Quote:
Originally Posted by humfrz
Yep, dad, the car just went into the ditch all by itself -  |
TLDR: That does happen.
One winter night, when I was either 16 or 17, I was driving though a rural area that I was only moderately familiar with. Snow was forecast, but MI lake effect kicked in resulting in full blizzard conditions. Like can't see the end of the hood with the headlights on, drive with only the parking lights, wall of snow blizzard.
I stopped "on the road" after proceeding through a 4-way stop, left my car door open, and ran across the street to brush off the street sign to find out where I was. As I turned back to my car, the wind blew closed the long, heavy (relative to vehicle weight), door of my '87 Cavalier Coupe, and I watched as the car slid sideways into the ditch.
This was well before kids had cell phones, so I dug the snow out from around the radiator and exhaust and sat and waited for someone to come along. The first vehicle to happen along was a 2wd S-10 or Ranger carrying a tow strap for when it gets stuck. It did not prove successful pulling my car out. The second car to come along lost control approaching the 4-way stop, went off-road, and got hung up on a barbed-wire fence. Thankfully, the third vehicle along was (I want to say) a Suburban (it might have just been a full-size truck with a cap, either was it was big, heavy, and 4wd).
So, the third vehicle used the tow strap from the first vehicle to pull me out of the ditch, then all of us together dug out the second vehicle, so the third vehicle could pull it out as well. About the time we were connecting the tow strap between vehicles two and three, a fleet of emergency vehicles (ambulances, firetrucks, police) materialized from the storm. The nearest house (1/4 mile away), saw the commotion, the increasing concentration of lights at the intersection, and rightly assumed the intersection was icy, but wrongly interpreted it was in increasing multi-car pileup and called 911. None of the first responders seemed thrilled to be out in that weather, although all were happy nobody was injured.
The best part was, since my car was on the road and driveable when the police arrived, they had no evidence to cite me for driving too fast for the conditions, unlike the lady in vehicle two.