asleep at the wheel one night on Pacific Coast Highway and found myself in the same lane as oncoming traffic and there was a long line of cars coming at me. I snapped out of it and yanked the wheel right before hitting the first car in line, he had slowed down because I was in his lane.

Down in Phoenix I was in the right lane approaching an underpass with a double semi next to me, we were doing maybe 65 when I saw the underpass had been flooded and my lane was the deepest. I hit the water and held on tight trying to keep my truck from hydroplaning into the wheels of the semi next to me. Truck had good wheel well covers, didn't stall out when I hit the water

hours of boredom and 2 seconds of terror

When I lived in San Francisco my friends and I would drive up and down the hills at night in a line of 4-8 cars... We'd bottom out and catch air just like the movie Bullitt. That wasn't actually terrifying but the potential for disaster was immense. Thank god we never killed anyone with our craziness.