Here Are Your Most Heroic Driving Moments

We are all heroes in our own way. Some of you can manage to keep all four tires on the ground despite the best efforts of overzealous car detailers. Others, were just heroes for making it out of their cars still alive. At least one of you won the day by not leaving the house.

Below are some wild stories of wits and survival. Some of you can tell a yarn that would earn you high praise in the blogging world. Here’s a few of my favorites

2 / 17

Years ago, travelling with my then girlfriend in my “awesome” 1968 LTD ... in the rain. Car suddenly stops to make a left turn where there is no left turn (I guess they were going to make a U-turn?). I hit the brakes long before anti-lock brakes, counter-steer for the skid, and go up a side street. Everyone was a bit stunned, but my “practice” driving paid off!

From Remember dialing “popcorn” for the time?

3 / 17

Drove from Atlanta to Orlando with three co-workers to meet with a new client. One of my co-workers was a guy named Luke who was 5'3" but insisted riding shotgun because of his supposed ‘vertigo.’

Luke also insisted on pushing the seat back as far as possible and leaning the seat back so it rested in the lap of my other coworker who was about 5'10"

He also dictated the radio station, the temperature of the A/C, where we ate, when we pulled over, etc. The only reason we put up with this shit is because Luke was the account manager.

The fact that Luke survived the trip without the three of us burying him alive in a Florida swamp is heroic enough, IMO.

However, on the drive back, we were on some two-lane in Southern GA, doing about 50mph, with Luke snoring in the front seat. Suddenly a deer appeared in the road. I broke hard, swerved to the left around the deer, felt the back end get loose, cranked the wheel the opposite way to stop the skid and wound up doing a 180 in the middle of the road without hitting a thing.

Luke was loosely belted into the front seat and got thrown around quite a bit, and claimed he was sore for a week afterwards. The rest of us were fine, if a bit shaken up.

Karma is a bitch.

To this day, Luke doesn’t believe there was a deer.

From Earthbound Misfit I

4 / 17

I was still in high school. Just got my license, driving mom’s 1966 Plymouth station wagon.

My HS buddy and I were building a hydroplane in his garage over in Huntington Harbor. He was the wood butcher and I was the fabricator.

I’d driven over to work on it one Saturday and we decided to tow the boat back to my house to fit some hardware. I’m following him in the battle wagon when we get to the “T” intersection where we will be turning right. Light is red and everyone is stopped. We move to the right lane and I step on the brakes, hear a bang, and the brake pedal goes to the floor. Pump it a couple times and nothing...

I quickly assess the situation as I recall my recent driver’s ed training... My left foot goes for the parking brake and my left hand reaches for the parking brake release.

Boat in front of me. Curb, sidewalk, cinder block wall and concrete streetlight poles to the right. Stopped cars in the next lane over. Far left lane is open so I make my move. Spin the wheel left then back to the right and slide to a stop in the intersection.

Car ended up pointing up the street we were turning on. Sat there for a few seconds contemplating what had just happened and noticed the knuckle on my left hand was bleeding. Banged it on the window crank reaching for the release. The house was just a block over. Carefully dove it around back and into the garage.

Turned out, dad had just done the brakes on the wagon. He took it apart again and discovered the left rear brakes had come apart inside the drum. He had mixed up the mechanical adjusters and had them on the opposite sides. Instead of adjusting out every time the car braked in reverse, they were backing off. Eventually they backed off enough that the pistons popped out of the slave cylinder and all brake pressure was lost (single reservoir master cylinder).

The parking brake (mechanical system) was only stopping the right rear wheel. That wheel left a nice ‘S’ shape skid mark, documenting my path into the intersection.

Lucky mom wasn’t driving that day. Pretty sure they would not be celebrating their 64th wedding anniversary this month if she had been driving it.

From Clay_T

5 / 17

Costco, Saturday 3:00pm, Christmas week.

Pulled in the lot, decided to go in the first lane to go on the other side in an attempt to go around to long line of cars waiting.

Got the first non-handicapped/non EV/non small family/non pregnant parking spot right in front of the door as hundreds, if not thousands other motorists were fighting for other spots, some for probably half an hour.

Could feel the mix of admiration, envy, disbelief and anger of everyone around me as I got out of my car with a smug, victorious smirk.

From Margin Of Error

6 / 17

A Yamaha 750 Seca was my daily driver for about a year in 1990-91. Cruising along late one night along a rural highway a car came up on me quick and close, acting a fool. I ignored them a while till they got close enough to make me nervous and I put some distance between us. I slowed back down to cruise the speed limit. Here they come, fast and close. Distance, cruise, here they come again. The third time this happened they came around me and I could see it was a car load of teenagers. They got around me, in front, then slammed on the brakes. I didn’t have time to think about anything, just leaned fast and hard and swerved around them on the right hard shoulder without shedding any speed and missing their back corner by inches. They didn’t catch up to me again after that and I have no idea what their beef was or if it was just idiots being idiots.

