Motorway Horror Stories

[Olly]

buzzing along on my motorbike....car pulls out overtake in front of my.

Car has a big sheet of ply wood tied on with a single bit of rope from the tow bar to somewhere on the front in the middle.

The whole sheet tore down the middle and two 2*8 sheets of 6 ply birch faced "sails" come flying at me at 80mph.

Survived.

No idea what happened to the sheets I'm afraid....I was shaking too much to look over my shoulder

[Board Game Geek]

buzzing along on my motorbike....car pulls out overtake in front of my.

Car has a big sheet of ply wood tied on with a single bit of rope from the tow bar to somewhere on the front in the middle.

The whole sheet tore down the middle and two 2*8 sheets of 6 ply birch faced "sails" come flying at me at 80mph.

Survived.

No idea what happened to the sheets I'm afraid....I was shaking too much to look over my shoulder

Scary. That's almost an Omen moment with the sheets of glass, IIRC.

[expat]

On the M6, quite busy on the other side. Then on the other side alittle way in front of me, I saw a puff of debris rise into the air. Then a car in the middle lane on the other side jumped up in the air, its underside facing me, as it rolled round end to end, coming straight for me.

There was nothing I could do but wait to see if it came over my side or not. Weird. I can still see it now.

[Board Game Geek]

On the M6, quite busy on the other side. Then on the other side alittle way in front of me, I saw a puff of debris rise into the air. Then a car in the middle lane on the other side jumped up in the air, its underside facing me, as it rolled round end to end, coming straight for me.

There was nothing I could do but wait to see if it came over my side or not. Weird. I can still see it now.

Blimming stunt drivers.....

[Nicely Nicely]

Not all on the motorway...

I had a blowout of the driver's side front wheel when doing 80 in the outside lane of the M4 in the dark, in the rain, in the rush hour. The normally-bastard-commuter-traffic to my left parted and let me through to the hard shoulder.

I had the windscreen shatter on the A40 when doing about 60. I immediately put my fist through it without thinking and pulled the glass in. I cut my hand to pieces in the process, but at least I didn't drive off the road / onto the other side!

I overtook someone and realised they were fast asleep when they were doing about 70 mph and they just drifted off into the armco barrier on the hard shoulder side.

I saw a woman applying mascara - mascara FFS! - in the outside lane of the A10 at about 4pm when she was doing about 45 mph.

Myself and a tanker driver had an attempted suicide. A bloke was standing on the central reservation of the A6 seemingly waiting to cross but ran out in front of us as I was overtaking the tanker. I had no idea just how short the stopping distance is of an HGV. We both swerved and dodged him and he went between us. People: do NOT tailgate HGVs!!!

I have seen someone joining the other side of the motorway from a roundabout ... the wrong way.

The twats that swerve from the outside lane and only just make it onto an exit - I have seen that many times but - amazingly - not yet seen one fail. I did see one fake Range Rover bounce over the verge as it left it even more too late, but he got away with it.

We saw an aluminium ladder in the outside lane, just in time. I was the passenger and started to mention the bits of car in the lane then saw the ladder. I said to my wife: "Ignore the cars in front. Stay in a straight line. Do NOT swerve." I could see what she couldn't: about three cars hit it trying to avoid it; my wife twigged and steered to made the wheels straddle the ladder. Nicely done at 85 mph. We were OK. For the next mile or two we saw about 20 cars and vans on the hard shoulder.

I saw the bonnet of a car fly up and hit the windscreen. I think they knew it might happen; they were only doing about 40 mph in the inside lane.


I used to ride a motorbike. I never will again. I had to react too many times to crap car drivers.

[expat]

Not all on the motorway...

I had a blowout of the driver's side front wheel when doing 80 in the outside lane of the M4 in the dark, in the rain, in the rush hour. The normally-bastard-commuter-traffic to my left parted and let me through to the hard shoulder.

Parted? When that happened to me, the other traffic didn't so much part to let me through as disappear into the rear-view mirror, anchors full on. I was basically occupying all the lanes, though.

