Near accident last night!! (long) (archive)

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I just want to tell you about a very close call I had yesterday so feel free to learn from my mistake although reading about it will problably not help much... I am sure some of you have heard a similar story before or maybe even lived one...

I've had close calls before and also a small crash last year when a woman stopped in a roundabout, but I have never before had anything like this happen to me, and I will now drive much more carefully. I said that before also, but this time I will not forget it and really change my driving style for the future.

Ok, this is what happened. I was driving home on the freeway yesterday at 120 km/h. My car was running on empty, so I was a little stressed on finding a gas station. I was driving on a 3 lane freeway, and was in the middle lane. I had cars behind me (200 meters or so) and a few in front of me, but none very close to me or on my sides. It was raining so the road was a bit slippery although it was not noticable before this happened. I came to this left hand curve where the speed limit was set to 80 km/h.

Just when I approached the curve i saw a car driving slow (proably 20 km/h or so under the speed limit), but stupid me instead of breaking down I wanted to pass it. I hit my breaks a tad before the curve so I guess my speed was around 100 km/h when it happened. Inside this curve I turned into the left lane to pass the car, and then it happened... my car lost all its grip!

The back turned out to the right and having this speed and seing the big concrete blocks on both sides of me i thought this was it... I did all I could to keep control of my car but it was impossible to stop.

I only know the time was going real slow here, and that i thought a lot of things, but my main thought was "i do NOT want to hit the walls - i do NOT want to hit the walls - shit shit shit"...

To make a long story short I did not only spin around once, but twice so a total 720 degrees! I put on a real show for the ones in front/behind me, although I am not sure the ones behind me saw anything since I was in the curve.

Obviously I do not remember everything from this, but I remember all my feelings from it and doing all I could to get control back so I would not hit the wall..

To close this story, I missed the wall on the right by a few inches, and also the one on the left and when stopping I was as close to the left wall as it could be. Not a scratch on my car, and more importantly not even a curled hair on my head (although I guess it was standing upwards!) My car must have been in a perfect position when this happened to pull of a stunt like this, because the 3-lanes did not have more than a few inches to spare for this to end totally different. I don't even want to think about what would have been the output if I had hit it at 100 km/h at my first 360 degree turn.

When it came to a stop (don't think it ever stopped totally) it was facing the correct way perfectly (so a perfect 720) and I drove forward because now I worried about cars from behind hitting me. The feeling I had then when driving was un-describable... I exited the freeway asap and went for a walk... :o)

I am religious so I do not believe I was the reason it went this good, although I guess I did something right when turning the wheel as my car spun around. I guess I have to thank lots of playing of Need For Speed 4 and Gran Turismo 3 for my correct handling of the wheel :o)

Now I need to check my cars alignment. It drags to the left, so spinning around messed something up, but that is EASY! I still can't believe I escaped from this unhurt.

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