What Is the Worst Crash You Have Been In?

Worst was getting off my Kawasaki Concours at around 55.   High side exit meant I tumbled on the asphalt for a while before sliding into a broken glass and gravel filled grassy ditch.   And yeah, that was a HUGE improvement, asphalt sucks hard.  I ended up looking like I'd lost a fight with a belt sander.  Work clothes and a helmet is not ATGATT.

Memorable was falling asleep in the back of an SUV my brother was piloting down to Florida.  I couldn't get comfortable sitting up so I took off my seatbelt to lay down and catch some zzzzz's.   Woke up (on my birthday) in an accident, he'd tagged the rear end of a slow moving semi and drove off into the median off I-65 but managed to keep it upright and otherwise intact.   But it was a very bouncy ride for a minute and I woke up thinking I was about to die.

Got cut off by an Audi A4 who made an illegal turn in front of my F-250.  I had a choice of swerving left into oncoming traffic for a head-on, or swerving right and killing 2 pedestrians.

I took the middle option and decided to tee-bone him at 40 mph.  Pushed his rear seat out the other side.  Totaled both vehicles.

My truck had 600,000 miles on it.  I had never had an accident- I thought I would drive it to 1,000,000 miles.

Even in a 20 year old vehicle, airbags saved my life.

Wednesday qualifier for FC at 2005 Runoffs Mid-Ohio.  Tried to avoid a wreck ahead.  Got catapulted end-over-end.  Slid into thunder valley on the roll hoop.  Got hit again, rolled a few times, ended up in upright position with no suspension or bodywork.  Then, got seriously T-boned in the right side... rolled again, lost engine and transaxle...but ended up right side up.

Climbed out of what was just the driver compartment with a cut finger.    

Dave Weitzenhof (7 time national champion) had talked me into buying what to me seemed a very expensive HANS device a few months before.  Totally convinced it saved my life.

Humm.   I was driving down this small road along a line of shops. I was only doing 20 mph or so. Idling in 2nd gear. Next thing I remember is seeing a lady running after me but she was 90 degrees out of sync with gravity and then wondering why I was looking in my side view mirror with my head on the door. Then four or seven days went by (still not sure) and the next think I know I am in a hospital eating some really bad chicken and jello.  6 months of dealing with concussion related crap. Dark rooms with out noise was my friend. Nausea weird headaches. Nurlogical weirdness. Short term memory was toast. Oh and if you have ever had a retinal migraine with the weird shimmering ya that bit of weirdness with my vision would happen but for hours not seconds.  Nausea so bad you want to die. There were all kinds of side effects and symptoms that just took time for them to go away as my brain healed. The fog cleared in about 3weeks but it was a good 6-7 months before I was good enough to go out like a normal person. That one really scared me as they said if I bang my head again for a year I may not wake up the next time.  
 

So what happened?  I was told the Lady that was chasing me in the mirror went through a stop sign and hit me in the passenger side front wheel at about 50 mph bouncing my head off the B pillar of my 83 Firebird. I kept rolling after the hit as I was out cold. I don't remember anything. I have no clue what happened to the car.  When it was all said and done I got a big check to cover everything and a pile more. My lawyer and my insurance agent took care of everything. .  

Sugar Crash.

We used to buy old cars for $25-$50 to bang around the farmer's fields.  I bought a 1952 Dodge, Mike bought a '55 Pontiac.  Going way too fast I rolled it over and slid under a barb wire fence.  Walked away smarter.

I have pictures somewhere, but I was on a back mountain road in a 97 subaru outback wagon and came around a turn to a deer in the middle of the road, I swerved, got sucked into a drainage ditch, hit a boulder with the passenger front and was shot back onto the road on my roof.  My knees started hurting about an hour after the crash, but it was all soft tissue that resolved with time. Poor car did its job, the engine was cracked in half. 

Worst crash....

Commercial Fatal.  

I was in a Ford F750 with dual rear axle.  Dodge Inteped driven by 80 yr old man pulled out in front of me as he never stopped for his stop sign.  Me driving and co-worker (trainee) in the passenger seat of the truck.  We came to a rest, upside down in a ditch.  Not a scratch on either of us.  

Lets just say the "cab-forward" design of the Dodge Interped was not the best feature  for the dual rear axles of the F750 to drive right over.  Dead on the scene. 

This would have been 1996.  The first Tuesday back from Labor Day.  

I was 16, so around 1990.

Driving a BMW 320i that was my Dad's, but that was essentially my car.

Six lane surface highway with a median. There are side streets coming off of either side and the median has crossing areas, some of which are not lit.

Guy comes out of a side street on the opposite side of the median, crosses the median without stopping and drives right in front of me in the middle lane of the opposite side. I was too young and inexperienced to realize what was going on and I also was not trained well enough to slow down when strange things happen, but at the same time this guy basically did everything wrong. I was going about 45, I hit the brakes hard once I realized what was happening, but there was no ABS on that car and I ended up t-boning him at around 30mph.

