Team-BHP - Embarrassing, cringe-worthy car moments!

This incident happened during lord ganesha festival days.
Around 6 years back, when i had just learnt to drive, i used to park my car in a large empty compound that had a bit tight space for passage of a vehicle.

I sat in the car with my sandals not buckled up properly and started the car. As i slowly drove towards the entry point of the compound, i realised that i was too close one side of the compound wall (it was a barbed fence) and tried removing my foot off the accelarator.

But alas, the pedal got stuck between my foot and sandal, and the next thing i remember was a loud thud and falling on the wall (a single pillar). There was no one near the vehicle or the fence, but from the other side of the road, i could see all my society members looking at me. I was so embarrassed that i did not drive the car for a week.

The car's bumper was broken a bit and it only took 50rs to temporarily repair it. One pillar of the fence fell, but hey, thereafter it was easy for me to park the car due to the larger passage created. :uncontrol

When I was still in college and new driver, I was occasionally allowed to drive my parents to market or other nearby places. One such day, they had gone shopping and I was sitting in the parked car (i10). However it was in front of a house's entrance and a car pulled up and started honking to get me to move.

Perhaps I was a bit flustered and moved quickly and entered a dead end narrow street. Realizing that I had to turn back, I started making a U turn. The street was so narrow that I had to do at least 10-15 front and back cycles, before I could make the turn. All the while being watched by a mini truck driver who was parked there.

It was only after I reached home that I realized that I could have just reversed out of the street. :)

Well every member of this community is someone who prides themselves on their driving skills and automobile knowledge. Based on this it was truly embarrassing for me when I messed up big time in front of my relatives. It was my cousin brother’s wedding and I was driving my relatives back from the venue. Me being the youngest of my cousins, most of my relatives were in disbelief that I could even drive, let alone drive well. My mausa ji (mother’s sister’s husband) is someone who is very judgmental and all us cousins fear him for it. He was also riding in the car. He was very impressed with my driving skills, it was a relief. My joy was short-lived though, even though I drove flawlessly, leaving everyone impressed, I messed up big time while parking. So what happened was, while parking I was taking the reference of another car that was parked beside my car. One thing I didn’t know in the dark was that there was a low lying tiles construction that was not present at that car’s side but was present where I was parking. Couldn’t see it in the dark, but while proceeding further, there was a big *THUD* and I knew what I had done. The whole radiator assembly had cracked, and all my effort to impress my mausa ji had went down the drain, had to hear an earful from dad as well.

Well, it was when we had Maruti Zen LXI. My mother was not at home. I was in 5-6th grade in school. Father was going to pick my sister from a party or something. I, a small child with basic car knowledge, I only knew about car names, didn't come across terms like clutch, brake, handbrake yet. So, father was getting ready and I said to myself, "Hey! why not I get the car out of the parking and surprise my dad." I knew I don't have any license so I wouldn't drive but my genius had quite a decent plan in hands. As my dad was wearing his shirt, I went down, unlocked the door and sat on the seat with a smirk on my face that I am such a good caring child, would be two steps ahead of others. When my father was wearing his shoes, I pushed down the handbrake and came outside. I stood in front of the car and pushed it towards the exit of parking. Thanks to my mother for whatever they she made me eat since childhood, the push was so powerful that the car was rolling easily. I again smirked at myself and now comes the "Average Priyadarshan Movie" lore. I talked to myself that why is the car not stopping. The smirk changed into a suspicion. HEY! why is it not stopping. WHY IS THE CAR NOT STOPPING. Looked around what's happening that's when my saviour and my captor came. Dad came down and was puzzled at where is the car and he noticed it is going away in reverse with nobody inside in the car. Call it auto parking. He ran behind the car and pushed the car against to stop it from rolling back and he succeeded, eventually. The scene was like SRK in RA.one stopping the train with his bare hands in a formal dressing. Well, my father scolded me in that moment and it was scary. He told me to stay at home and not join him which is my punishment. I took out my school note book and wrote, "I am Sorry, Pappa." for 50 times.

