Crying
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So I get one of those tense phone calls from my daughter - the phone call where she's crying and you can hear traffic in the background - and you know she was (or is) in rush hour traffic on the way to school - and through the tears and choking sobs she lets me know that she almost hit someone. In the first 10 seconds of that call I'm thinking "she's been in a horrible accident and she's pinned inside of a burning vehicle". So I have to concentrate to not laugh out loud the rest of the call because I'm so relieved that all of this drama is over an 'almost'. *phew*
MehGerbil wrote:
she almost hit someone
It is a very painful experience to almost hit someone. Happened to me one time, and I needed at least five whole minutes to be able to move again after the emergency braking. And one day to calm down. ( It was a child who came cycling on the wrong side of the road in a curve, e.g. in front of me driving). Of course, it is worse to hit them actually. I killed a cat a month ago (the cat was frightened by a dog in a garden, rushed through the bushes separating the garden from the road ... and landed under my wheels). Very bad feeling, even if I could not have done anything to avoid it.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb
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How long has she been driving? I have two more about to start, so I have to pick a car to sacrifice...
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
how I have visions of you in a pentagram holding a big curved dagger over an old Ford
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
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how I have visions of you in a pentagram holding a big curved dagger over an old Ford
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
Something like that. My first born is now 32. Second born is a daughter, she's 30. They were both very careful drivers, but I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction. Oldest got waved through an intersection in rush hour traffic. Just about destroyed out 15 seat van. It was a noob accident, and that's the problem - NOTHING replaces experience. It's where defensive driving comes from - you can just feel something bad about to happen - if you have the experience. The second destroyed our Honda by losing control, zipping out into a grass field and hitting the only tree for 100 feet. The good news is that they both had their seat belts on, and everyone walked away. All of my children know - if I catch them in a car without a seatbelt, they walk.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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So I get one of those tense phone calls from my daughter - the phone call where she's crying and you can hear traffic in the background - and you know she was (or is) in rush hour traffic on the way to school - and through the tears and choking sobs she lets me know that she almost hit someone. In the first 10 seconds of that call I'm thinking "she's been in a horrible accident and she's pinned inside of a burning vehicle". So I have to concentrate to not laugh out loud the rest of the call because I'm so relieved that all of this drama is over an 'almost'. *phew*
"Almost? Well done for avoiding it! Now you know you really are paying attention as much as you hoped you were! Congratulations!" I nearly (not as close as 'almost') had an incident last week, with some guy hitting a roundabout at about 55. It's refreshing to know that your subconscious gets to the brake pretty fast.
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Something like that. My first born is now 32. Second born is a daughter, she's 30. They were both very careful drivers, but I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction. Oldest got waved through an intersection in rush hour traffic. Just about destroyed out 15 seat van. It was a noob accident, and that's the problem - NOTHING replaces experience. It's where defensive driving comes from - you can just feel something bad about to happen - if you have the experience. The second destroyed our Honda by losing control, zipping out into a grass field and hitting the only tree for 100 feet. The good news is that they both had their seat belts on, and everyone walked away. All of my children know - if I catch them in a car without a seatbelt, they walk.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction.
