Jimbo

This happened in my pre-bimmer days driving a VW Beetle.

I was stopped on the freeway in traffic with my wife.
I hear some squealin' brakes.
I look up in my rear view mirror to see a huge trash truck barreling down on me and the Mrs.
The truck was so close I could even see the fear and fright in the truck drivers face as he was puttin' all his effort to jam on the brakes.

This truck wasn't going to stop on time.

I instantly put the car into gear, floored it and pulled to the right (w/o looking-no time, barely missing the car in front of me.

As I usually do, I had been checking my mirrors and looking side to side, so I figured I had a pretty good chance that there wasn't someone blocking my exit.

I looked back about a second later and see the trash truck stopped where I was just parked.

My daughter would have been an orphan.

browellm

This happened in my previous car, an SLK.

I was driving back from a gig I had been to in London at about 2am in the morning so the roads were (thankfully) pretty deserted. I had been driving on the motorway with cruise control on at about 95mph. It wasn't raining but it had been earlier, so the roads were fairly greasy.

I exited the motorway, and it's one of those exits on the M1 that has no roundabout - it just sweeps onto the adjoining A-road dual carriageway (50mph limit).

Stupidly I thought "hey, I'll leave my cruise control on. No need to back off.

About half way round the arc of the bend then back end of the car just broke away and I was in an uncontrolled skid. After doing a 360 (or maybe 2) the front of the car hit the left hand crash barrier at about 60-70mph and bounced off that, eventually coming to a complete stop in the middle of the road. Fortunately there was a layby about 200yds further up the road I was able to crawl in to.

I did about ?14,000 damage to the car, and I walked away unharmed but a bit shaky of course. I thank the stars there was only me and the crash barrier involved. If it had been earlier in the evening I could have caused carnage, but then probably I wouldn't have taken such a stupid risk either.

Iceman

In 1988 I owned an E23 and bought a Golf Diesel (new) for the daily use in my company. I owned the Golf for four days and drove in wet weather conditions (after rain).
I left the highway (Autobahn) and entered another road (federal highway). The speed limit was 70 Km/h and got reduced to 50 Km/h, then to 40 Km/h right before a 90 degree right turn where there were bushes on the right side of the road, so you were not able to see what's behind the turn. Therefore they had this HUGE 40 Km/h sign put up and above it a traffic light warning.
Driving in a 7series with ABS and that other technique this would have been an easy corner, even with 70 Km/h, but I somehow forgot I'm sitting in a Golf Diesel.
Right before the turn, when I noticed there is a traffic light, I was still making 70 Km/h. The light was red, there were cars waiting in line. On the opposite direction there were cars driving - facing the direction I was coming from.
I hit the brakes and the wheels stopped, the car was sliding straight ahead towards a traffic sign (keep right). So I had to make the decission to crash into the waiting cars and injure somebody who didn't expect an idiot like me coming around the corner too fast, or crash into the opposing traffic, what would have been even worse... Or just let go and pray.
So I took the middle, hit the sign, the car took off, was airborn for about 25 meters, crashed on the intersection, slid across it and came to a full stop on the other side of it.
I was very lucky no one got injured, since the traffic in the opposit direction just had to stop on a red light and for just the couple seconds I went airborn ALL lights were red.
I was NOT buckled up and had nothing! Didn't brake something, no concussion, nothing !!!
So I don't know how many guardian angels were on Duty, but definately a lot.
The car - offcourse - was a total write off, with just having 450Km's clocked.
Something I definately don't want to experience again!!!