Yup, this is my embarrassing part.

I'm cringing right now as I write this, was probably when I was ~18.

Dad and I are washing the car(2009 Logan glx 1.4) in the evening, around an hour later, we finish. Being Mangalore, at that time of evening (6pm-ish) lots of mosquitoes around.. anyways, dad tells me to move the car back into the garage and i sit in the car.
Along with me, a mosquito (a fairly large one mind you) tags along. The car is probably about 6-7 metres away from the other end of the garage.

I've already started the car, put it in gear and have gained just a little momentum to cover the few feet left.. and at that moment this mosquito chooses to sit really really close to my eye and hand automatically goes to whack it off my face. (My brain in the background is telling me "oi bruv your still moving":eek:)
My feet automatically slams on the clutch and brake which makes a 'wee bit' of noise and I stop-just a few inches off of the wall.

My dad just walks over and asks me what the heck I was doing. Told him a mosquito got me distracted and he just glared at me.

Oh, Car survived, the mosquito escaped.:Frustrati

The year must have been 2007 and I was 21 years old. We had a marriage to attend in a village in Bihar. We went to Patna by train and went to a close relatives house first. The plan was to go together for the marriage (some 100 kms further from Patna). Now this was the month of May so it was sweltering hot and you could literally fill buckets with sweat.

Now my relatives had a 2 year old maruti 800 that was very dear to them although it only stayed in parking - they did not know how to drive. The only time the car saw the streets was maybe when an uncle came to visit them.

So, someone proposed we take the car, but no one knew how to drive! I claimed I knew, and I had a license too, but they did not trust me. So my uncle took me for a test drive, and even though he did not know how to drive, he evaluated me and declared I could drive!

Now I had told them I had a license, and I did, but I had left it in Pune.rl: because I never thought I was going to drive. I did not tell them this though.

So 6 of us got loaded in that poor maruti 800 which had no AC and started our journey. It was literally a trial by fire - For most part of the journey we could not go above 10/15 kms per hour due to traffic. My feet was paining from holding the clutch and break for so long. The heat was such that I had not experienced in a long long time. I can only imagine the plight of the 4 people in the rear seat, who on top of all the above, were also scared about my driving skills and my nature to stick out the window and call people to move out of my way.. rl:.

We did manage to reach our destination in about 6-7 hours and also returned back after a couple of weeks. The maruti survived with a couple of scratches. I did get my driving credetials stamped as well - except for the people in the car - the entire village was in awe of me - all of 21 years old, driving and coming by a car - the whole village did not have a car except for some commercial bolero's. I was the expert on cars and my favorite pasttime was taking out the car and parking at different spots while the whole village watched in awe.

In the late 1990s, I had restored my grandfather's Ambassador Mk.2, and slightly bored out the engine for a bump up in power. It had about 60bhp from its 1.5 litre BMC petrol engine. Still had stock clutch and gearbox - 4 speed column shifter.

At a signal, while driving to office one day, I fell for a drag race challenge. It was Amby Vs. Zen. Slotted into first, and as soon as the lights went green, I took off like a F1 driver. Perfect launch, leaving the Zen behind. Then I slammed the shifter into 2nd and ... Heard the most awful crashing sound. And then no drive - engine and wheels no longer connected. The Zen disappeared into the distance, leaving me most embarassed.

Turns out, with the "quick" shift from 1st to 2nd, I had broken a gearbox shaft, leaving me with just 3rd and 4th gears. I limped to the office and got the gearbox fixed by an FNG nearby.

For this story, I was not the embarrassed, but rather it was a relative of mine.

My family had decided to go for Ochira in Kerala for a distant relative's 100th birthday. We were mostly going just to get out on the road and relax after a tiring work-week. My father and I decided to take our beloved Innova Crysta which had run less than 10K kms. The morning drive was wonderful and we reached just before noon.

I was the one driving, so my family disembarked from the car and I asked the uncle of the house where I could park. He cheerily told me that they had an abandoned house plot right opposite to the house that I could park in. Please note that it had rained the night before, which somehow the uncle did not think was important to notice. This was my first time parking at this place, so I naturally trusted his words, because why would he send our wonderful car to a treacherous parking spot?

