Little Luck and Common Sense, Averted a Disaster

[shailinder]

Today a very strange thing had happened with me. I was driving on Gurgaon expressway and upon seeing a speeding bus in front, wanted to down shift gear to overtake. But to my utter surprise I could not lift and press the clutch?

REASON !

My shoelace got tangled with clutch lever and I was helpless for a moment . I was driving at 80+ and did not know what to do. After a second or two I gathered my senses back and hit the hazard light on. So that traffic coming behind could sense that there is something wrong. At the same time, I started decreasing speed and move towards left side from the extreme right (As I wanted to overtake).

I tried to press the clutch lever using my heel and with little pushing and pulling I succeeded and stop my car immediately on the left side of expressway. After that I untangled my shoelace and as a best practice (started from today), inserted the lace inside the space between shoe and ankle.

I thanked my stars as with little luck and common sense I could avert a disaster.

I am sure we always encounter certain things on a daily basis. Please share yours and how you averted that movement. I am confident, some best practices adopted by us would save someone somewhere.

 

[truecitylover]

Man, that seems your sheer luck and use of sense. Happy that nothing happened. Hope a lesson was learnt today by heart in mouth experience.

Drive safe!

 

[amiti]

Good, you showed your presence of mind and averted an accident. More over you are safe and nothing happened.

 

[TSIVipul]

That's quite a different kind of incident faced by you,but since I always wear shoes,so I too will take care from next time.
Anyways,KUDOS to you for being calm and then acting according to the demand of the situation instead of being panicked and take some senseless action.

A similar incident happened with my uncle too..
He was new at driving and instead of pressing brakes for stopping the car,he pressed both clutch and accelerator and tailgated a moving bus on a speed breaker.What was good that he was not driving fast and hasn't got any injury.

 

[shailinder]

Man, that seems your sheer luck and use of sense. Happy that nothing happened. Hope a lesson was learnt today by heart in mouth experience.

Drive safe!

Good, you showed your presence of mind and averted an accident. More over you are safe and nothing happened.

Thanks man. You are right a lesson learnt. But thankfully not the hard way.

That's quite a different kind of incident faced by you,but since I always wear shoes,so I too will take care from next time.
Anyways,KUDOS to you for being calm and then acting according to the demand of the situation instead of being panicked and take some senseless action.

A similar incident happened with my uncle too..
He was new at driving and instead of pressing brakes for stopping the car,he pressed both clutch and accelerator and tailgated a moving bus on a speed breaker.What was good that he was not driving fast and hasn't got any injury.

Thanks Vipul. Incident happened to your uncle is quite common for new learners as they tend to do something like this often.

When I learnt driving, I started practicing skipping gears (Generally I skip 4th gear and shift to 5th straight after 3rd.) But at that time I shifted from 2nd to reverse instead of 4th . Again luck or my common sense saved gear box of my car as I did not release clutch after shifting and sense that lever traveled a lot of distance then it should have moreover, reverse hooter also started blowing. So a mixture of common sense and technology saved me. Since then I do not skip 3rd (2nd to 4th).

 

[TSIVipul]

When I learnt driving, I started practicing skipping gears (Generally I skip 4th gear and shift to 5th straight after 3rd.) But at that time I shifted from 2nd to reverse instead of 4th . Again luck or my common sense saved gear box of my car as I did not release clutch after shifting and sense that lever traveled a lot of distance then it should have moreover, reverse hooter also started blowing. So a mixture of common sense and technology saved me. Since then I do not skip 3rd (2nd to 4th).

Well,I feel this a really bad practice of skipping gears,our chauffeur taught me how to drive when I was just 14(he is serving my father for more than 12 years)so till the end of my 10th class,I was quite expert at the steering and had started making long commutes too,then came the farewell of the 10th class and I took with me the car to school.
After the party came the roaming time and I,my two friends and three girls(GFs)left for roaming around the city.We were trapped behind a loaded truck on the ascending part of a flyover in a jam and I made a foolishness of taking my car just 1-2 inches away from the truck(I was dangerously close to the truck)and when came the moving time,the truck driver pressed the clutch and the truck came back. It hit my car,broken my front grille and a dent on my hood. Rest everything was okay. Simply accepted my fault and went home to get scolded.