Stopped at a light at a freeway junction. Guy in front of me stops but gets impatient and goes just before it turns green.

We get stopped by the next light at the same junction. I am now next to the guy, both of us waiting to turn left to then merge onto the freeway across a fairly large intersection that accommodates all N-S normal traffic, traffic entering the E-W freeway from the N-S traffic, and traffic exiting the E-W freeway to join the N-S traffic.

He stops for only a few moments before deciding to go anyways (I think another direction had come to a stop and he assumed we’d be next), and as he goes through the intersection, the traffic exiting the freeway to go south gets the green light, and in slow motion with plenty of time to stop (cause they were just getting moving) the two front-runners both t-bone (f-bone?) the guy.

It was bizarre and completely avoidable on all fronts. Like a slow motion train wreck. Benefit of the doubt though, the exiting traffic probably just didn’t see him coming until he was right in front of them. I’m just glad that, whatever accident that guy was gonna get into that night, it happened before we got onto the freeway together.

I was walking on the sidewalk at a traffic-lighted intersection when I heard a loud bang.

I turn around to see a Honda had rear-ended a Volvo 240 that had stopped at a red light. The front of the Honda looked like a piece of crumpled up paper wrapped up nicely on the 240’s tow bar. The 240 was unscathed.

Was waiting outside a government building in Peru, and noticed while a small car was driving by and hit a pothole causing the whole front passenger tire assembly (tire, brake, suspension, and control arms) break off and roll away while the rest of the car slid to the other side. The tire and the assembly kept rolling and hit two other cars before rolling into a store through the window, it reminded me of the old tire rack commercial.

Riding passenger down the freeway and an SUV swerving through traffic clipped a nearby sedan right in the rear corner. Think PIT maneuver but the sedan ended up vertical spinning on its trunk/boot like a top for at least 3 rotations.

Was getting a lube, oil, filter at a shop that had a big window so you can look out at the service bays.

One of the cars lurched forward, pinned the mechanic against the wall and broke both his legs. It was a whole deal.

Once I leave as driving very early to work, the roads were empty and I saw a truck upside down and sideways across the lane, not a scratch on it, as though God had just reached down, looked at it, then gently set it back down. Nobody in it either.

I was driving from Bakersfield to LA and pulled off the highway to get some gas. It was one of those exit ramps that goes down lower than the highway. I’m sitting at the light waiting to turn left and go under the highway, when a car comes flying off the highway upside down. It is airborne and goes right over top of my car. It hits the ground, slides until it hits the other side of the road and somehow rolls back onto its wheels. It then tries to take off but just crashes into fence and stops. A few moments later a parade of police cars came hauling ass down the exit ramp. I just drove straight back onto the highway and stopped at the next gas station.

Tossup between:

• Seeing a sporty little car neatly stacked on top of a full-size sedan at the local shopping mall. Owner had floored it, jumped the curb, and somehow managed to climb atop the sedan. It was remarkable just how little damage there was on the Sedan, relatively speaking.
• Seeing a truck on the highway shoulder, which had somehow managed to roll itself on its side facing the wrong direction. Like, 180 degrees around into traffic and on its side. Somehow it didn’t look like other vehicles had been involved.

You know how sometimes a telephone pole has a support cable going from the ground to about 8 ft up the pole?

I once saw a car drive up one of those and get stuck.

I once saw a car parked on top of a fire hydrant. The hyrant was lodged in the car’s front wheel well. No water gushing but we have dry hydrants so they don’t burst in the cold.

Driving down a stretch of desert road near Tucson, pickup truck in front of me, and we’re cruising through the wasteland at about 60. We’re coming up to a T intersection where the incoming road has a stop sign and we don’t. It’s the only intersection on this road for at least a mile in either direction. There’s a lone car waiting at the stop sign as we approach. It takes us a good 15-20 seconds to get to the T junction, and in all that time the waiting car never moves despite having no traffic in either direction preventing them from turning out onto the road.

As soon as the pickup truck in front of me is past the point of no return, the driver of the car pulls right out in front of him to turn left. He swerves but can’t avoid hitting the front of her car. Fortunately I was closely watching the whole thing unfold so I’m immediately hard on the brakes, but pickup truck driver just had no time to react. The right half of the pickup hits the whole front side of the car and it’s probably doing 50-55 when it hits, because the driver only had a fraction of a second to brake.

After impact the pickup goes careening left across the road and into a ditch, and the car spins like a top, doing a 360+ in-place from the impact force. By the time the car stops spinning I’ve pulled over on the right, and I jump out of my car to help (after making sure the people behind me had stopped!)

I check the car first since it’s closest, and I find the female teenage driver sitting in her seat crying her eyes out. She won’t/can’t answer questions but she’s breathing and sobbing and and there’s no apparent carnage I can see. I move on to the pickup in the ditch which I find has two occupants. I ask “are you guys ok?” and almost immediately feel kinda dumb for asking. The driver has removed a large piece of the dashboard with his forehead, which is now bleeding profusely. But he is able to look at me and snark out a reply, “Do I look like I’m ok?”. Well he’s alive and sarcastic so he’s probably not dying, and the passenger is conscious, so it’s time to call 911 and then try to find pickup truck driver a bandage.

I hang out to give a report to the cops, and they tell me the girl said she just wasn’t paying attention. No idea what could have made her just pause there for half a minute and then decide to go without even looking; this was the mid 90’s so cell phones weren’t really a thing yet. I would have sworn she was trying to murder the people in the pickup truck based on her perfect timing.

Far as I know everybody came out ok, and nobody had to leave in an ambulance, but that was the gnarliest car wreck I ever had front seat tickets to without being involved.

Once drove past a crash where the driver somehow missed the fact that the road split in two and managed to drive head on in to the end of the guard rail. The guard rail went over the bonnet and through the windscreen on the passenger side all the way in to the cabin. I’m pretty sure he had no passengers.

Riding my motorbike to work on a cold morning, I came up behind a car driving very very slowly through my residential area. I watched them slowly follow the road as it curved to the left, slowly keep turning left as the road straightened out, slowly drive up the curb and slowly hit a street light.

I pulled over to check on the driver as I was worried about it being a medical issue, but noticed they were already reversing. This made me think they might be drunk, so I moved a bit further away to put my bike behind a parked car, then went to check - by this time the driver was out of the car, not drunk or having any medical issues, just checking the car and then cleaning the windscreen. They had been too lazy to wait for the windscreen to de-mist a bit and had been trying to drive almost completely blind while wiping it with their hand…