Motoring Discussion > Lucky Escapes Green Issues
Thread Author: No FM2R Replies: 12

 Lucky Escapes - No FM2R
As I was driving back home on the school run just now I had a lucky escape of no great interest or import but it started me thinking.

About 10 years ago I was driving through rural Buckinghamshire in winter on a country road. It was very cold but dry. I was driving a Phaeton, which was equipped with an awful lot of clever stability control stuff. I'd left the house thinking about ice and/or frost but there hadn't been any.

As I was going around a gentle corner, at about 50mph, the car lost all (and I mean *all*) grip and was simply floating. At about the same time three cars in ditches came into view with half a dozen people around all waving frantically.

By pure fluke the Phaeton drifted in the same direction as the curve for quite some distance and then just as it looked like it was going to run out of road and with no great drama, it regained grip and carried on as normal.

But for a while, at 50mph with my girls in the back and ditches and trees either side of the car everything was totally out of control.

Sometimes I'm grateful karma is not a thing, I still come out in cold sweats thinking about it even now.

So how close have you come without the bad thing actually happening?

 Lucky Escapes - sooty123
Driving wise, I was travelling south on the A17 at night. Along that particular stretch of road there's several house that have lights/reflectors on the gate posts that are right on the edge of the road.

I was about to overtake and I thought I saw one of those lights so fine to carry on, yet something at the back of my mind said *hang on* as I got across the white line, it turned out to be a motorbike. Would have been a head on with nowhere to go. I can honestly say I learnt about driving from that. I was tired it was dark I should have been much more careful.
 Lucky Escapes - bathtub tom
I came out of a petrol station on a motorbike and thought the back end felt loose, but put it down to spilled diesel.
Straight onto a dual carriageway, where the back tyre completely deflated. The damn thing was dragging me right, but I didn't dare try too hard to pull it back, when it finally flipped over the other side of the rim and started dragging me left. This happened several times with me desperately trying to slow without using too much braking. I guess the cars behind could see my predicament and left me a lot of space. I was actively looking for somewhere to aim off-road without hitting anything hard. Fortunately I was able to pull up kerbside and push the damn thing home.
 Lucky Escapes - zippy
There has been a few but a couple come to mind...

On my way to a hotel for work, up a dual carriageway in my 3.2l v6 Audi I was about 100 yards behind a tarpaulin covered HGV in lane 1.

I was in no rush. I noticed a scaffolding board come off the top of the HGV and spin like a buzz saw towards me.

Luckily I was awake and stepped on the power. The board just cleared the car and I heard it hit the road behind me. I am convinced that if I had not closed the distance the board would have hit my windscreen with devastating consequences.


I was visiting a foundry and having the "tour". I was following a director who moments before had stepped in to the foundry and all sort of alarms went off and a hot snake of bright orange iron started to whip around the building.

Workers were diving to the floor and the guy behind me tugged on my jacket so hard it got ripped.

I got a heat rash from it. A further step in and I would have been dead.

H&S closed down the place 6 months later.
 Lucky Escapes - No FM2R
>>I was in no rush. I noticed a scaffolding board come off the top of the HGV

Some years ago a friend of mine was driving up the motorway, M4 I think, and a Renault 19 came off the top of a transporter in front of her and bounced past her side window,


That foundry one is scary.
 Lucky Escapes - zippy
>>That foundry one is scary.

It was. I didn't realise it but I clearly in shock and when I got home I threw up!

I have been to a number of foundries, from small independents doing small batches in sand moulds to ones operated by major international organisations.

They are dangerous places. The largest international one made you go through an hour H&S before the tour and made it clear that there will be fatalities at the plant, but that everything that they did was designed to reduce risk. They couldn't eliminate it.

I felt safe there.

 Lucky Escapes - zippy
Not quite a lucky escape but similar to Marks...

My brother came off an A road due to black ice. He had a proper Land Rover 4x4.

He and a few other cars were in a field!

The police turn up and a very annoyed officer is threatening to book them all for driving without due care and attention when a second patrol car comes around the corner and ends up in the same field.

Brother says he tried his hardest not to crease up!
 Lucky Escapes - R.P.
Couple of near misses over the years - mostly on bikes. I'd been cleaning the CBR1000 I had at a nearby garage. Rode out and opened up -- rear wheel (well shod) started spinning either through being wet from the wash or on diesel (I didn't analyse it but concentrated on the recovery) ..thing kept upright, another event was riding with a pillion (which always loads up the response) when a plank came off a passing truck, it bounced clean over the bike. I stopped for a fag (I don't smoke or ever have !).
 Lucky Escapes - Bromptonaut
Sure I've related this before but....

Mrs B and I have a favourite French campsite in the Auvergne near the town of Mont Dore. Originally discovered on a bike trip in 1990 but subsequently visited multiple times by car with kids on board.

Since the Lyon to Bordeaux (A89?) was completed access is straightforward but before that you left the Autoroute at Clermont Ferrand and followed the N89 over the Col de Ventouse at summit of which you turned off onto the Col de Guery.

On instant occasion we'd had warnings on Autoroute Radio all the way from Calais about Orages dans le Massif. Surely enough, as we motored out of Clermont the sky darkened and by the summit of the Ventouse it was thunder, lightning and hailstones the size of peas.

Stopped in lea of a closed hotel on junction while storm passed and sun came out; road still covered with hailstones. I'd just said something to Mrs B who was driving the Xantia about potential lack of grip as we approached a 90 degree left turn of road. BMW 3 coming other way fastish took what for him was left turn and lost traction and spun. Initially thought we'd catch him broadside and then he'd take out offside (passenger side in our UK car) doors. Miraculously he missed both.

Driver was a young man who's eye I briefly caught as he spun by - he'd clearly surrendered control to Newtonian physics. I think he actually stayed on road rather than ending up in ditch but I have to admit I didn't wait to find out.......
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 3 May 19 at 22:38
 Lucky Escapes - Zero

>> So how close have you come without the bad thing actually happening?

Based on my past history, I tend to make sure I follow it through to its awful conclusion.
 Lucky Escapes - MD
Coming down the M1 in a hired V6 Mondeo a wheel and tyre from an HGV bounced across the central reservation some 100 yards in front of us. Slight trouser moment. 1993 I think.
 Lucky Escapes - Falkirk Bairn
2 months ago I was crossing a bridge over a local canal - around a corner came a Audi A5 sideways - it must have been an upmarket one - huge / wide tyres. Driving slowly I stopped & the driver regained control & flashed past. I had thought of handing in the video to the Police then decided not to.

Local paper this week, 19 year old, driving daddy's A5, plead guilty to driving at over 100mph on local roads, dangerous driving, making off when police car had lights |& siren on to pull over,,,,,,,

This was the same weekend that the A5 spun at the canal.

Sentencing deferred for reports
 Lucky Escapes - hawkeye
M1 heading into Leeds keeping up with the 50mph rush-hour traffic in a battered hand-painted Citroen Ami 8, the 3 lanes are packed and I'm foolishly in lane 3 with a Mercedes hounding me. I smell burning and 2 cars ahead of me in lane 2 a Mark 3 Cortina loses its offside half-shaft, brake drum and wheel. The assembly punches out of the side of the car in a shower of rust and I get a good look at this missile heading axle-first for the Citroen's flimsy bonnet. Fortunately it digs in in front of my car and vaults past the A-pillar onto the central reserve. It happened so quickly I'd only just begun to brake. Brings me out in a sweat even though it was 30 years ago.
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