I'm not sure if this is the place to post this, but I just want to get this off of my chest. Recently, I was involved in a car accident. Basically I was being a moron and thought I could pull off a left turn and this car coming from my left side collided into me. The bumper and the headlights were severed from the car, and front part of the car overall sustained a lot of damage. Fortunately, neither driver was injured. The part of the car where the other car collided into made the difference between unfortunate and disastrous, as it could have resulted in severe injuries. I have never been in a car accident before. The car itself is undrivable in its current form and will need to be taken to a shop to get it repaired. I'm carpooling with someone for the time being but after this I am just paranoid. I never want to be in the driver's seat of a car again. It's shocking to think that despite fact that I'm alive and unharmed, things could've easily been much much worse. Anyone else been through something similar? Were you able to overcome your paranoidness?
I still clench up every time someone turns in front of my car and I feel it's a little close. Even if they're just in the median, I get tense.
When it happened for me, I was in the left lane (four lane road) and there was a car in the median, going to turn left. The old woman (who was driving alone, at night, with a handicapped placard) turned just as I was coming up to her car. We were both relatively OK. Our cars were totaled. The only thing she said was "Boy, I got you good, didn't I?" What really gets me was that we were literally the only two cars on the road. She couldn't have failed harder.
What stays with me is that loss of control. I had no control over that situation. In fact, anything I had done would have made it worse. If I had gone right, she might have hit me in the driver's side door. If I sped up, she might have hit me in the gas tank. I couldn't have stopped any sooner, either, because it was quite sudden. It still terrifies me to this day when I think about it.
I bought a new car straight away and I've been driving it for five years. I still live with that memory, knowing that someone could have died right there on Route 9. But I know that I could never get over it if I didn't get back behind the wheel and prove to myself that one incident doesn't mean that I'm taking my life in my hands when I drive. I just needed to be careful and remind myself that the world isn't full of old ladies who can't see my car.
I got right back to my daily routine, but I took it easy. I left with more time before work so I didn't have to race to get there. I paid more attention and I shied away from drivers that I thought were less than competent. Sure, you might need more time to get where you're going, but that's OK as long as you get there in one piece.
tl:dr, treat it as a life lesson, start small, and get back behind the wheel.
What stays with me is that loss of control. I had no control over that situation.
This is pretty much it.
At 19 (almost 10 years ago), I was in a car wreck. The wreck killed the driver, a friend of mine, and put me in the hospital for two weeks and into a wheelchair for months. It was something like 6 months before I could walk without a cane. I obviously had a lot of anxiety and it took me a LONG time to be comfortable riding in the car without someone else.
Earlier this week a teenager backed into my car in a parking lot in an extraordinarily stupid fashion (it was a parallel parking spot, and I pulled in behind him and he proceeded to back up). He only dinged me, but it left me fairly nervous and I ended up calling in to a meeting I was supposed to be at in person, but the meeting was an hour's drive away and I wasn't up to it.
The reality is that cars are death machines. The only reason I coped with my car wreck the way I did is that I'd already been a volunteer firefighter/EMT for years, and had seen my fair share of wrecks. It takes a lot of willful ignorance of the fact that you're driving a death machine for most people to do it. The beauty of the human mind is that we tend to forget these things. You'll be fine, although you may get a little panicked in the future more often that you'd think. You'll get used to it again with some time, how much depends on how willing you are to confront your fear. Fear isn't a bad thing, it keeps you from taking stupid risks that a lot of drivers take every day. But you also can't let it dictate how you live your life. For me, it was allowing anyone who wasn't my Dad to drive me around. But the key was to force myself to do it even though I was afraid, because it's basically the only way to retrain your brain out of that primal fear instinct. Drive yourself short distances for a while to get used it, and work yourself up to a longer commute. You'll be okay, but you'll definitely be a better driver after this, at least until you forget.
There are 35,000 deaths attributed to car accidents in the US and I somehow miraculously ended up not being one of them. The DPS officer and tow truck driver said they did not see a car with that level of damage where the person survived. It has been my only car accident and it was nearly fatal. All four cars involved in the accident, including the asshat in the solid steel Ford 250 pickup truck who was glued to his cell phone while going 75mph, was totaled. For 5 months I couldn't drive to the city that I did most of my business in, but I decided to just overcome my fears and drive there to visit family. I nearly had a panic attack where I had the accident the first time I drove back. But I did it again and again and I'm fine with it now.