I had two other guys in the car with me. They were averse to wearing seat belts and being a young idiot I did not insist. The guy in the front had put the shoulder belt behind him and so only had the lap belt portion on. He put his arm up as he went into the windshield and sustained multiple large lacerations.

The guy in back had no belts on. He braced himself against the seat in front and dislocated his elbow and broke an ankle.

I was wearing all belts, but there were no airbags so I hit my head on the steering wheel and the seat belt slashed the under side of my jaw like a razor blade. I still have a scar there.

The BMW did everything it could to keep us from dying. It absorbed most of the frontal impact and collapsed properly with the engine getting pushed down and under the front. There was no cabin intrusion at all.

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

Dave Weitzenhof (7 time national champion) had talked me into buying what to me seemed a very expensive HANS device a few months before.  Totally convinced it saved my life.

 

A friend was running a Shelby Can-Am pro race at LVMS in conjunction an Indy car race. He had smacked the wall and suffered a basal skull fracture.

The HANS devices were very pricey back then and I didn't make a whole lot but I worked a bunch of Kart race weekends to pay for it.

Sport bike wreck on the street, I wasn't hurt too bad and was able to ride home, but watched a good friend of mine get killed right in front of me. 

Sport bike wreck at Hallett lost it going into The Bitch, was knocked out long enough they stopped the session. Suffered from post-concussion syndrome for months after that. By the time I got the bike back together I had no desire to ride anymore. I get the itch every now and then to buy a Supermoto or a Ducati, but there aren't any fun roads around here. 

I like to say that the best case for a benevolent god may be that I'm still alive. Not the worst, but the most life changing was at the age of 18 street racing in a car that didn't have seatbelts. (I can be a moron) I got totally sideways just as a car came around the corner from the other direction. It center punched me and I hit the pillar between the windows. My neck came out OK,  and other than significant lacerations, I was fine. But I did have a case of overwhelming guilt, because the fault was 100 percent on me. I jumped out of the car, ran to the other driver shouting "are you okay?". He was belted in with nary a scratch. He took one look at my blood-soaked self and said "don't worry about me. You need to sit down".

This totally changed my position  IRT street racing, especially when my livid father reminded me that my mother drives that road every day and that she could have been the one I hit.

October 2020. Return trip from Challenge on I40 in NM. Surgeon cleared me to get back to normal in a couple more weeks. We'll see. Basically just another reason I hate winter and snow. 

~14 years ago On a TOTD trip I barrel rolled my car.  Definitely going too fast for conditions.  My passenger was hurt pretty bad, but I walked away.  He thankfully made a full recovery.  That ended all desire I have to drive like a moron on a public road.

Drunk driver in an early 90s Ford F-150 hit me head-on so hard that the front of my ’90 Lincoln Mark VII imploded. I woke up in a hospital room with my arm in a sling and an Erector set in my lower right leg. The seat belt broke my collar bone, the air bag scorched my forearms, my knees ate the dash, and the engine/trans shattered my lower right leg when they were shoved through the firewall. The drunk driver ran off with this buddy but was caught almost immediately. He was out of jail on bond before I even woke up from surgery.

I remember the moment everything went quiet in the car. I remember throwing all my weight against the door to get out, not realizing that my busted shoulder and mangled right leg were the reasons I couldn’t get better leverage. I remember finally getting the door open, landing on the asphalt staring up at the stars and the truck driver that had stopped to see if I was alive. I remember grabbing the towel I kept behind the driver seat, tying a tourniquet on my compound fracture (thank you Boy Scouts), and thinking to myself “I’m not going to die in Doraville.”

I spent months in rehab learning to walk again. Thankfully the walker only lasted a month, but I needed a cane for a year. I don’t feel the titanium as much as I used to, but the gnarled bone, screw heads, and missing muscle are a reminder of how close it came to lights out. Whenever things get rough I remind myself that I’ve been through worse and came through it okay.

Don’t drink and drive folks.

Driving home from a friends place before a hurricane was going to hit. Storm came in early, dumped like 4" of rain in right under an hour. Turned right onto a two lane road, got up to 45-50mph and then hit a storm manhole that had the drain holes plugged up turning it into a small swimming pool. My 2005 Mustang with 275's on it didnt like that, hydroplaned into the center median and hit a "bush" which just happened to have a massive stump in the middle. Car went airborned, ripped off the sideskirt and then rippled the entire side of the car from the front fender to the rear 3/4 panel. 

$10k+ in damage(frame bent, subframe toast, front shock shaft bent/control arm bent, body work and alot of lights/plastics), a nasty concussion and a very annoyed girlfriend(wife now!) at the time. Car never ran right or handled right after that. Up to the day i traded it in i still found leaves and twigs from that "bush" in the car in some odd locations.

Some pictures of the incident and area it happened. Also some of the carnage.








 

Both of mine happened when I was by myself and not really doing anything wrong.  Especially compared to other times in my life when I was really asking for a problem.  Water was pooled up and I didn't recognize it right away.  I hydroplaned my car on the highway and spun into the median cables at about 70 mph.  Every body panel on the car was damaged.  Broken glass cut me up a little bit, but I wasn't even sore the next day.  It was really loud.

