Today, March 23, is Near Miss Day, commemorating the day in 1989 when the asteroid 4581 Asclepius got close enough to Earth that astronomers thought we might end up like the dinosaurs. That would almost be as bad as if something were to damage your car. A few years ago, I took my 66,000-mile Lexus SC300 factory 5-speed for a completely unnecessary drive just to stretch its legs. I noticed something I never see while in my daily: a large truck wheel bouncing over the freeway median. It was headed right toward me. Luckily there was space enough to swerve two lanes, and a second later it obliterated the front end of the Prius that had been behind me.
What’s your most terrifying near miss story?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “How did you learn to drive?“.
If we’ve learned anything from this week’s answers is that JNC readers are a bunch of scofflaws. c1ph4 learned to drive on a Starlet purloined from a friend’s parents’ garage. Taylor C. borrowed the family van with a plastic AAA wallet key. Kyuusha Corner, Negishi no Keibajo, and crank_case all got behind the wheel prior to driving age on a gravel lot, army base, and farm, respectively.
We also learned an interesting fact thanks to TheJWT. Ohio license holders can much more easily transfer their driver’s licenses to Japan, bypassing some of the notoriously difficult steps otherwise required to obtain a Japanese license.
streetspirit‘s tale of passing a driver’s test despite running a red light could frankly be resubmitted for this week’s near miss question.
However, the winner this week is Joe Musashi, who proves that playing video games isn’t a waste of time at all:
Not sure myself.
I did the thing like in the other poster here said, where he sat in dad’s lap at 8 and you steer and dad presses on the pedals because I was 8. I think there I got a feel for the steering that never went away. The vibrations and weight shifting as the car moves around. Those things I didn’t forget. I knew I wanted to play that driving game on the PlayStation right after that. And I did.
The next memory I have (that I can share *cough*) was probably being 13 or so, just taking mom’s minivan around the neighborhood. Auto-tragic two pedal driving. Easy.
All I did was play those racing games through out my teenage-hood. I had GT2 and GT3; and the other crazy NFS games. I more or less had a basic understanding of driving at this point but never got on a car to drive it. I’m kind of glad however.
By the time I was an adult, I instinctively knew how to pilot the car around. No shocker to anyone or to myself. I missed the shock that everyone goes through driving for the first time. I never had that.
Got my license, asked the license lady if I got any, what are they called? Faults or whatever? She was like “aw nah bud. You ain’t go to worry about a thing.” The people I went with that day, they were all something. Failed something. A missed something. Something.
Some years later, I got a manual. Same thing. Like I had the DLC already installed or something. Gimmie a semi or something. Let’s try that.
What was the question? I don’t know dude. I just did.
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
