“I shouldn’t have done that,” is a sentence I’ve uttered too many times to count. Usually, I do something that sounds like it could have been a good idea when I thought of it, but then the execution is so disastrous that I wonder why I’m even permitted to have a driver’s license or something resembling good things in life. Yep, I’ve done some terribly boneheaded things behind the wheel, and I want to know that I’m not alone. What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done behind the wheel?
This week, I’m starting a multi-part series about how picking up my new-to-me 1997 Honda Life went catastrophically wrong after just one small goof-up. Then, I compounded my misery with one more bad decision. Then, a severe storm sank a knife into my bruised heart just for good measure.
I’m still feeling extremely bad and stupid over this, and to try to bring myself comfort, I’ve tried to remind myself that I’m only human and there have been other times I made small mistakes that snowballed into something much larger.
One of my most recent boneheaded moves was when I took our Ski-Klasse Mercedes-Benz E-Class project on the Gambler 500. We built that car to be the ultimate snow car, but we also thought it might be fun to take off-roading, too. Thus, Ski-Klasse ended up at 4Fest, where I deleted the vehicle’s muffler on a dirt track. Then, I drove it down to Tennessee, where I tested out Ski-Klasse’s strengthened front-end structure by banging it down off-road trails.
It was during this Gambler 500 rally that I bit off more than I could chew. I saw a mud hole and watched as far more capable vehicles got beaten up getting through it. But I thought it wasn’t going to be a big deal. I figured I’d just enter the hole with more speed and rely on the car’s beefy front end to get the vehicle through. It was going to be the ultimate test to show just how much of a beast that we turned Ski-Klasse into.
I was half correct. The strengthened front end did its job. I didn’t so much bounce through the hole like the earlier 4x4s did, but beat the mud into submission. What I didn’t account for was how the rest of the car was going to take the hit. The left rear hydraulic shock blew on impact, sending hydraulic fluid gushing out at a rapid rate and rendering the car nearly inoperable. My Gambler 500 run was done only a couple of hours in. I then spent the rest of the weekend trying and repeatedly failing to fix the dead suspension. Ultimately, I was rescued by the wacky racers of the 24 Hours of Lemons.
Adding insult to injury was how the wagon’s right rear window regulator failed, which was followed by the window shattering when I hit a particularly bad pothole with the car’s broken suspension. People on Instagram then called me an “it” when I posted videos detailing just how silly and bad things got. It was just a horrible weekend all around. Oh, and then I screwed up again only a few months later when I took Ski-Klasse drifting in a snowy parking lot and got it stuck on a snow pile. Yeah, Ski-Klasse wasn’t exactly great in snow, either.
Other dumb times include when I accidentally ran one of my Smarts low on oil for hundreds of miles, when I left my credit card on my car’s roof, when I tried to ride an unfamiliar scooter 700 miles home, when I accidentally broke one of my Smarts’ parking pawls, and when I caught two minivans on fire.
Yet, I don’t consider any of those antics to be my dumbest times behind the wheel anymore. You’ll have to stick around to read that later. For now, make me feel a bit better about myself and tell me, What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done behind the wheel?
Oh, I could write a book…
But the most costly and stupid error was not t-boning the DA’s Aunt in her Karman Ghia with my Mom’s ’72 Mercury Monterey Custom.
Nor was it letting my ’71 Volvo 144S run out of oil, locking up the engine.
Nor was it not clearing the windscreen of my 1980 Honda Prelude XE after a snowstorm in Tokyo, blowing a fuse and forcing me to drive back to base that morning in the snow nearly blind.
It was driving mildly drunk and getting a DUI in Marin County.
I do not recommend it.
Please – Let your friends drive you home or take an Uber.
You can always go back to get your car tomorrow.
Drove without properly clearing frost off the windshield. Not exciting, but it was true because the second I got some direct sun, I couldn’t see shit. Bumped into the back end of a neighbor’s truck.
I got a Hyundai Elantra airborne on California 120 just shy of a quarter century ago.
Buddy and I were cruising the parties at his alma mater in his old ass Bronco. We started smelling something funny so we pulled into an apartment complex parking lot. Smoke was coming from the engine bay. We opened the hood and found the alternator on fire. We grabbed the first liquid thing we found and used it to douse the flames. I don’t recall exactly what it was, but it was definitely the wrong thing because the fire got bigger. Luckily, we realized we had just parked next to the apartment complex’s swimming pool and we now had an empty container with which to transport the pool water.
Well since you gave the motorcycle example, I’ll toss mine in – Desert camping taking the sportbike loaded down with camping supplies. And our campsite was back an extremely soft-sand road, I was sure the front was going to wash out on me (almost did a couple times but I somehow managed to keep it upright).
May or may not have jumped a GMT800 Z71 Suburban in high school. Turns out a terrace is a decent jump, but doesn’t provide a fantastic landing ramp. Didn’t phase that Suburban, thing was bulletproof.
