A thread for people to reminisce about some of their memorable driving moments and experiences!
my first memorable moment is probably the same as many others.
when at 4 years old I sat on my dad’s knee and steered the car around the caravan site on the summer holiday.
the next one would be on the Monday after the Friday that I passed my test and went to work (in lincoln) and the minute I arrived in the yard I was told “see that old box van down the bottom of the yard” yeah, the totally knacked piece of scrap!, what about it, I said. “that’s yours, now get it in and drive it up to Holyhead!!!”
the next was about a year later, i was in the box van, in London, looking for a helipad beside the river Thames.
we (my 2 co-workers and i) had been going round in circles for about an hour and whilst we were doing this we noticed that there was a guy pasting up one of those big roadside advert posters.
you know the ones? the ones that are made up of about 12 a1 sizes of paper you see on the sides of buildings.
well, we saw that the guy had finished and so we pulled up to ask him for directions!!
he said that we needed to turn round and go back and it was just along the way.
so I started to turn the wagon around!!!
And backed right up to the sign this guy had just spent an hour pasting up.
now when I say “backed up”!!!
I mean I backed into it and punched a great big hole in it with the wagon’s yellow flashing light fixture!
i stopped the wagon and looked at the poster guy expecting him to explode! and he just shrugged and said “its ok mate i already took the picture of it to prove it was finished” and waved us off with a smile!!!
Tumbling down the road, having been flicked off my Ducati 999 was pretty memorable.
It was the classic ground/sky, ground/sky, ground/sky, ground/sky followed by eerliy still and quiet, scenario.
My first company car was a Reliant Supervan iii
It had Pirelli Extraflex tyres fitted in order to boost the available suspension travel. Those tyres had sharp 90 degree shoulders which would follow any road imperfections, so when I encountered a repaired trench in the road, the tyre just tracked the ridge that was left and the car climbed up the nearside hedge before I knew what was happening. I managed to steer it off the hedge but was on two wheels.
I had to drive it balanced like that for a hundred metres or so before a gap in the traffic coming the other way enabled me to flick the steering right so I could drop the nearside wheel back down again.
That was definitely memorable.
Many years ago the boss of the garage where I worked had been given a Moto Guzzi V7 Sport as a courtesy bike whilst his CB750 was in for a service. He very unwisely suggested I take it out for a ride. Very unwise because I was 19, quite inexperienced and a much faster rider in my head than I was in the real world.
I headed off from Orpington in the general direction of Tonbridge taking in a steep hill with a sweeping S-bend. I was familiar with this hill in a downward direction but had never actually ridden up it.
I thought it would be a good stretch of road on which to test the Guzzi’s handling and headed into the first right hander at a fair rate of knots only to discover that the following left hander tightened up dramatically. With everything scraping and rapidly running out of road, I crossed the double white lines, bounced off the kerb on the outside of the bend and wobbled back onto my side of the road. Fortunately no damage was done to my underwear and I rode back at a much reduced rate.
A very luck escape that unfortunately didn’t serve to slow me down for long.
Back in the late 80s I took my young family on a holiday to Florida. We stayed with my sister who lived in Miami. She met us at the airport and accompanied me to the Hertz car rental where I had to pick up a rental for the three weeks we were there. I had rented a modest sedan but my sister knew someone senior at Hertz and managed to blag me an upgrade to a red Pontiac Sunbird convertible.
We left the kids in the pool with my brother-in-law and went for a top-down drive in the Sunbird. We drove over the causeway to Miami Beach. Both my sister and my wife were attractive blondes and I have an abiding memory of driving down past those old hotels by the beach with the sun blazing down when “Take It Easy” by the Eagles came on the radio. My wife’s long blonde hair was streaming in the wind and I thought to myself “Freeze me in this moment, it’ll never get any better than this…”
When I was 17 I had a motorbike which I drove to work when I was an apprentice spray painter.
I passed my car test and used to get asked to deliver cars etc when we weren’t busy.
One day I was asked to drive the boss’s brother to pick up a car that had been scratched when being delivered.
He was to drive the car back and I would take the Land-rover back.
We got to this very large house and it turns out the car was a brand new Jaguar XJS in British racing Green.
I begged and begged the boss’s brother to let me take the XJS and eventually he gave in and said OK.
I was driving on the motorway between Stirling and Kincardine and decided to see how fast it would go.
I caught up with an old guy in a black BMW hogging the outside lane on an otherwise empty stretch. I flashed him a couple of times but he wouldn’t move so I passed him on the inside lane just as a police car came down the slip road and pulled in front of me.
I slowed down behind them. They obviously wanted me to pass them as they kept slowing down. Eventually they pulled onto the hard shoulder so I had to pass them.
I could see them looking into the car checking me out.
I’m sure they must have thought ■■■…Young lad with long hair and overalls in an XJS.
They pulled me over and booked me for undertaking.