My parents mostly avoided the stress by having myself and two of my three siblings learn to drive entirely on cars that were old/junky enough that they wouldn't be a real loss if destroyed. One of the beaters I drove was totaled in an accident that while the other drivers fault an older and wiser person probably could have avoided was enough of a heap (15+ years old and driven into the ground by my mom) that the $1k the other drivers insurance offered was 3x what my dad thought it was worth.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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Something like that. My first born is now 32. Second born is a daughter, she's 30. They were both very careful drivers, but I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction. Oldest got waved through an intersection in rush hour traffic. Just about destroyed out 15 seat van. It was a noob accident, and that's the problem - NOTHING replaces experience. It's where defensive driving comes from - you can just feel something bad about to happen - if you have the experience. The second destroyed our Honda by losing control, zipping out into a grass field and hitting the only tree for 100 feet. The good news is that they both had their seat belts on, and everyone walked away. All of my children know - if I catch them in a car without a seatbelt, they walk.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Something like that. My first born is now 32. Second born is a daughter, she's 30. They were both very careful drivers, but I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction. Oldest got waved through an intersection in rush hour traffic. Just about destroyed out 15 seat van. It was a noob accident, and that's the problem - NOTHING replaces experience. It's where defensive driving comes from - you can just feel something bad about to happen - if you have the experience. The second destroyed our Honda by losing control, zipping out into a grass field and hitting the only tree for 100 feet. The good news is that they both had their seat belts on, and everyone walked away. All of my children know - if I catch them in a car without a seatbelt, they walk.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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So I get one of those tense phone calls from my daughter - the phone call where she's crying and you can hear traffic in the background - and you know she was (or is) in rush hour traffic on the way to school - and through the tears and choking sobs she lets me know that she almost hit someone. In the first 10 seconds of that call I'm thinking "she's been in a horrible accident and she's pinned inside of a burning vehicle". So I have to concentrate to not laugh out loud the rest of the call because I'm so relieved that all of this drama is over an 'almost'. *phew*
I was driving down a street in a residential area near where I lived, parked cars on both sides, when I saw a ball bounce out in front of me. I immediately did an emergency stop and actually turned the car sideways so that when the small boy ran out after the ball I had almost stopped and merely tapped him with my door. He looked at me wide-eyed for a couple of seconds and then fell over. I couldn't open my door because he was right in front of it so I wound down the window to look at him and heard his mother approaching - a sort of doppler effect scream. She had seen everything and after picking him up and making sure he was OK she thanked me for stopping and carried him off to their house. About halfway there she started screaming AT him as he started complaining about losing his ball! I went and got the ball and tossed into into their front garden, the mother came back out and thanked me again and said the little boy was sorry for causing me trouble (which I am sure was a polite lie) and that he wasn't going to be allowed outdoors again that day (which I am sure was true). No damage. Education for the boy (hopefully). A good day, all in all. Of course, this was England a few years ago. I am sure, if it had been America, the police would have been called, I would have been arrested at gunpoint for reckless and dangerous driving and the mother would have sued me and my insurance company for a few million dollars for traumatic injury and something or other that sounds dreadful. My life as I know it would have been over and I would have welcomed being deported as an undesirable alien to escape the shame and stigma.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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So I get one of those tense phone calls from my daughter - the phone call where she's crying and you can hear traffic in the background - and you know she was (or is) in rush hour traffic on the way to school - and through the tears and choking sobs she lets me know that she almost hit someone. In the first 10 seconds of that call I'm thinking "she's been in a horrible accident and she's pinned inside of a burning vehicle". So I have to concentrate to not laugh out loud the rest of the call because I'm so relieved that all of this drama is over an 'almost'. *phew*
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I remember seeing it in the news.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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Something like that. My first born is now 32. Second born is a daughter, she's 30. They were both very careful drivers, but I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction. Oldest got waved through an intersection in rush hour traffic. Just about destroyed out 15 seat van. It was a noob accident, and that's the problem - NOTHING replaces experience. It's where defensive driving comes from - you can just feel something bad about to happen - if you have the experience. The second destroyed our Honda by losing control, zipping out into a grass field and hitting the only tree for 100 feet. The good news is that they both had their seat belts on, and everyone walked away. All of my children know - if I catch them in a car without a seatbelt, they walk.
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Do people really have accidents as a matter of course like that? I would never expect that anyone would have one. Maybe our driving test is sufficiently rigorous that people are prepared for 'noob mistakes' and don't continue with them to the point of hitting things? I've never (touch wood) hit anything serious, and my brother's damage extends to a badger strike (fairly nasty superficial car damage, but totally not his fault) and a wingmirror (expecting oncoming traffic to get over and it didn't).
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charlieg wrote:
I confess to being quite anal about making sure they did not wreck the car. We would have had a much happier 3 years if I had just resigned myself to the inevitable destruction.
My parents mostly avoided the stress by having myself and two of my three siblings learn to drive entirely on cars that were old/junky enough that they wouldn't be a real loss if destroyed. One of the beaters I drove was totaled in an accident that while the other drivers fault an older and wiser person probably could have avoided was enough of a heap (15+ years old and driven into the ground by my mom) that the $1k the other drivers insurance offered was 3x what my dad thought it was worth.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
:thumbsup: exactly
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Quote:
hitting the only tree for 100 feet
...and how is the tree holding up?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
I think the bark on it was mussed a little. The only evidence of the accident were the tire tracks leading up to it :)
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Do people really have accidents as a matter of course like that? I would never expect that anyone would have one. Maybe our driving test is sufficiently rigorous that people are prepared for 'noob mistakes' and don't continue with them to the point of hitting things? I've never (touch wood) hit anything serious, and my brother's damage extends to a badger strike (fairly nasty superficial car damage, but totally not his fault) and a wingmirror (expecting oncoming traffic to get over and it didn't).