Not me, but my friend Scott crashed his car in high school. His parents, each driving their own car, met him there. He drove his dad’s car and rear ended his mom’s car, totaling all three cars in an hour
How about 2 wheels and a handlebar? I had just flown home after a week of meetings from the big Hawaii island the night before on a Friday. I was about to start two weeks of vacation, and even if it was Saturday, I decided that morning to ride the Kawasaki to the office and file my expense report.
What I didn’t do is check the weather. It was December, and while Hawaii was nice and warm (even rented a Harley to ride around the island), home was having a bit of a cold snap. So riding along the highway when I top a hill and see a whole series of red taillights light up. Went to break and realized there was just a small amount of frozen dew on the road. Skidding and sliding was doing no good, I was coming up on a car fast. Decided to push off the bike and take it to the ground.
Unfortunately my leg didn’t clear and the bike smashed it into 5 pieces. Lesson learned? Pay attention to the weather!
Grabbed a cigarette out of the hand of a passenger and threw it out the window. Didn’t realize it blew back in until my clothes were on fire. At least my passenger was respectful on my no smoking in the car rule after that.
I was in South Africa for work and decided that on the weekend it would be cool to drive out to a national park for some animal spotting.
Rented a car, but decided that I needed an automatic because the wrong side of the road, and a manual transmission with the opposite hand, and Johannesburg/South Africa traffic was at least one too many variables. Wound up with the ultimate safari car. An Audi A4 with about 200km on it.
Bombed out to Pilanesberg National Park, which is an ancient volcanic crater that provides a natural boundary to the park. Only guidance from co-workers was to be back at the hotel before sundown, otherwise great doom could await.
There had been heavy rain the week before my arrival, and what would normally would be dirt packed roads over a rocky bed was now an offroad course akin to the road to Mordor. The road, made of basalt rocks and dirt, the rains had washed away the dirt, just leaving the volcanic substrate.
I have no doubts that as I manouvered through the park that day, and my subsequent high-speed blast back to Jo-berg that that Audi has perpetual PTSD. I’m amazed I didn’t rupture a tire or oil-pan, or rocker panel, as that poor car went places the engineers in Ingolstadt can’t even imagine.
Hit a lot of checkmarks, including a Jurassic Park mirror moment with an elephant, and amazed that I didn’t wind up stranded.
A bit of recency bias here, but being too quick with the “turn it off and on again” strategy last summer when my truck went into limp mode. It had an electronic throttle control message on the screen, which previously had gone away after a restart. Except this time the crank position sensor had failed and it was never going to restart.
Stranded me on the side of I-90 for hours in 95 degree heat while my useless insurance roadside assistance tried to figure out what to do with my truck and trailer. The trip was over either way, but I could have spent that time in a nicely air conditioned McDonalds next to the dealer ten miles down the road instead of baking on the pavement.
Dumbest or most glorious?
Passing a snow plow, that turned out to be three snow plows in several inches of snow on a cloverleaf, in a 1986 MR2. Did I lose traction? Yes! Did I panic? No. Did I gloriously ride the drift around the plows and come out the other end? Well, god protects children and fools I guess.
+1 for the fools.
I think I mentioned it on here awhile back. Took a wrong turn going way too fast at night in the country and ended up dumping my baby blue Metro in a pool of water. Water stopped pouring in at about ashtray level with the engine totally submerged. Wandered back to the highway where I met the cops. Somehow I got lost on my hike and couldn’t remember where the hell the car was. The sheriff and I looked but it wasn’t until 2 weeks later someone finally discovered it. Police called and told me it was on a district court judge ‘s land and I better get it before he finds out.
Luckily the Sheriff kept my name out of the paper, but you know small town gossip. 10 years later I stopped in town at the cafe. Someone at the bar turned and looked at me, then said “Your that guy that lost his car!”
Not me, but a high school friend when I was in the car with him.
He had a new Neon in the 90’s. It handled well and was quicker and nimbler than the old boats everyone else was driving in high school. We were driving a couple towns over (rural MN here) when a rabbit ran out on the road. He swerved. But he swerved to hit the bunny & got it. This was already in the middle of a winding roal and going pretty fast.
Nothing happened, but it was pretty dumb. Later that year he wrapped that car around a tree and ended up in coma for a month. I lost touch with him after high school, but I think he is an engineer now.
What a jackass…
My wife and I were scouting potential boondocking campsites in the Uinta Mountains in our Ram 1500. I saw a steep trail off to the side of the main dirt road, and decided to see where it went. What I didn’t do was get out and look at it; had I done so, I would have realized that the forest service had tried to block it off with a pile of dirt and rock that ATV/UTV riders had worn down over the years, making it look like part of the path. We shot up the hill, crested the pile with the front end, and high centered. It took two trucks, two tow straps, some chains, and several hours (in the rain) to unfuck us.
Ever since that event, the air suspension has repeatedly failed – it may or may not be related.
