Leland Gregory - Stupid on the Road: Idiots on Planes, Trains, Buses, and Cars

The following are actual statements given by insurance policyholders describing automobile accidents in which they were involved.

The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.

I thought my window was down but found it was up when I put my hand through it.

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

The guy was all over the place. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.

Stephen Thomas Manley, Jr., was driving down Farm Road 920 north of Weatherford, Texas, when a car driven by B. J. Justin Lundin began tailgating him. Manley tapped his brakes to get Lundin to back off, an action that apparently enraged the twenty-year-old Poolville, Texas, native. According to an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Lundin passed Manley on the night of January 6, 2003, and then blocked his car by stopping in front of it. Lundin then jumped out of his car and began throwing rocks at Manley. He was in the process of kicking and hitting Manleys car when another car drove by and ran him over, killing him instantly.

Text-Messaging Driver Hits Parked Patrol Car

Arizona Republic headline, June 27, 2007

A malfunction during the switch-over from track power to overhead power lines prompted a conductor on a New York commuter train to stop and go up top with a fire extinguisher to investigate. According to a February 2008 article in the White Plains (NY) Journal News, it was fortunate that he took the fire extinguisher because the eleven to fourteen thousand volts of electricity surging through the overhead lines had caused a man, thirty-six-year-old Ricardo Chavez, to burst into flames up there. The conductor put out the torched train hopper, and Chavez was hospitalized in fair conditionno word, however, on why he was on top of the train to begin with.

Finishing thirty-fifth in the Club North Shore Half Marathon near Chicago in April 1993 was thirty-eight-year-old Mr. Farm Vehicle.

A lead-footed motorist was caught by a high-speed camera that photographed his cars license plate and recorded his speed. When police mailed the speeder his sixty-five-dollar ticket, they included the photograph that was imprinted with the date and speed. In response, the motorist mailed them a photograph of a check. Not wanting the photograph wars to develop any further, the police mailed the man a picture of a pair of handcuffs. He got the picture, in more ways than one, and immediately sent them a check for the full amount.

On March 27, 2003, the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera reported that a thirty-nine-year-old driver from Boulder had accidentally crashed into a tree after celebrating his cars odometer hitting one hundred thousand miles with a bottle of champagne.

A man in East Orange, New Jersey, was driving down I-280 on his way to work when a truck crossed the median and crushed the drivers side of his car. Rescue workers were able to extract the man using the Jaws of Life and, once he was freed, the man hitched a ride from a passing motorist and went to work. The event was reported on the news, and the mans wife saw the horrible accident, heard that the driver was missing, and assumed that her husband had died in the crash. She called local hospitals, the police, and the morgue, but no one knew where her husband wasuntil, that is, he walked through the door of their house. A coworker had given the man a ride home. When the entire ordeal sank in, the man went into a state of shock and took the next three days off from work.

Two Florida police officers decided to follow the operator of a car because he was driving like he was a little green. They tailed the car for nearly two miles before pulling it over and discovering the driver was greenhe was an iguana. When the officers approached the car, they noticed a three-and-a-half-foot iguana at the wheel and an intoxicated John Ruppell slouched down in the drivers seat. The iguana didnt have car insurance but was friends with the gecko from the Geico commercials.

A lot of things can hit your windshield while driving, but one Austrian woman really had a cow when she saw what had struck her windshieldit was a cow. According to the Austria Press Agency, in June 2002, a thirty-six-year-old woman was injured after a cow fell and landed on the hood of her car. The cows fatal fall occurred after it had strayed from a hillside onto the flat roof of a tunnel, lost its hoofing, and plummeted just as the car emerged from the tunnel. The womans car quickly went from cloth seats to all leather upholstery.