No one gets behind the wheel and goes out for the day hoping to get into an accident – or at least, that’s what most drivers on the road assume.
Apparently, that assumption is not always correct.
OP found himself on the road behind a sweet, cherry-red Chevy.
Background: This was back in the 1990s. I’d recently been medically retired from the military and was attending college in Texas. My wife was working in her chosen field while I did my level best to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Anyway, one day I left the campus, going around the backside to avoid the traffic. I was heading over to pick my wife up for lunch and ended up sitting behind another car at a stop sign.
The car in front of me was a brand new Chevy, one of their little fast models (the actual name escapes me at the moment) in candy apple red, being driven by a fairly new blonde, also a little fast model (whose name will also slip).
When the light turned, she pulled into the intersection, stopped, and then backed up right into him.
I sat, an old sailor in an old pickup, just listening to the radio and thinking about lunch, when the Chevy drove into the intersection … and then stopped.
I didn’t think anything of it, so I hadn’t done more than put my hand on the gear shift in preparation of pulling up, when suddenly, with a suitable squeal of tire, the Chevy shot back at me!
I slapped the shift into reverse but was too late. The little Chevy smashed into the front of my truck doing around 25/30 mph. After a second, I cut my engine, got out of the cab, and walked around to the front of my truck.
The good news was that I could see that I wasn’t going to have to worry about that loose belt squeal anymore. The bad news is that the front of my little pickup was pretty much totaled.
Grill drove back into radiator, water all over the pavement, headlights smashed … I bent down and noted that there seemed to be oil leaking as well.
Luckily, he realized what was happening before the police arrived.
With a sigh of total incomprehension, I walked further up to the passenger door of the little red Chevy and its blonde driver.
I was mad, but not enraged. I guess I was still trying to figure out exactly what had happened and why she’d ended up stopping in mid-turn and put it in reverse like that.
I looked through the tinted window and she was on the phone, talking agitatedly to someone.
With all the cell phone silliness I’d seen since leaving the military, seeing her yapping on one really didn’t surprise me … although, had I thought about it, I should have wondered who – exactly – she was calling.
Instead, I tapped on the window and she turned a bland face to me … then screamed into the phone, loud enough to penetrate the glass, “OH MY GAWD, HE’S GOT A TIRE IRON!!”
Naturally, I spun around and looked behind me … then the nickel dropped. I turned in a slow circle and noted that there were no businesses, houses, or apartments in view, nor was anyone on the sidewalks or walking down the roads.
For that matter, the only traffic was several blocks away in any direction.
Her little car was sitting at the stop sign, almost exactly where it had been when I pulled in behind her! I stepped back and looked at our vehicles … yup, it looked for all the world as if I’d rear-ended her!
Damn! The little witch had set me up!!
I quickly walked back to my truck, thinking as fast as I could.
Any minute now, a police car was going to show up, called by the little blonde, expecting to find a crazed man with a tire iron … and I dearly needed to not be that man.
I pulled my tire iron out from behind my seat and threw it as far as I could into the nearby field, then jumped into my truck. I was a slim chance, but it was the only hope I had.
I made sure the truck was in reverse, then belted myself in, slammed my face into the steering wheel, opened my door (and heard sirens not too far away), and half slumped out the open door at an uncomfortable angle.
I went limp just as the police car screeched to a halt.
He went to some pretty extreme measures.
I ignored the policeman screaming at me to get out of the truck, trusting that my limp body would not move him to open fire.
He finally edged his way over, noticed the bloody nose, tugged at an eyelid (I made sure my eye was well rolled up), and let me drop back into position.
I stayed limp while he checked on the blond, who was near hysterical with fright over the lunatic with the tire iron.
Until she saw me, that is. I’d hoped that her rearview mirror was as off as it looked, or that she’d be too involved with concocting her own story to notice what I was doing.
At seeing my body hanging limply below the driver’s door of my truck, she stammered to a halt. A second set of sirens had been getting closer and the policeman told the now silent blonde to stay in her car.
A few seconds later, someone cut me out of my seatbelt and laid me on the ground. A competent set of hands checked my vitals, and, within a few seconds, a harsh and demanding smell flooded my clotting nose.
I fought it for a few seconds and made a pretty good display of a man coming around after having been knocked out. I immediately made to throw myself to the side … and stopped, half being restrained and half staring wildly around to see what had happened.
The medic sat back when I sat up, looked at the front end of my truck, and moaned, “What the heck did that idiot do to my truck!?!” He told me to lie back down and started asking me professional questions about where I hurt and could I feel my toes and all that crap.
