I've been a part of 9 fender benders or worse in my life, and 8 of them have been in my car. 5 or the 8 were my fault, or I was cited in any case. I was a pretty bad driver from 19-23, amazingly none were alchohol related as I don't really drink.
The first car I had was a tank of an Audi. I chipped a few headlights, but had a string of 3 light fender benders in that car. One of which I was driving to King's Island with a friend. Windows were down, and a dandelion seed comes through the window and into my eye. I wasn't really prepared at the time to handle such a thing, should have hit the breaks immediately but instead I lightly clocked the car in front of me going 10-15. Unfortunately the passenger wasn't wearing her seatbelt and she did the most damage in the collision by implanting her head in the windshield. She turned out to be ok, although she had a splitting headache the next day. The engine's idler did get messed up though, so for the entire ride back home if the car was stopped for more than half a second, the engine would kick off and wouldn't start for 10 minutes. I got very good at stalling at intersections, using my momentum to coast the car through the right hand turn into a parking lot, then restarting the car later and timing my approach to a light so I could continue on without stopping again.
The old Audi became too expensive over time to maintain for a kid straight out of high school. I had a Chrysler Lebaron convertible after that. That car was not a tank, and it took two very bad beatings, and both within two months of each other. I was at fault for both. While delivering pizzas one day early to a school an SUV pulled a fast stop at the bottom of a hill after a downpour the night before. I hadn't given myself enough room to stop given the circumstances and I hit her hard. The damage to the SUV was small, I bent the trailer hitch at most I think, but the left front half of my car was completely mangled trying to avoid the SUV. My car wasn't totaled out however, and after a few weeks of pouring a bucket of water through the leaky radiator after every delivery I replaced the parts and kept on driving it.
Well, a couple months later it was the first day of summer break from college. I had gotten little sleep the night before, and my parents had called me early to come home for something. I wasn't rested enough to drive, but I was completely sober ( I can count the number of times I drank at all in college on one hand). Well, not far from school I was about to get on the highway, in single lane traffic due to construction, a garbage truck ahead had come to a full and unexpected stop. I, of course, was not paying attention to what was going on up ahead and I clocked the driver in front of me in the same exact way I had hit the SUV just a few months prior, only this time my hood and fender were more crumpled and nasty with the fender rubbing against the tire. I was in a pickle at this point. For one, my illustrious pizza driver career while at college was dependant on my driver's license points being below a certain number and this accident would put me over. Thinking only of the present predicament and not of any possible consequences, I surveyed the damage to my car as I briefly talked with the other driver, then I bolted when he suggested moving our cars to the side of the road to allow traffic to move on. It was a prick move, and I completely regret it to this day. I shouldn't have had the priviledge to drive at that point, let alone keep my job, and if I saw the driver today I would compensate him well for the damage I inflicted. Fortunately I took the worst of it again as he walked away with a loose bumper. In any case, I limped down the road with the fender tearing up my tire. I made it 25 miles to my buddy's house where we proceeded to bang out the fender and jump up and down on the hood of my car to straighten it back out so that it looked just like it did...after the first accident. My parents never found out, neither did my job of course, and that was the last of my accidents where I was at fault.
Among other accidents I've been in, I had two in a '97 Grand Prix. One involved an SUV sliding through an icy intersection and clocking my back end, spinning my car 1 1/2 rotations. The other accident, however, was a lot worse and scary. While coming back from Cleveland one early winter night I was warned that an ice storm was coming. I was hoping to get south fast enough to avoid it so I could be at my sister's 21st birthday, but that wasn't in the cards. Coming down 71 I received the brunt of Mother Nature's attack. The roads quickly started turning icy, and there hadn't been enough time or manpower to prepare the roads. The highway wasn't too bad, as long as you maintained your lane, following the previous vehicle's tracks, and didn't do anything stupid. I had tested a lane change once already moving from far left to middle, being cautious that no one was behind me, and knew from that attempt that it was not wise to make another change. Well, a young girl decided it would be a smart move to change lanes with only a few car lengths ahead of me. She hit the ice building up between the lanes and immediately began fishtailing and slowing down. Well, there was nothing I could do but to try and avoid at this point so I pulled my wheel sharply to the right, but collided with her back right bumper with my front left. This ended up spinning me around so my car was now facing oncomming traffic and going down 71 backwards in this nasty weather. Because of the collision my front left tire was now bowed though, and it caused my car to slowly roll backwards off onto the shoulder and behind a guard rail safely. I somehow was avoided by all other cars behind us. In the end, because of all the other collisions that night, an officer wasn't able to be at the scene until nearly 4 hours later. Despite her pleas of "sorry" to me afterwards and matching testimonies to the officer, she came back over a month later and changed her story because she said she wasn't in her right mind because of the collision. She went on to claim she maintained her lane the entire time and that I flew up on her in the collision. It ended up going to the insurance companies and they fought it out in court and neither of us was cited in the accident. The original officer's report was thrown out because he was assisting from outside the county, so they couldn't vouch for him. The funny thing was the collision happened just 4 miles outside Ashland where I grew up and I had planned on getting off at that exit to clean my windshield of ice and change my wiper blades, waiting out the storm at a friend's house.
