Calm down dear, I'm really a very good driver.
One evening, I get a call from my brother. He is working nearby, and wonders if I might like to go for some food. This is a good plan for me, as it means a steak dinner on his company expenses, for the bargain price of letting him tidy up my sofa to sleep on it. Superb, methinks, and I jump in the car.

I drive the ten miles or so to the dingy and decrepit industrial estate where he occasionally works (he works very hard and regularly, just only occasionally on said dingy industrial estate) I pick him up, and off we set. The car is full of the joys of early autumn, the sounds of relaxing music, and we settle into the joyous banter that only brothers can share. Merrily questioning each others parenthood, we start driving foodwards.

We are driving around the ring road, at-or-just-below the speed limit (genuinely, as it's a 1.3 Fiesta and pretty incapable of breaching that barrier, plus I drive like an old lady), and we are approaching a roundabout. To this day, I couldn't tell you whether I failed to see that junction, or my mind didn't process it, but when my senses and brain finally convened their little conference, we were about 5/10 yards from the roundabout, still at about 60.

At this point, time slows down. I slam on the brakes as hard as I can, and attempt to aim the car to the left. This was not a mini roundabout, and the island in the middle was looking remarkably ramp shaped, so I was not about to hit it and go the full Evil Knievel if I could avoid it. The wheels instantly decide to have a tantrum. If they can't go at full speed, they shan't go at all, and promptly start to skid. By now, I am no longer distracted, but on full video-game alert, and my epic 'need for speed' skills kick in.

Tyres squealing, we are turning a little to the left, but the car is oversteering, and there isn't much clearance around the junction to run off. I have to pull the wheel back around to the right, which somehow (I really was never very good at computer games) manages to catch the tyres, and pull us back to the right. We are still slowing down rather heavily, but even so, I manage to get more sideways skidding of the wheels in the other direction. Mercifully, with my half-second of training in how to handle the car at this speed, a little bit of nudging, and at last we are pointed in the right direction (by now at a significantly safer speed).

It is all over and done with in about a second and a half. We manage to exit the roundabout entirely unscathed, save for some unsightly gusset-troubling, and decide to ditch the (still smoking) car at the earliest sensible opportunity and walk to the pub. At the instant it was happening there was genuinely almost no fear, just shock and the adrenaline kicking in, but bugger me was I petrified afterwards. Any car on the roundabout, anywhere in our way, and I would have had no chance of missing them, which would have left rather more than the aforementioned pant-damage.

Didn't stop shaking for about an hour and a half afterwards, and I now drive even more like an old lady than I did previously.

Length? It retracted in so far with the fright I was practically choking.
(Serotonicity was a naughty boy on..., Thu 5 Apr 2012, 22:40, 1 reply)

Same happened to me once
...which is why I now treat all other drivers on the road as potential maniacs
(TheJacksonSixth, Fri 6 Apr 2012, 17:45, closed)