Everything I’ve seen and read since then makes me think I pulled off something that night a rider as green as I was should not have been able to. I sometimes think back and imagine it must have looked somewhat impressive. Or maybe “pulled off” is being generous and it’s probably more accurate to say “got away with”.

From Harmon20

7 / 17

Long before there were upper middle class folks hucking Raptors and TRX’s, there were hillbillies airing out GMT400s in their back 40. Here’s me at a tender age doing my best dukes impression.

From Caddywompis

8 / 17

Mine was just last week. I went to the beach ostensibly to give my foot/ hip a workout from walking in the sand and climbing dunes. The sand was incredibly loose which didn’t affect me because I air down my tires. Others didn’t do what I did, and they got stuck. I ended up recovering I think like 6 vehicles in total, and while I wasn’t charging I ended up making something like 150ish bucks. At one point I felt like a mother hen gathering chicks

From RedRaiderEducator

9 / 17

Someone ran a blind stop sign while I was crossing the intersection (they had a stop sign, I did not). I somehow managed to swerve around them going like 45mph and nearly miss them. I got out to inspect the damage and there was merely a gouge from the screw on their license plate holder and a scuff on the bumper.

My passengers get out and praise me as being the greatest fucking driver. My rear passenger in particular was very happy not to have her door smashed into her face. I was very happy to not be dead/maimed as well.

Same car as Baby Driver, but as with the author, I’m not Baby Driver.

From put-some-turbo-on-meeeee

10 / 17

My most impressive feat of driving is actively avoiding shitbox Nissans, Infinitis, and Dodge Chargers/Challengers in regular traffic. Not an easy task in Kansas City.

From mountainbikingandtrackdays

11 / 17

My heroic moment came at the back end of a group of us driving like asses.

I’m in my senior year of high school and I’m in a four-car convoy crossing Missouri on Interstate 70 to go to a speech tournament. The teacher/coach is leading the way in a Pontiac 3-seat station wagon packed with him and 9 students. I’m behind in my trusty Rambler Classic with 5 other students, with two other cars similarly packed with teenagers behind me.

We’re about halfway through our 250-mile crossing and cruising the left lane at a steady 85 on flat highway through corn country. The trailing two cars were passing and jumping each other, sometimes running the shoulder to jump a slot in the convoy.

Not wanting to be any part of this, I moved closer to the lead wagon to close the distance and keep these clowns from cutting me off. That meant about a two car distance from the back bumper of the lead wagon, which was way too close, but we were cruising at a steady 85 and I thought it wasn’t that big a deal.

That is, until a semi cut off the wagon passing a 55 mph truck planning to pass him at, like, 56 mph. And both trucks immediately nailed the brakes.

Wagon locks the brakes. I hit the brakes to settle the car on its nose, then looked to the left shoulder, which had just disappeared. We’re closing on the car fast, and the eyes of the three far back seat passengers facing us grew to pie pans as the tail of the wagon pitched up and my car was hurtling toward them.

I took a glance to the right and there was just this much room between the back of the slower semi and the car behind him. I took my foot off the brake, pitched the car into a barely controlled slide across the right lane, straightened the car on the shoulder and then slid the car to a stop even with the cab of the right-lane truck.

That’s when I saw traffic was at a standstill in front of both trucks. It was just a lucky guess and a desperate, decisive move that kept us all from certain calamity. The other three cars in the convoy slithered to a stop behind the left lane semi, and nobody hit anybody. the only minor injury was a headache for my right-front passenger as the side of his head smacked the window when I straightened the car on the shoulder.

I pulled my heart back out of my throat, and we started to roll once again. The right lane trucker happily waved me into the right lane in front of him, and gave me a thumbs up as I got into the lane. Once the convoy got back in formation at the end of the mini traffic jam, we all slowed to saner speeds and maintained appropriate distances.

When we finally got to Kansas City, the coach put his arm around my shoulder, walked me away from the team and cussed for the first and last time I was ever with him. “You saved our ass back there. Great driving,” he said, then walked away.

The driving helped, but I still believe nothing short of divine providence saved us that day.

From jrhmobile

12 / 17

Going back a few years, it had been an icy morning, but the sun was out and everywhere had thawed. Or so I thought. I came off the main road out of the city, wanting to turn right around the roundabout which is underneath the main road (this is in the UK).

Seeing no traffic and being a lot younger and less careful than my current self, I took the roundabout with some vigour. Of course, with the bridge being there sunlight had not touched everywhere and there was a big patch of black ice and I found the car going straight on.

