Ekona

I'd suggest picking a venue for the grub, at least we'd know where we were going then

You're not kidding, he was away in Amsterdam on a heavy weekend and was asleep after a mad night when I rang him. I think it took a couple of hours before it actually sank in what had happened!

Tbh I probably wouldn't do it either. Can create all sorts of friction if you're the newbie. I think I'd stick with keeping written accounts of everything. Even if you keep a diary alongside, so that when you feel you're being singled out unfairly you can go back to it 6 mths time and say with accuracy what actually happened. I agree with Neil in that I'd be over friendly if possible, it's very hard to be angry with someone if they're constantly being nice to you.

This, a million times this! I do this now all the time, just because the culture of some people is to blame every one else when stuff goes wrong, so now I do it all to cover my own arse. I'm guessing that having a quiet word with her superior isn't an option?

Yeah, being a passenger is probably the best way to describe it, spot-on. Holding on more than driving, so to speak. I've a couple of mates (not related to the same guy who's car I binned) who I've grown up with mucking around with cars. One of them wrote his MR2 off ditching it into the pit wall at Anglesey in the rain, and another spun my old VXR220 into the armco on the A1 in the rain. Given how I've light-heatedly teased them about that over the years, you want to see the stick I'm getting off them now!

Thanks Graham, great post mate You too Doc, legend. I guess it's just me venting as much as anything, it's hugely frustrating to have been hit twice with confidence when it comes to driving (recalling my recent discovery of a fear of driving on mountains on the Spain trip) in the same year. I'm sure I'll eventually get back to where I was and more than likely better as I now know what can go wrong, it just seems a long way away at this point. Something else that's odd, is that I seem to be completely unaffected when driving my truck in the damp, but put me in the 911 or the Mini (MX5 is SORN'd right now) and I get THE FEAR again. Truly my mind works in mysterious ways. Should have a new car to play with next month anyway, might be time to do a cheapy airfield day and go push..

Can you believe he actually complained at the time, having to fork out £20!

Thanks for the kind words folks, it's much appreciated and I genuinely mean that. I'll try and pick up on a few bits mentioned, sorry if I don't do it by name. My back's fine, as was I as really the impact didn't seem that much: It was certainly noisy, and it's a noise I'll never forget, but i was very well strapped in and secured so no movement to whiplash or anything.W With regards to doing trackdays/drift days/driver training, I've done loads of that in the past. Well, never a proper drift day, but I've been sideways plenty of times on track to feel comfortable doing it (see the footage from the SXOC day at Anglesey this year with me and Docwra for proof of that!). I've done multiple days with Andy Walsh too, both in MR and FR cars to get an understanding of vehicle dynamics, and in truth I think it's this that saved me from a bigger crash. I tried to catch it, but I think when you're used to catching stuff sliding and something still feels very wrong you know quickly when to give up, and just jump on the brake and pray for the best! I hate horses too. Fell off one of those when I was younger, didn't bother getting back on and don't miss it at all. Luckily, and I still cannot believe how lucky this was, but my friend had paid £20 to put me on their insurance properly for the weekend. Without that, I'd have been absolutely stuffed. It's put driving other cars in a different light, as I used to be very happy to drive someone else's car regardless as long as I had 3rd party cover, and whilst I wouldn't rag it I wouldn't exactly hold back. I've driven some pretty expensive machinery that way, and it's only now that I realise just what could've happened! My new rule is that if I can't afford to repair or replace it if I write it off, then I don't drive it full stop. So I'd be happy to drive someone's early JDM Zed, but not someone's new 370Z they'd only picked up the week before. If you live in Essex and look out of your window today, that's kinda the conditions it was when I had the accident, to give some kind of perspective to it.