I put the car into drive and steadily took into the fairly large plot. I don't like reversing my car out of the parking spot, so I decided to back it in. Halfway through the manoevure the car just stopped moving. There was quite a bit of grass and debris, so I thought that there must be something blocking the tire. I gently gave a bit more accelerator only to find out that the traction control light was blinking!

Sensing the worst, I stepped down and looked to see the rear tire completely bogged down in mud. This was my dad's precious car, so I did not waste time spinning the wheel and immediately called him. The situation naturally escalated to the point where there were a few other locals and myself pushing the car, our feet covered in mud to save the car. A few even suggested that a JCB would do the job to which my dad passionately protested. After considerable effort and coordination we managed to drag the car out.

By this point I was mentally and physically exhausted. My feet were absolutely dirty and I was in absolutely in no mood to socialize. Thanked the gods that the vehicle had been rescued and went to the birthday party. But the story does not end there. We had parked our car in a different parking spot and one of the guests came and told us that our rear wheel had a puncture. Me and my dad were too tired to have a reaction. I drove around to find a tire shop, but most were closed because it was a Sunday.

I did find one very close-by, but the guy was too scared to work on the car and could not remove the wheel. Since, the wheel had a lot of dust, it required one good kick to get it out (which he didn't do). I soon reached the main highway and found a big shop that was very crowded. Guys there saw that I was a young guy and paid no heed to me, saying that I had to wait a long time before they could get to my car.

Called my dad, who soon arrived with another family's driver. They convinced the shop to just seal the puncture and that we would do the rest of the work ourselves. We finally fixed it and headed back home safely.

Our saving grace was the many people who helped us and my dad's ingenious purchase of a portable tyre inflator. But man oh man, what was that uncle thinking? Since he was an elderly gentleman, nobody really blamed him, but I am sure he felt embarassed.

Don’t know how to engage the reverse gear, Blocking the entire road.

The car was a manual transmission Vento and I was alone in the car I must take a three-point U-turn on a small village road. The road was narrow and after turning halfway, there by blocking the entire road, I must take reverse to complete the turn. Then only realized that it was my first drive on the Vento, and I don’t know how to engage reverse gear. It took 3-4 minutes to realize there is a switch in the gear lever that allows to slot the reverse gear. It was my luck, not a single vehicle came through the road while this drama was happening.

A similar incident happened to my friend aswell, and I was in the passenger seat that time, and I don’t know driving then. My friend tried to take a U-turn in front of his house and the car was a Tata Sumo. (We must push the gear lever down to engage the reverse). It was his Sister’s Marriage and there was a huge gathering in his house, also the traffic started piling up from both sides. Seeing the struggle, a truck driver who got blocked by us came to the rescue.

Okay, this is not an embarrassing car moment, but an very embarrassing (auto)-mobile moment!

A 10-11 year old me, got my first lesson in Newton's laws of motion, the hard way!

I would always see passengers alighting out of moving train and found that really cool! I found it something of a stunt, that made people a super hero in my eyes. WOW! They just got off a moving thing, where as we would get down only after this thing comes to a complete dead stop! How boring!

Me, my mum and my aunt had been to Malleshwaram for some shopping. We took an Auto-rickshaw back home. I was sitting at the corner looking at the traffic and people going by. As we neared our home, the devil inside my head whispered, "It is your time to shine! Jump off the moving rickshaw and become a super hero! Your mum and aunt apart from the neighbors would be star struck at your newly achieved super power".

You see where this is going!

I listened to the voice and jumped. The complete blithering idiot that I was, I only noticed people jumping off the moving train. Never noticed the people run forward to carry their inertia and then slowly come to a stop.

I jumped, without running. Mother nature took care of the rest. She took me in violently as I face planted on the asphalt. Scraped my forehead, hands and knees and bruised my ego too.

A beating from mum to top it off. A week holiday from school and a mockery from classmates.