I've only been in a couple of single car accidents where I wasn't the driver, but I think the key thing for you here is the realization that it was your fault in this case. Driving is a crap-shoot, but minimizing the potential for danger by adjusting your behavior behind the wheel is something you CAN do to make yourself safer in the future. If you're unsure of the timing and distance when executing a maneuver in the future, then wait instead of risking it. You may be overly cautious at first, and it may tick off someone waiting behind you, but your confidence will come back to you (just make sure you've tempered that confidence).
About 2 years ago, I crashed into a student driver as I had entered an intersection. I thought that I had a green light, but when I looked up the light was red. (this was before the collision happened, but too late for me to prevent it). It was a low-energy collision, and both drivers were able to drive away, but it was a psychological blow that there was a crash and it was 100% my fault.
I continue to drive(because I have to to go to work and stuff like that), but I'm still a bit self conscious
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When it happened for me, I was in the left lane (four lane road) and there was a car in the median, going to turn left. The old woman (who was driving alone, at night, with a handicapped placard) turned just as I was coming up to her car. We were both relatively OK. Our cars were totaled. The only thing she said was "Boy, I got you good, didn't I?" What really gets me was that we were literally the only two cars on the road. She couldn't have failed harder.
What stays with me is that loss of control. I had no control over that situation. In fact, anything I had done would have made it worse. If I had gone right, she might have hit me in the driver's side door. If I sped up, she might have hit me in the gas tank. I couldn't have stopped any sooner, either, because it was quite sudden. It still terrifies me to this day when I think about it.
I bought a new car straight away and I've been driving it for five years. I still live with that memory, knowing that someone could have died right there on Route 9. But I know that I could never get over it if I didn't get back behind the wheel and prove to myself that one incident doesn't mean that I'm taking my life in my hands when I drive. I just needed to be careful and remind myself that the world isn't full of old ladies who can't see my car.
I got right back to my daily routine, but I took it easy. I left with more time before work so I didn't have to race to get there. I paid more attention and I shied away from drivers that I thought were less than competent. Sure, you might need more time to get where you're going, but that's OK as long as you get there in one piece.
tl:dr, treat it as a life lesson, start small, and get back behind the wheel.
This is pretty much it.
At 19 (almost 10 years ago), I was in a car wreck. The wreck killed the driver, a friend of mine, and put me in the hospital for two weeks and into a wheelchair for months. It was something like 6 months before I could walk without a cane. I obviously had a lot of anxiety and it took me a LONG time to be comfortable riding in the car without someone else.
Earlier this week a teenager backed into my car in a parking lot in an extraordinarily stupid fashion (it was a parallel parking spot, and I pulled in behind him and he proceeded to back up). He only dinged me, but it left me fairly nervous and I ended up calling in to a meeting I was supposed to be at in person, but the meeting was an hour's drive away and I wasn't up to it.
The reality is that cars are death machines. The only reason I coped with my car wreck the way I did is that I'd already been a volunteer firefighter/EMT for years, and had seen my fair share of wrecks. It takes a lot of willful ignorance of the fact that you're driving a death machine for most people to do it. The beauty of the human mind is that we tend to forget these things. You'll be fine, although you may get a little panicked in the future more often that you'd think. You'll get used to it again with some time, how much depends on how willing you are to confront your fear. Fear isn't a bad thing, it keeps you from taking stupid risks that a lot of drivers take every day. But you also can't let it dictate how you live your life. For me, it was allowing anyone who wasn't my Dad to drive me around. But the key was to force myself to do it even though I was afraid, because it's basically the only way to retrain your brain out of that primal fear instinct. Drive yourself short distances for a while to get used it, and work yourself up to a longer commute. You'll be okay, but you'll definitely be a better driver after this, at least until you forget.
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It will get better with time and practice.
I continue to drive(because I have to to go to work and stuff like that), but I'm still a bit self conscious