Having watched too much BTCC, I yank the steering wheel and apply power, find some grip and success? Nope. The back of the car is now on the ice and I’ve gone from understeer to oversteer. No problem, thought younger me, I yanked the wheel back the other way and took that roundabout sideways.

Something in my mind tells me the car shouldn’t really have behaved like that, being front-wheel drive and all, but for the one person waiting to come onto the roundabout I was a boss that day, I still remember his face.

From Pitchblende

13 / 17

The place: Wisconsin. The time of year, Winter. We got an enormous dump of snow. Like a foot or more, which has become increasingly rare. I woke up, Shoveled my driveway and then heroically did not go out and drive to the store for any reason at all.

Instead, I heroically stayed in my house, sat comfortably looking out at my snow-covered neighborhood and waited for the snow plows to arrive and did not drive. I continued to heroically not even think about driving until much later in the day, when the snow plows finally came. I went out, shoveled out the snow the plows had dumped at the end of the driveway, went back inside, poured myself a nice whiskey and continued, heroically, to not drive, to not clog up the road for no good reason, to not get in the way of the plows.

Not all heroes wear capes, some of them wear pajamas.

From Buckfiddiousagain

14 / 17

Was going to a college class in my old BRZ and it was slightly damp. There’s a merge where the road your on curves onto the main road at like a 45 degree angle. I took the curve like I do everyday and lost the rear end. There was a white SUV to the left of me and I somehow managed to stay off of them, fishtailed towards the curb, corrected back towards oncoming (code brown moment) corrected back towards the curb again and finally straightened out without hitting anything. I was so embarrassed and still am because you should always know the limits of your car especially in damp conditions but at the same time, I shouldn’t of saved that. Those Forza drifting sessions came in handy ;0

From PttyBlue43

15 / 17

When I lived in Germany I took my Jacquemond-tuned 928 to get it detailed. (My then-wife had slid it into the back of a white van in the rain, because she was following too close, and I took it to Olivier Jacquemond in Lyon to make it better than new - after several months without the car, I had just gotten it back.) The guys were quite enamored with the car, and decided to go above and beyond to make it extra pretty. One of the things they did was to armor-all the crap out of everything that wasn’t painted, including every square inch of tire - yes, that includes the treads.

On the drive home, it started raining, heavy at first then just enough to keep the roads damp. The tires had a hard time getting consistent grip, so I kept the speed down even on the unrestricted parts. At one interchange, I was in the left lane to go straight, a C5 Audi A6 was in the right lane signaling to take the exit. Last second, the Audi changed his mind and swerved towards me in the left lane. I instinctively jerked the wheel to the left to avoid getting sideswiped, but the oil-slicked tires gave up on traction, and the 928 snapped almost 90° anticlockwise. So there I am, at about 60mph almost completely sideways, the front of the car aimed directly at the center guardrail, me looking out the passenger window to see where I wanted to go, and countersteering to the right. The car skidded sideways for what seemed an eternity, the pucker factor was high. I remember thinking “Oh no, not again, I just got it back.” Fortunately, the car pulled out the skid without making contact with anything. Audi A6 guy drove off. I pulled over to catch my breath and extract the fine Porsche leather from my insides.

Good times.

From AlsoKnownAsRukh

16 / 17

It’s 1985 and the speed limit is 55 mph. Yep, youngsters, that’s how it was back then.

Also: I’m the goat (lower-case) in this story, not the hero.

It took years to admit (I was only 21 at the time) but I dozed off at the wheel of my 1981 Datsun (now Nissan) B210 manual hatchback. I drifted off the right edge of I-5 (near Coalinga, CA), woke up, steered left, back end started drifting a little bit to the right, over-corrected course, back end snapped around to the left and I found myself perpendicular to the highway and felt the car starting to lift on two wheels. Five full barrel rolls later, I was again on the right side of the highway, right side up and unbelievably nearly 100% unscathed (two small cuts on my left arm).

The heroes? The people who stopped for my sorry-ass. Like the trucker who parked on the northbound size and ran across four lanes, expecting to find a dead body and happy to see me alive.

Maybe they didn’t administer first aid, but they were the heroes I needed.

Let this be a warning to everybody: if you’re nodding off, you should have already found a place to park. Get off the road, ASAP. You’re past the point of needing coffee, you need a nice long nap before you continue.

Side-note: the car was, of course, totaled. Three of the tires had blown out, almost all of the glass was gone. Yet, it didn’t look as bad as you’d think. The roof didn’t collapse, the frame didn’t buckle in. And, the next day while retrieving my personal belongings at the salvage yard, the car actually started up and the engine ran!

From NotLewisHamilton

17 / 17