Every few seconds, I’d look back at the wreck and mutter about the idiot backing up like that, and what the hell had he been smoking … little bits of angry stuff.
Their statements, of course, conflicted.
The policeman, having gotten the blonde’s statement, walked over and asked me if I felt up to talking. I said I felt fine, just a little sore. The medic okayed it and helped me to my feet.
I gave the officer my license and proof of insurance and included my retired military ID card, then sat on my front seat and, as if I just noticed it, asked what had happened to my seat belt? He explained that I had to be cut out of it and I shrugged.
“Just another item for his insurance company to pay for, I guess … what the hell was his story, Officer? Why did he back up that way?!”
The policeman looked sharply at me and asked me what I meant.
I described exactly what had happened but concealing the fact that I knew that it was a female driving the Chevy and kept referring to her as ‘him’. After I got done and he’d finished writing it all down, he asked if I had any proof?
“Proof? What do you mean, proof?” I frowned at him … then let my jaw drop a bit.
“Hey, waitaminute! You ain’t telling me that guy … that idiot is saying that I did this, are you?!?”
He admitted that the other driver’s story was that I’d rear ended her – not him – and then threatened her with a tire iron. I frowned again and informed him that I didn’t have a tire iron, that it was sitting in the garage of my house, a couple of hours away.
I moved aside as he searched the cab of my truck … and caught a lucky break when he noticed, without my having to point it out to him, that my truck was still in reverse.
He got out of my cab, frowning, then asked me to stay where I was and walked up to the Chevy. He then asked the blonde to step out of her car and, when she’d done so, leaned into the open driver-side door.
After a few seconds, he stood back up and asked the girl to repeat her statement of what happened.
The truth, however, set him free.
It was a marvelously teary bit of acting, but she almost blew it by being somewhat puzzled when he didn’t react. Instead, he asked her to go on and describe everything that had happened after the accident and everything she’d done then.
She backed down from the tire iron story, saying that it might have simply been a reflection on her window, but insisting that I’d at least beaten on her window and that I’d simply been putting on an act for their benefit.
The policeman looked over at the medic, who slowly shook his head. (Years of doing Search and Rescue might not have done much good for me, physically, but I sure as hell know what an unconscious man acts like!)
The policeman then asked her if she’d tried to drive away or had she immediately shut off her engine. She said that the engine had died and, no matter what lies I’d said, that she’d never tried to leave the scene of the accident!
The policeman nodded once and asked the medic to step over. He then asked the medic to sit in the Chevy and confirm that it was in reverse. (I love smart people!! I didn’t even have to suggest he check!)
The best part is that they thought she was the lunatic for accusing him of faking.
When I last saw the little blonde, she was honestly crying. She was also handcuffed and being driven away, arrested for making a false police report, some legal mumbo-jumbo about trying to run a con, and – my favorite part – assault and battery.
Once she’d realized that she’d blown it, about the same instant she was handcuffed, she started weeping and explaining that she didn’t have the money for the payments on the car, and that her only option was to fake an accident, but that I’d been faking, too, and hadn’t been injured … you gotta believe me! She wouldn’t lie about that!!
I signed my name to an almost letter-perfect statement of events over at the police station, being careful to never mention in my own statement about how my nose got banged up, or how I’d ended up unconscious and hanging out of the door.
The arresting officer’s report, as well as the EMT’s, had already noted that it appeared that I’d either been partially ejected by the impact or might have been trying to get out of the truck at the last moment. (I’ve always believed that one should never sign one’s name to a false statement. Wisest, in the long run, don’t cha think?)
Turned out that her car insurance was good, however, and they paid for my little pickup’s repair. The damage wasn’t as bad as it originally looked, thank God.
A little front end work, a new radiator and assorted other dinged or dented gizmos, a little cosmetic surgery to make her outside look right once more … hell, the mechanic is even going to toss in a full overhaul, including fixing that damn fan belt.
I had to drive a loaner for the next week (also care of the blonde’s insurance) and the irony of this will make you laugh; it’s was a little red Chevy.
Nice car and my wife and I had a ball riding in it, but way too expensive for a guy like me to drive every day.
Hell, a car that nice might have made me try something stupid to make the payments …
Is Reddit impressed or slightly scared? Let’s find out!
There’s nothing like video evidence.
Apparently this kind of thing isn’t all that rare.
Oh my gosh that’s hilarious.
You never know when that sort of thing will come in handy.
They definitely like the story.
This is absolutely dastardly.
I loved it.
If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.