Crashed a motorcycle on a highway on ramp.  No idea what happened.  I was hard on the gas, maybe 70 mph, and ended up in a bitch of a tank slapper.  It came on really violently and fast.  Broke three fingers.  One ended up getting amputated.  I thought the chin bar of my helmet broke my collar bone, but it was just bruised.  Big scuff on the forehead and face shield of the helmet.  I couldn't figure out what caused that one.  Everything was normal, and then instantly it wasn't.  I fixed the bike and sold it cheap.  I've only ridden on the road one time since, which is too bad.  I'd love to get back out there, but it would make my wife worry herself to death.

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

Edit...

Quite a few thumb injuries in this thread. My worst crash, but in a helicopter, not a car. I split the bone in my thumb. It's good as new now with the old scar from when they put some titanium in.

 Next time use a chainsaw to cut down those pines.  A helicopter is the wrong tool for the job.

I rolled my RX7 at the Mt Ascutney Hillclimb. Landed in a dry stream bed about 40 feet away from the road surface. 


Caution to headphones - it's a rotary.
https://youtu.be/rxVs6-Fps2Q?t=93

Late 90s 

I was sitting at a light in my '88 Prelude at around 2am as I was delivering newspapers. This clown hits me while drunk with his notchback foxbody Mustang. 

I had to be extracted through the sunroof hole. 

You can see his dark blue mustang in the foreground. The hit was so hard, even his trunk lid got bent!

Also of note, six lane divided road. I am at the light alone. He had to berkeleying hit me when there were two open lanes next to me. 

Lost the car, got stuck with a bunch of hospital bills and had to pay almost $400 to get the wreck out of the tow yard. 

The guy was taken to the hospital and snuck out. Left the state. 
 

On the road the worst was driving my jeep into the center divider on the highway..long story short i was doing about 80mph had a car cut 4 lanes into mine. I went into a wicked swapper fought to save it/not flip by the time i got it straight I was headed for the center divider and that was it. Broke the seat and steering wheel. Only dislocated my shoulder wasnt even knocked out

I also have a few roundy round crashes that totaled cars. One knocking me out a few making me see stars. Multiple major motorcycle accidents causing concussions amongst major bodilly damage.

From it all im pretty sure I have nuerilogical issues. Wife and I were actually just talking about me seeing somebody about it.

I literally loose entire days. Go on "auto pilot" and have weird foggy brain episodes that are very hard to explain.

2016 at NJMP coming onto the front straight at 115 mph car several seconds in front of me blew his engine and dumped about 7 quarts of oil. I hit the tires and armco on the right  and was told I moved the armco.  No injuries and 6 weeks later I ran the car at the SCCA Runoffs after very extensive repairs. The worst accident was in December 1974 driving on a 2 lane back rode after an earlier ice storm. A tree broke 10 feet off the ground and landed on the front of my 66 Impala. I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently I was unconscious for about 20 minutes. Long story short 5 hospital stays many hours of rehab and 2 1/2 years later I was able to go back to work. Initially I was told I would be partially paralyzed  and not able to work again at anything physical. I am happy to say I fooled everyone and here I am still working and driving a race car.

I've not had anything bad happen on a road course, couple of bent wheels and some scuffed paint is all. Dirt track cars I have bounced off the concrete a time or two but not bad. Worst circle track crash was in a dirt late model. Big 4th of July show so all the hot shoes showed up. I started mid pack and about 10 laps into this 50 lapper, a couple of guys in front of me get together on the high side and I cut left and stay on the gas hoping to be past by the time they come back across the track. Unfortunately, a car turns sideways in front of me and I hit him in the drivers side at almost WOT. Luckily he was in a well built car and was ok, just extremely pissed. I felt like I had a nose bleed but didn't. Had a head ache for a day or two. 

Absolute worst crash was in 1994 in my '68 Suburban. I was sitting at a stop light,  third or fourth car back, the light turns green and I move about three feet and I see something just before it hits me. It was a blue Ford Ranger that hit me so hard it broke both engine mounts and the transmission mount. The frame was broken in a couple places and the passenger side front door didn't open and close right. A lady ran the light and hit the ranger and caused it to spin into me. My kids were with me and my daughter had a bump on the arm from hitting the door and my son who was in the passenger side of the rear seat lost his glasses. We found them on the front dash. Got  free ride in an ambulance but we were all okay. Just glad we decide to drive it that morning, we had thought about driving my Chevy Monza wagon but it was low on fuel so we took the truck. Went and had a picture taken in front of the 'burb. Their Mother still hates this picture.

This was my wife's worst. Left turn in front of a speeding car. There wasn't a straight panel left anywhere on the car. The wheelbase on the passenger side was 1 1/2" shorter than the driver's side. Luckily she had no serious injuries, just lots of bruises. Double lucky, there was no one in the passenger seat.