Late '70s, on a winding paved backroad heading into town, a smaller car coming in the opposite direction lost traction (a light, misty rain had just gone through) and rolled twice in a field before landing upright.

My buddy and I quickly pulled over and ran towards the car to make sure everything was alright.

They drove off before we got to them…

Just last week, a car had missed their turn on the motorway, so decided to REVERSE up the hard shoulder.

I’ve seen a lot of bad things. But one that has always stuck with me was a guy studying.

I’m not talking about glancing down at a book. He had a textbook propped up on his steering wheel and was using a highlighter to mark in the book.

I was with my uncle (ca 1990) when he confidently took an offramp and got onto the I5 freeway going the wrong direction in an RV.

During morning rush hour (a near-standstill occasionally broken by brief periods of 10mph movement), I once saw a woman eating a bowl of soup/oatmeal/whatever while steering with her elbows.

It seemed to be a regional norm to eat breakfast in the car because a 20 mile commute generally took 1.5-3 hours and often moved slower than a walking pace, but that was the only time I’d ever seen someone eating food that required a dish and utensil.

I was on a highway doing around 60 when the car in front of me suddenly spun around in a 360 and stopped. Luckily they were some distance in front and there was no other traffic. When I passed, it was a teenage boy in the passenger and his grandmother driving. She was yelling at him and reaching down between them trying to do something. I think he had pulled the e-brake just to see what would happen.

I was on the beltway one night in a construction zone. They had jersey walls (concrete barriers) instead of cones and barrels to shift traffic. The SUV in front of me had not been weaving or worrying me at all when it drifted into the jersey wall in the left and just ground along it doing about 70. I expected them to jerk the wheel the other way, but they didn’t. After a few seconds, they drifted back to the center of the lane. Just as I was thinking good on them for not panicking, they slammed back into the jersey wall and rode it until it ended. Their car was scraped all to hell. They had to have fallen asleep (passed out drunk). The grinding noise of car on concrete and flying sparks were too obvious to not be noticed by a conscious driver. I backed way off and fortunately was nearing my exit.

Drove past a guy on the highway, driving 100kph, wondered why he first drove so slow, then sped up, then slowed again… He was reading a book while driving 🤦‍♂️ One other guy, driving 80kph hardly could keep the truck on his own lane, so I drove past him. He was filling in some paper forms, while he had a cup of, assumably, coffee in the other hand, and tried to keep the truck going straight with that. Jeez these people…

My dad. He drove the wrong way on a highway, fell asleep at the wheel, and unknowingly ran from the cops.

To this day, my dad doesn’t believe me that he’s ran from the cops twice.

Since none of you know my dad, imagine if Mr Rodgers were cranky, racist, and stubborn.

Cops on laptops/phones while driving on the highway and getting a pass literally every time they’re driving distracted and kill or injure someone.

Every single year in my city someone gets smoked by a cop car/SUV, and the internal investigations always determine via CCTV + phone activity logs that yes their officer was on their phone/laptop, yes they were speeding, yes they went through a red light, yes they failed to have their 🚨 on, but… No, they’re never found guilty and the whole internal investigation is the furthest thing from transparent to the public.

Seen too much shit.

People driving and: texting, watching movies, reading with books or newspapers pinned to the steering wheels, working on a laptop with those steering wheel laptop holders, applying makeup, shaving. Sometimes more than one of these things at a time.

The cellphone video/text/surfing is a multiple times a day occurrence. People drive with their phones in their hands and use them all the damn time.

Seen two people deceased, one hit while attempting to cross a busy road well away from a crossing area, another thrown from the car after rolling it because they’d clipped a car while they were speeding and weaving through traffic.

People backing up in breakdown lanes on freeways to make an exit. People crossing multiple lanes rapidly, cutting off other cars, to avoid missing an exit. People OUI weaving in a lane. People nearly coming to a full stop in traffic to avoid missing an exit or turn.

Yeah, think that’s most of it. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some. I’m sure I’ll see more tomorrow.

I get that the spirit is what a person has seen IRL, but there’s a pretty (in)famous video of a guy having sex with a woman in the driver’s seat of a Tesla in self-driving mode.

This is a bit different, but I took a taxi once where the driver was ranting how slow other drivers around him were reacting to traffic saying they weren’t paying attention…while he was fiddling with his phone and texting someone.

Flip a car while streetracing on a narrow three-lane highway in the middle of the city, in moderate traffic that was moving 70 km/h ish at most. Amazingly they didn’t take anyone else out.

I called 911. They redirected the call to the police station. After I described the incident, I could feel the officer’s eyeroll through the phone. It was odd to realize that something so extreme for me was literally just another day for them.

Edited to add:

personal grooming was the fourth leading cause of accidents.

An old co-worker liked telling the story of how he was rear-ended on a very busy city highway. The other driver was a young woman who stepped out the car all distraught and said “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you, I was putting on my makeup!” My coworker was ready to wave off the incident because there was basically no damage to any car but he changed his mind as soon as he heard that.

Was back when I was 19 or 20, was hanging out with my buddies from home over the summer while on break

We were at a McDonald’s at 1:30 or 2 am. Kid around our age comes screeching into the McDonald’s parking lot, going over curbs and everything, sparks flying from two wheels. He had punctured both his front tires and was riding on rims. Turns out one of my friends knew him - he takes a look, looks at the guy, goes “yo man, you probably don’t wanna drive on those”

Kid goes “yeah well I really want McDonald’s I’m gonna go home after”

My friend goes “you live about 15 min away, you really shouldn’t drive.”

He gets his shit and starts driving, sparks still going off. Were a little concerned so we follow him. 200 feet later he gets pulled over, so we pull over behind the cop. The cop looks at us and goes “do you guys know this idiot?”

My buddy’s like yeah…

Cop says you should get him in your car.

Kid refuses. Drives 8 miles home in rims. Smoke everywhere, most awful sound you’ve ever heard. We follow him home, I find out he’s dumb rich.

We go into his guest house, which was bigger than all of our actual houses, smoke one, then leave.