Put her in a ditch real good

[FordGuy100]

Title says it all.

Here is the story. The other day, I woke up to 6" of fresh snow. We were only supposed to get a dusting so it was a nice suprise. So I check, we still have school. So I load myself and my sister up and we head down the driveway. I reach the road, and wow...unplowed. The road had 6" of snow, with solid packed snow/ice, and it was rutted real bad. I was going to turn around and go home, but I decided against it. Anyways I was going along, and I start to go around a corner. A car coming around the way was past the center median and on my side some, enough that we would have hit if I didnt get out of the way. So I get out of the guys way...and guess what...it starts fishtailing real bad. It was in 4 high, and I was probably doing around 35-40mph. Anyways I tried saving it like 3-5 times, somewhere in that range. I would get it to come back, and once I did I would immediatly start turning the wheel the other way. A corner was coming up though...and I just couldnt save it. I ended up going sideways down the road, and went into a shallow ditch, and hit the embankment. At that point I was doing I would say like 25mph, somewhere around there, and to be honest I wasnt looking at the speedo. I knew I was going in, and I just braced for impact. Anyways, front bumper dug in, and stopped me in around 8 feet. The right side of the truck came up off the air, I felt it land back down on the wheels, I'm glad I wasnt going any faster.

So a guy pulls up beside me, and he asks if we are allright. I thank him and told him that it all depends on the damage. I call the parents, they tell me to go to school. So I drove to school, and got out to look at the damage. It was AMAZING, at first look, nothing was wrong. Bumper was a little dirty, tires were a little dirty, but it all looked good. Later on I found that the drivers side of the front bumper was pushed in like 1/2", but you cant tell unless you point it out. I consider myself real lucky...and I'm really wanting to find that dang car :

Gotta give props to Ford for putting on a dang impressive front bumper. Stopped my truck doing 25mph-ish in 8 feet of rubbing against the embankment.

 

[Cat_Rebel]

Glad it wasn't anything major & it's fixable damage. You do have to give Ford props for building em "Ford Tough".

 

[92F350CC]

Wow, glad you weren't hurt. Yeah, these trucks are ****ing tough. I've had a friend borrow mine to tow his broken down E-series van once. Apparently he hooked the tow cable TO MY REAR BUMPER INSTEAD OF MY RECEIVER HITCH AND GAVE IT HELL. It barely tweaked the bumper .
Had another time where somebody in a GMC 3/4 ton van backed into it and it didn't do a thing.
Ford knew what they were doing.

Also, I would definitely be on the war path for that guy who wasn't on his side of the road(although he probably didn't intend to be, judging by the conditions). Not neccessarily for damage to the truck, but for endangering you and your sister.

 

[gsgIDI]

Justin,
You are a lucky guy not much damage to the truck. My son who is 16 and learning to drive with the husband (learners permit) missed a turn in. It was from a left turn in lane off the highway, my son who was driving, missed the turn and wound up in a culvert. The truck a 2000 Ford 150 gasser had $1700.00 damage done to it. My son got a ticket and is now on drivers restriction till March 14, 2009. He then needs to get a notary to notarize an agereement between the Judge and my son that he has not been driving since the accident before Christmes. We decided to not let him drive period. If he gets a ticket he will have to wait till he was 18 to get his license and our insurance would double in price. Just wanted to let you know that you are a lucky young man.
God Bless. gsgIDI

 

[FordGuy100]

Yeah I'm glad nothing bad came out of it. As it sits, you cant tell anything is bent, so I will keep it as is for while. I plan on building bumpers, its on my list of things to do.

I havent seen the car before, probaby some hippy from Portland driving up to the state park to check out the snow. It was an older Subaro wagon...

I guess I can get some compensation from the school district superintendent, because he didnt delay school. Dont know if I'll do that though...

 

[TWeatherford]

Same kind of deal happened a few months ago to my Dad and me, him driving his truck. We were going 45-50 up a slight hill, on a 4 lane road, 2wd, all the sudden there was a patch of ice. No ice before or after, just there. The rear broke loose, and there was no saving it. We went across four lanes and the paved median, and then across a decent ravine and up a really steep hill. We hit the ravine and hill kind of sideways, and both were preparing for a rollover. Instead we went up the hill very quickly, and then rolled back down. Truck stayed on its wheels, drove back up onto the road (after locking into 4x4), and couldn't find any damage on his truck. When we tried to drive away the steering was messed up, turned out we bent the tie rods big time, but the damage would have been much worse if it hadn't been built so strong. The Dana 60 up front definitely held up well.

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

I guess I can get some compensation from the school district superintendent, because he didnt delay school. Dont know if I'll do that though...

Good luck with that Justin, that'd be like me trying to sue BO for "dispersing my wealth" to my welfare career neighbor and trying to get my money back.
Its just not going to happen.

On the other hand when I was in HS, my bro and I were driving home from school and we met a rival school's bus of football players. Someone threw a bottle out the window at us, one of those plastic 2 liter ones, it bounced and broke the front spoiler on my 79 Z28 Camaro. I wont give you any ideas, but lets just say after I had a talk with the bus driver, coach and school principal, I ended up getting my $1200 spoiler repair bill out of them.

On another note, Im glad you didnt get hurt, and your truck didnt get hurt bad by the sounds of it either.
And, this is put down a ditch "real good". The bumper was about the straightest thing left on the truck.

You must be registered for see images attach

Im sure you remember that one.

 

[RLDSL]

Glad y'all are ok. Never fun to go ditch diving.
There;s never a shortage a idiots out driving on snow and ice who have no business trying to drive on the stuff.

In many states, the school super is very responsible for student safety in transit to and from school regardless of personal or public transit if the road conditions are not safe to allow safe passage and it is the responsibility of the school system to see to it that the schools are either closed for the day or a delayed opening , half day thing happens, otherwise exactly what happened , does happen, young folks are out on the road when they shouldn't be, because the law compels them to be present in school every day that the school is open, otherwise they are in violation of truancy laws. Those states carry insurance to cover such things.
It's a similar situation to if my wife has one of her employees go pick up something in their personal car , once that person is doing something under someone elses direction, the vehicle is no longer under their personal control, but under the control of the person who is making the decisions. the person making the decisons is the one who is held financially responsible ( something they've recently had to stop doing because the coverage was costing too much so now she has to go get the stuff herself )

 

[k_williams1982]

Glad to hear that you are okay. If you decide to replace the front bumper rather than build new ones, let me know before I haul the parts truck off. I have a good chrome front bumper over here.

 

[The Warden]

Good to hear that you and your sister are okay.

Accidents are never a fun thing. The best thing you can do is to chalk this up as a learning experience. You can be the safest and most careful driver in the world, and some moron who doesn't know what the sam-hill he's doing can still ruin your day while he's ruining his. It sounded like you did everything you could to avoid it; I'm not trying to lecture you, and I hope it didn't come off sounding that way. It's just something to think about...