It's now been well over two months since this happened, and I now feel comfortable enough to discuss this amongst friends, so apologies for the long post. I will not be disclosing the car I was driving at the time, but it wasn't any of mine. It was, however, a car I am familiar with. 0-60 of the car in question is sub 5sec, top speed of over 170mph. Same rough size and weight of a Zed. The car also has modern TCS. I've never had a crash before. Ever. Okay, so I knocked off a wing mirror from a Mini when learning in my Escort, but that doesn't count. I'd never had a full-on, holy-crap-this-isn't-fun crash before. What I tell you now is the absolute truth, no embelishments added or sections missed. It was a Sunday morning, and the weather was overcast. Roads were drying up from the heavy rain the night before, but I still felt happy with going out for a drive. Not a massive blat as it wasn't that dry, but it wasn't soaking either. The car was borrowed from a friend who had gone away for the weekend and thrown me the keys, so I wasn't going to waste the opportunity to at least enjoy it partially. I popped out to my local supermarket to grab some milk for breakfast, so a route I've taken literally hundreds if not thousands of times before. At the exit to the supermarket is a roundabout with a two-lane dual carriageway either side, and I wanted to turn left down the DC heading home. There was a Mini in front of me, so I let her go out first and then when I checked it was all clear, I followed. There was nothing behind me, or other cars entering the roundabout. Which, it turns out, was very lucky... Turned left, started to straighten the car up and accelerate. Suddenly I felt the rear end go light and start to come round, so I kept a steady throttle and tried to correct. Very, very quickly I realised that this was beyond the point of saving, so I came straight off the gas and jumped onto the brake ("When in a spin, both feet in" and all that). The car stopped rotating and I was now pointing directly at the armco on the hard shoulder, and could only prepare myself for what happened next. The nose jumped up a kerb, straight into the armco which caused the rear to then pivot and strike the same bit of the armco. This jolt pushed the front end back into the road and the rear followed, and the car rotated across both lanes coming to a rest against the armco on the outside lane, facing the wrong way down the road. Engine had killed itself after the initial impact, so I put the hazards on, took a deep breath and exited the vehicle. I walked across to the hard shoulder and called the police and recovery, in that order. I ended up with police, fire brigade and ambulance there (hat trick!), although sadly they didn't bring any spare underwear with them. I should add at this point that I was perfectly fine, no injuries at all. The car, however, was not looking so good. I've been over and over and over this in my head so many times over the last few weeks, and I still come to the same conclusions every time. I'll list them here, whether you agree with them or not is a matter for debate I guess. 1. Biggest cause of the accident? Me. Too much right foot for the conditions, clearly. If I'm putting numbers on it, I'd say that this takes up 90%. Okay, it was a road I was familiar with and a car I'd driven previously, but obviously I underestimated the conditions. 2. The speed at the point of losing control cannot have been any more than 40mph absolute tops, and I suspect more like 30-35mph. I had a car in front of me, I was still in the middle of the turn left, and the impact point on the armco is so close to the start of it that it would've been impossible to have been going much quicker at all. Still, suprising how quicly things went south even at that speed, when I've caught bigger 'oops' moments on track at higher speeds. 3. The supermarket has a petrol station. Now, I'm not using the old diesel-on-the-road excuse, but I suspect that either myself or the road may have had some kind of fluid on it. It happened too quickly. 4. In conjunction with the above, I've now noticed that there's a surface change from concrete to tarmac at precisely the point that you would put the power down. With the above, and the damp road, and the fact I wasn't in my regular car, I can't help but wonder if I applied the power when one tyre was on the tarmac and one on the concrete. I'll never know though. Like I say, I take full responsibility for the results. I won't blame the car, and whilst I suspect the conditions and other points above were contributory factors, I was the one driving. The car is fixed now, although it did take 6 weeks, and the owner still talking to me so that's good. The worst thing to come out of it isn't the insurance rises or anything like that, but the fact that I've lost so much confidence in my ability. I won't lie to you, I will say that I was supremely confident of my driving abilities in the wet/damp before this: I prided myself on it. I may not have been that quick in the dry compared with others, but in the wet I was bloody good. I'd proven that over 12 years of road driving, numerous soaking wet trackdays and on multiple karting days too, and I'm generally considered to be 'the quick one' out of my friends when the heavens open. Now, I'm bloody terrified. Where before I'd take certain roads at a given speed in a sporty car, now I find myself crawling round them (I'm probably not, but it feels like it). I've still got all the sensory inputs as before the crash, but even in my own cars I'm just so completely nervous when the roads get wet, and I find myself unable to press on at all. Now, maybe it's just me being more sensible (was I too confident before?), or maybe I'm just a huge wimp now, but there's no doubt that it's very much changed my driving style. In the dry I'm as I was, it's only in the wet. I've been past that same bit of road in similar conditions in my own cars since, and there's not a hint of any trouble at all. It was probably a pure one-off, but it does bring home just how very quickly stuff can go south, regardless of how you view your own skills. I'd certainly still consider myself an experienced driver of fast cars, without trying to sound big-headed, but chuff me if there was nothing I could do when that back end started to come round. As always, please be careful out there folks, and hopefully this exceedingly long post may make others think twice and save an incident. And before anyone asks, no the tyres weren't mixed!

19s for looks, 18s for go. Also 18s will be cheaper to buy and (more importantly) be cheaper to buy tyres for.

Lols at whoever changed my sig!

Interesting, first time I've heard that. At what track/s and which TDO/s was that with, if you don't mind me asking?

Car trackdays are like bike trackdays, only with cars.

Got worse than that: On the way home I stopped to help a couple of coppers clear a fallen tree from the side of the road (same road, too!), so felt like an awesome citizen doing my civic duty to help others. I did actually put my hi-vis on that time as it was pitch black, so seemed the sensible thing to do.

On the way into work there was a rather large branch in the middle of the road on a country lane. Bloke in a van ahead of me carefully inched his way past it on one side, probably got a few nasty scratches down the panel for his troubles. I simply parked the truck across the road, chucked the hazards on and then got out of the cab and pulled the branch out of the way into a nearby ditch, thus making life easier for both myself and other road users. My point is not how wonderful I am at doing this, but more what the bloody hell was the bloke in front thinking of??!! It's surely obvious that it would be better just to move the obstacle rather than try to avoid it. *****.

Yes and no. Yes in terms of trying to do the right thing, but no because Zmanalex no longer trades and he wasn't a specialist in audio stuff anyway We should probably get that smiley removed.

Ah, bugger. PP linked to your credit card by any chance?

I did, when I bought my VXR220 back in '06.

Really, you're at the stage where you might as well strip out the stock gear and replace with aftermarket. At least that way it will suit your needs better.

That's what the Toyobaru does. It sounds sh*t.

Deffo the way to go

NO NO NO NO NO Just no. It's a sh*t idea. BMW don't pump sound in, it's a recorded sound based on what revs and gear the car is in. The BRZ86 and the 991 pump sound in, and it sounds false in the former and not needed in the latter.

Donuts ftmfw

I'd have claimed for a refund before the 45 days, regardless of what had been promised. Failing that, SCC now.