After they let me go, I got back to work and was too scared to tell anyone.
20 minutes later they called over the tannoy for me to go to the boss’s office.
When I went in, the 2 cops that stopped me were sitting there, and the boss was furious…he was going to sack me.
Fortunately the boss’s brother was a retired cop and after speaking to the traffic cops managed to persuade the boss that what I did wasn’t actually that reckless and it wouldn’t be right to sack me…
Thank god the cops hadn’t seen me 5 minutes earlier bombing along the motorway flat out.
Anyway, I got a £100 fine and an endorsement on my licence.
That was more than a months wages back then…
@bobsyeruncle just reminded me of another driving moment.
i was working as a car valeter on Normanton airfield.
when one of the guys from the giant parking lot outside came in ask all the valeting staff to come and help them move some cars that had just come in.
so i went out and jumped in this brand new, 5 miles from testing on the clock, peugot 306 sedan (one with a boot one) and all we had to do was drive these cars 150 yards down a road and then turn 45% to the right and then go through some gates on the airfield proper where we where parking them.
well, that turn just happened to be a gravel trap!!!
so I was the last in the line of cars and I was speeding to catch up, only doing 40ish, I turned at the corner and the back end just left me! it just completely went!
I went through the gates doing a flat spin!!! didn’t touch em, no damage to the car!
nothing!
just my pride was damaged.
needless to say, I Never got asked to move any cars ever again!!!
Spun my 1998 Fiesta 1.4 Si in front of a (then new) SPECS camera on the A515 Cat & Fiddle (reportedly Britain’s most dangerous road)! Went a bit fast into a tight corner, panic dabbed the brakes and then poor tyres, no weight on the rear, no driver aids and scabby Cheshire tarmac did the rest - a complete 180 but by some miracle I didn’t hit any kerbs! It was dusk and the road was quiet so SPECS was the only witness… oh and my incredibly chilled brother in the passenger seat
reminds me of the day after I got my first mx5, a mark 2, 1.8l.
I came out of my driveway and went to make a 90 degree right turn.
But instead, the rear wheels lost traction, the back end went and I ended up facing the wrong way!
so basically I came out of the drive to make a 90-degree turn and made a slow 260 degree 3 quarter donut!!! in the middle of Ancaster village!
cold, wet winter roads can be extremely slippery, couple that with a powerful rear-wheel-drive car and you can get some really interesting sights!
Still in my late teens I was chucked the keys to the big boss mans car. Only ever allowed to wash it before, he found out I now had my full license. So me a long haired yoof got to drive a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow from Derby to Burton, took it for a service. The return journey wasn’t half bad either, I had to bring a big Merc back, his second car.
That reminds me of the day I passed my test.
I had a motorbike and my mum and dad were desperate for me to sell it so they said they’d buy me a car if I passed my test.
I applied for my test and expected to wait a couple of months, so plenty of time for lessons. I ticked the box to say I’d take a cancellation.
I came home from work on the Friday night and my mum said " hurry up and get a shower, you’ve got a double driving lesson booked"…she then told me I’d got a cancellation and was sitting my test on the Monday.
I had 2 lessons on the Friday, 2 on the Saturday and one one the Monday morning before I sat my test.
Fortunately I passed and when I got back on the Monday afternoon there was a second hand white 1974 vauxhall viva sitting in my drive. It was mine
I took my dad for a quick run to see how I got on then went out to pick up 3 of my pals.
The viva tyres weren’t much wider than my motorbike tyres and a few miles from my house we went round an S-bend in a 30 zone, and due to overhanging trees and a damp road it was rather slippy.
We did a full 360 spin and ended up the embankment at the opposite side of the road.
Fortunately there was nothing coming the other way.
We scrambled out the car which was now covered in mud and looked in a real sorry state.
I was crapping myself thinking my dad was going to kill me.
When we washed the mud off, the only damage to the car was a small 10p piece sized dent below the front bumper.
We were lucky in more ways than one.
First thing I bought was a set of rostyle wheels with wider tyres.
It was a few years before I told my dad that story…
Back in the seventies I had numerous different jobs before going to college, including working as a window cleaner for a large company that had contracts for various shops , offices and Hospitals in the West London / Surrey area, on one occasion out in Surrey , and I cant remember how it all came about, but somehow we got onto a section of the Old Brooklands banked race circuit in the old window cleaner van with ladders on top and all, I just wish I had a camera with me at the time.
on the A515 Cat & Fiddle (reportedly Britain’s most dangerous road)! Went a bit fast into a tight corner, panic dabbed the brakes and then poor tyres, no weight on the rear, no driver aids and scabby Cheshire tarmac did the rest - a complete 180 but by some miracle I didn’t hit any kerbs! It was dusk and the road was quiet so SPECS was the only witness… oh and my incredibly chilled brother in the passenger seat 