Sorry, don't know where you live, but in Atlanta, they don't call it the crush hour for nothing. Interestingly, the next two boys - who were holy terrors - have never had an accident. Well, almost flipping a Humvee and an Abrahms tank don't really count, do they? :)
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I was driving down a street in a residential area near where I lived, parked cars on both sides, when I saw a ball bounce out in front of me. I immediately did an emergency stop and actually turned the car sideways so that when the small boy ran out after the ball I had almost stopped and merely tapped him with my door. He looked at me wide-eyed for a couple of seconds and then fell over. I couldn't open my door because he was right in front of it so I wound down the window to look at him and heard his mother approaching - a sort of doppler effect scream. She had seen everything and after picking him up and making sure he was OK she thanked me for stopping and carried him off to their house. About halfway there she started screaming AT him as he started complaining about losing his ball! I went and got the ball and tossed into into their front garden, the mother came back out and thanked me again and said the little boy was sorry for causing me trouble (which I am sure was a polite lie) and that he wasn't going to be allowed outdoors again that day (which I am sure was true). No damage. Education for the boy (hopefully). A good day, all in all. Of course, this was England a few years ago. I am sure, if it had been America, the police would have been called, I would have been arrested at gunpoint for reckless and dangerous driving and the mother would have sued me and my insurance company for a few million dollars for traumatic injury and something or other that sounds dreadful. My life as I know it would have been over and I would have welcomed being deported as an undesirable alien to escape the shame and stigma.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
It's NOT THAT BAD in America. There are a few people running around with common sense, thought sightings are getting fewer. ;P
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Sorry, don't know where you live, but in Atlanta, they don't call it the crush hour for nothing. Interestingly, the next two boys - who were holy terrors - have never had an accident. Well, almost flipping a Humvee and an Abrahms tank don't really count, do they? :)
Charlie Gilley You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house. "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Do people really have accidents as a matter of course like that? I would never expect that anyone would have one. Maybe our driving test is sufficiently rigorous that people are prepared for 'noob mistakes' and don't continue with them to the point of hitting things? I've never (touch wood) hit anything serious, and my brother's damage extends to a badger strike (fairly nasty superficial car damage, but totally not his fault) and a wingmirror (expecting oncoming traffic to get over and it didn't).
Requirements vary by state; in PA upgrading your learners permit (supervision required) to a drivers license requires, among other things, 65 hours of documented driving experience. Mastering a skill, requires several hundred to several thousand hours of practice; which for most people would require years to acquire (this is reflected by steadily dropping insurance rates through your 20s). Even if your parents carry out a running lecture series about why gotchas and why they're doing what they're doing, learning by lecture is a lot less effective than learning by doing; and the latter inevitably entails mistakes. The accident I had at 17.5 is a good example. I was approaching an intersection where I didn't have to stop; and a, sun blinded, driver at the cross street slowly pulled out in front of me trying to cross the intersection. There wasn't enough space to do more than break hard and slow from 45 to 25mph, and the ditch/embankments on either side of the road meant I couldn't evade by driving onto someones lawn. At the last second it occurred to me to cut my wheel hard so I hit her front fender at a 45* angle instead of t-boning her drivers door, which while it probably guaranteed her car was totaled too allowed everyone to walk away with nothing worse than sea tbelt bruises. But in my panic I forgot about my horn until it was too late. If she reacted fast and gunned her engine I might've been able to pass behind her on the shoulder; which is why although it wasn't my fault I say that if I was more experienced I might have been able to prevent it..
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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[generic post pointing out that down voting in the lounge was disabled a while ago]
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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[generic post pointing out that down voting in the lounge was disabled a while ago]
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
[generic reply to generic response to generic post about downvote]
Reality is an illusion caused by a lack of alcohol "Nagy, you have won the internets." - Keith Barrow