Your driving record

Mea culpa.

I have since remembered 3 other incidents.

One where I reversed into a parked car in the staff car park of at a new job. In my defence, it was a cold, wet day in that ancient time of no bleepers / cameras and even no heated rear windows.  Luckily I just broke the other car's headlight. Embarrassing but got me known. It was in my mum's MG1300 (which was a hateful car). Not a 1300GT (which had preceded it), but a god awful badge engineered old man spec. Sporty it was not.  

Another where I reversed into a parked car while being in a real hurry to get out of a tight car parking space. 

And the third where I backed into a concrete pillar in the unlit underground car park in a hired Fiat 500 in Spain. 

Basically, I must be shit at parking!

Montego story (looks like we’ve all got at least one).  As a teenager a Group of us went down to the coast with one set of parents in one car and older brothers (one from the same family) driving others. I was in the parentally driven Montego estate, the father driving who was an oil company chap with Duckhams. About half way down there was a loud noise at the back and we carried on without paying any attention. About 15 miles later one of the brothers caught us up and waved us down (no mobile phones back then). We’d had a flat for that 15 miles and we pointed out that we’d heard a noise. The father driving said “I thought it was handling strangely, but I put it down to the car being full. And it is a Montego, after all.....”

A friend of mine packed in his job and went back to Uni to study Law. His company car went back so he picked up an old Montego for £200 or so and parked it outside the flat he'd rented in Shieldfield, Newcastle. One Sunday morning got up and it was missing. Later that day he got a phone call from the police to say it had been found abandoned down the coast at Whitley Bay so he went to pick it up. This happened again, and again, and then regularly. Instead of paying for a taxi home people would just "borrow" his Montego as it was easy to get into and steal, drive it to near their home and abandon it. If ever a car could talk that one would have a tale to tell.

My driving “career” is fairly mundane but not as squeaky clean as some here! I’ve been driving 30 years and have probably averaged over 20k p.a.in that time, right from the start as a student in Leeds but living in Kent, I did plenty of long trips and always have done. 

I had no big accidents as a yoof but did drive like a nobber and had two slight ones, glancing an earth bank one time and losing the back on ice another time resulting in a new wing needed for the family Nova, no claim made.... at that time I could corner quickly but had no real idea about weight transfer  and on the limit handling - it was a decade later when doing the Caterham racing that I really grasped it. The main peril of young driving is driving fast all the time rather than just when it is suitable.

My first car (Fiesta mkI 1.3S) was stolen at uni and replaced using my TA officer pay with a 309XSi with a good immobiliser! I didn’t claim. I’ve never claimed except once on race insurance, though in all honesty my ex wife did claim on her Puma when a stolen car hit me when I was driving it 20 years ago, that’s the only time insurance has paid out for anything I’ve done rather than collect my cash. 

I’ve had 4 SP30 speeding fines in that time - two coppers in person in the old days when they existed except as yellow boxes, two mobile speed camera. Ive had many more close calls where clearly the camera van was not paying attention, and twice have been stopped by the bill when I hadn’t done what they alleged, and refused to accept their fine knowing no evidence would be forthcoming - it was the last I heard each time...

ive had a handful of parking tickets and one box junction one where a van took “my” clear space and left me hanging. And a handful of very low level speeding and parking fines abroad, France Italy and Germany. German fines are very reasonable, I almost enjoyed paying it. 

Being honest, I’ve always tried very hard to be quick but not take risks but I have at times driven very fast on secluded roads and could have had a “big one“, but on the speeding fines front ive been very lucky overall - I observe 20 and 30 limits well, 40 mostly, but some limits are madness and 50 and above I can see as a bit of a “appropriate speed” invitation... selling Telematics systems for a dozen years has reduced my motorway speeding a lot or I’d have more tickets I’m sure!!!

This forum is, basically, the font of all human knowledge on many varied and wide subjects. Just imagine what we could do with world hunger if given half the chance...