I got into the car, started the ignition. The car sounded funny, so I opened the door, got out, and out of habit I locked the door and closed it. With the engine still running. All the doors were locked and the windows up.
Now I roll down the window if I ever open the door while it’s running.
I did that on my Chevrolet Celebrity. Fun Fact it had separate ignition and door lock keys and I had them both on the same key chain, so even worse.
lol, I had the spare key in my wallet which I left in the apartment, because I was just warming up the car, and would get it later. Of course the apartment key was locked in the car too. I was able to unscrew the antenna, bend the tip and jimmy the lock.
I realize now that part of the benefit of having multiple keys for ignition, door lock, valet was that they could be kept separately for this reason but I don’t think I ever had keys like this that weren’t directly adjacent to each other on my keyring.
Now that all new cars have proximity fobs and nanny systems I am annoyed I can’t lock the car running even when I want to.
I always have a moment of panic when closing a running car door.
After several hours by the river, sober but very relaxed, I got in my truck and started pulling forward out of the small turnout spot in which I had parked. There was a huge drop off right in front of me that I forgot about, and wrongfully assumed there was something there for me to drive on. My little Toyota truck ended up with her back wheels up in the air, the frame almost 90 degrees to the ground. Luckily some dudes who had chains drove by and dragged my poor truck back to perpendicular.
Wait…. when did Ski Klass go in the snow… I feel like we missed an update somewhere.
I had it in the snow for about all of 5 minutes before it got stuck in -15 degree weather in an abandoned K-Mart parking lot. A guy tried to help me recover the car, only to break the car’s sweet Hellas and his own bumper.
My wife rescued me, then I picked up a tow strap and my mom’s Yukon to pull it out of the snow mound I was stuck on.
I think we decided not to write about breaking it even more. But yeah, Ski-Klasse wasn’t great if the snow was any more than a few inches deep or had been thoroughly frozen by a Midwest winter.
Thanks for the update. Im mean that tracks overall. Snow tires will only do so much… where is it now?
Lie. There are no Kmart parking lots
When I was around 17 or 18, I was allowed to take my mom’s turbo audi back to MA from VT all by myself. I went about 100 to 120 the whole way down the highway, and then decided to take back roads. There was no storm going on, but it was the middle of winter and well below freezing. I was going down a back road in the countryside and decided I’d see if I could hit 100 before I got to the next corner. I could, but what I couldn’t do was slow down, because when I got close to that corner it was all ice. So, I spun, bounced off one snow bank, spun back across the road, bounced off another snow bank AND a telephone pole, and came to rest in the middle of the road with both sides of the car dented in and one tire rapidly deflating due to a chunk of telephone pole being embedded in it. It was the 90s, so no cell phones. I had to walk to the nearest house I could find, and bang on the door and ask them if I could use the phone. I could not, but they helpfully had already called the police. Thankfully the officer was very understanding, as were my parents (considering), and I learned quite a few valuable lessons. It could’ve ended a LOT worse.
Post high school me drifted a friends 60 something VW bug into and onto a 4’ high snowdrift,. It took four of us to lift, push shovel the thing loose. Nothing hurt but teen pride and frozen fingers and toes. Saskatchewan is cold in January.
Drunk roof surfing on a friends Vega one Friday night. We all survived. Another epically stupid post high school stunt we all engaged in.
Helping a friend put a 351 Cleveland 4v into a 65 mustang. We ‘made’ it fit with sledge hammers and a gas axe. The handling was severely broken due to our surgical mods to the trans tunnel and engine bay. We spent months revising the swap reinforcing the shock towers and tunnel to strengthen the drastically compromised frame and trans tunnel.
I tried to drift my parents E350 van in High School down an icy road and no damage to the van but the brown inside match my brown pants that were blue at the start of the drive.
I punched the center of the steering wheel causing the horn to get stuck on. It was 1 am. In a residential neighborhood.
Not technically behind the wheel myself but a group of buddies in high school did a lot of “hooding” for a couple winters.
Basically like tubing behind a speedboat but the tube is an upside down junkyard hood, the water is frozen gravel road, and the boat is a primer grey Nissan pickup with a flatbed – what could go wrong?
More recently the stupid thing was behind handlebars when I volunteered to ride someone else’s dirtbike back to camp because they got injured while we were extracting a stuck side-by-side.
The bike had about 3x the power I was used to and a super twitchy throttle. Add some light rain and about halfway back I lost the back end on a flat rock and yeeted the bike deep into the brush along the trail and myself about 15 feet forward before I rolled to a stop…
Drive an LM002.
As a runner up: Hit black ice in a corner at over 100 mph when I was still a kid, slid over one foot and kept going, slowed down into the double digits after that.
I did 120 in a Fiat 500 Abarth in middle of nowhere Oregon. On roughly 10 year old studded show tires. The car had more to give (I had it up to 220whp at that point) but I decided at that speed it would probably mean death, so I pulled back