There's a turn by my house that's banked really nicely, but is practically a 90 degree turn. You can't tell that it's like that till you're right on top of it as well. I was on my way to pick up a CDJ (I used to spin Minimal Tech/Deep House) and passed up a slow driver in the far right lane. There's also a 530, some infinity, and a civic all surrounding me with about 20-50 feet in between us.
I was on the inside lane, took it at 83 (40 is around the normal people take it at) and didn't take it correctly. I realized that my entry was too fast when I saw my lane make a sudden turn to the right, so I hit the brakes and continued to try and get through the turn. I got through about 60% before my crap tires lost traction (cooper touring) and my back end spun wide. I corrected, but was too hard on the brakes and got it to lose more traction while it slid to the right and spun me all the way around. I remember looking the 530 driver in the eyes, him giving me this perplexed and scared look. I then missed the other cars by a safe distance and slid into a guard rail at about 20. Since I still had the wheel turned to the left, my front passenger tire hit the railing causing me to bounce off a little. I sat there, shooken up, and decided to at least get the car off of the off ramp, so I started it back up, put it in gear, and turned it around. To my surprise, it drove pretty well, just had an alignment issue, so I decided to pull into a parking lot to check it out.
Thanks to my wheel being turned, I saved all damage to my door and quarter panel; all the damage was sustained in the tire and passenger fender. I freaked out when I saw it, but honestly it's just a 12" crease and bubble in the lip with no damage to the paint, you can't even notice it unless it's pointed out. Unfortunately when I pulled away I scraped the quarter panel on the rail and burned some of the paint, but it's an easy fix with a little work and blending.
It was a crappy moment indeed, I got a quote for $3,000 to get it fixed up by Cal West. They are supposed to be the best around, but I got orange peel on my paint after they fixed it from the drunk driver who ran into it when parked. I actually have some friends that work at BMW who do body work on ferraris and lambos who said they'll do it for pretty cheap, just need to find a good couple days.
These pictures were taken after the accident. As you can see, I really really really got lucky in how I hit that rail.



Oh, and I never got the CDJ, the guy never showed...
-TC
This post has been edited by razor7: Aug 12, 2009 - 2:16 AM