[NickFitz]

M1 southbound, just past Watford Gap services, morning rush hour and all three lanes fairly packed. A lorry started to pull out to overtake, managed to clip the lorry it was trying to get past as it did so, braked and started losing control, and thus clipped a small hatchback, causing it to spin all the way across the carriageway and come to a halt three cars ahead of me in the outside lane... facing us

The look of utter bemusement on the young female driver's face as she looked back at three lanes of traffic coming to a rapid halt in front of her was a picture. To her credit, she got her act together within a couple of seconds and did a neat 180° turn on to the hard shoulder behind the now-stopped lorries that had triggered the whole thing.

Another time when I was doing that journey, there was a car transporter overturned on the opposite side just north of J20, lying at a neat right angle to the central barrier and extending across the entire width of the carriageway. The really weird thing was that the trailer was on its side with its top pointing south, whereas the cab (still apparently attached) had its roof pointing north

Then there was the time at the M6-M6 Toll-M42 junction when I saw some old boy a few cars behind forget that he was towing a caravan and start to change lines, sideswiping a BMW in the process. Luckily the traffic was only going at about 20mph because of congestion.

One more for luck: having been stuck on the M5 somewhere near Stroud for nearly two hours as a previous accident was cleared away, we suddenly all got moving again. Of course loads of people started forcing their way into the outside lane, in the apparent belief that being there would make their car go faster, and within half a mile of the restart some bozo had cut in so sharply that the chap behind had to brake, which caused the bozo tailgating them to rear-end them, and that bozo to be rear-ended in turn by the bozo that was tailgating them. Luckily this only happened about ten cars in front of me and all three drivers were uninjured enough to get out of their cars and shout at one another, so I was able to get past before the road was closed again.

[Sysman]

In the early '90's I saw a Volvo estate with 3 adults, 2 children and a large caravan doing 90+ fail to move properly from the outside to middle lane Southbound on the M6 near Stafford, the resulting partial jack-knife, rolling and utter disintegration of the caravan was impressive. The look on the face of the (fortunately) truck driver who unexpectedly stopped the caravan fridge from flying South on the Northbound carriageway with his vehicle was equally impressive.

One summer in the early 1980s I was doing a lot of motorway driving and I saw the aftermath of lots of caravan crashes. The surprising thing was that all of the ones I saw had been towed by largish cars such as Volvos, Audis and Granadas. Caravans tend to turn to matchstick when they turn over at speed.

Don't underestimate the draught caused by a bus or an artic either passing or going in the opposite direction. I think this is the real reason for banning caravans and trailers in the outside lane, and the speed limit too.

That same summer, heading out of London on the M4 there was an ancient Datsun with a soft tyre swerving across all three lanes in front of me. I put the hazard lights on, slowed right down and blocked a large Beemer trying to zoom past me. He was very grateful that I did that once he saw what was happening.

I believe that good anticipation on a motorway takes practice; when you are doing a lot of motorway driving, your anticipation and thus accident avoidance skills definitely get better.

[Paddy]

Very elderly lady driving at 30mph in the middle lane. A police car then tried to make her pull over to the hard shoulder, she was still oblivious to what was going on even when the policeman leaned out of the window and frantically pointed to the hard sholder.


Off the motorway:
Man of typical Lewisham origin (BMW blacked out windows and boom boom music)in road rage incident on round about. I shook him of by backing and doing a u-turn.

Carjack attempt in Italy, I hit the central locking and booted it towards the “innocent” motorcyclist blocking the road. (strangely he moved out the way)

[Sysman]

I overtook someone and realised they were fast asleep when they were doing about 70 mph and they just drifted off into the armco barrier on the hard shoulder side.

Completely empty M6 one morning, clear day, heading north. As I was passing a Ford Escort, for no apparent reason he drifted into the middle then outside lanes. I braked hard enough to create smoke, felt the back end wobble, then put my foot down hard to get through the small gap.

He must have nodded off, as on noticing me go past he braked hard enough to lose control. Fortunately there was no traffic around to hit him.

Another Ford Escort, this time in thick snow. Everyone was doing about 35-40 mph, but this Escort (the rear wheel drive variety) sailed past us at 50 and spun. To this day I don't know how I missed him, but a few miles further on, he sailed past me again. You would have thought he would have learned...

I used to ride a motorbike. I never will again. I had to react too many times to crap car drivers.

After seeing various friends and acquaintances have suffer major injuries over the years, it put me off too. It's a great shame, as there's nothing finer at times.