This one was sent my a lovely member of our group, I hope you like it :)
After failing my A-levels in the late 90s, I took a job as a courier on my motorbike. Then after selling it, they gave me a lovely little Renault van to drive.
Being only 20 at the time I didn’t have much respect for anything really, least of all the van I was given, even though I was given it to use as my own vehicle 24x7.
On the way to a delivery one day I was struggling. With no GPS to guide me, I saw a man on the pavement so I thought I’d pull up partially onto the pavement to ask for directions. I leaned over to wind the passenger window down, politely asked, and got a good response.
I was a in a bit of a rush and as I needed to turn around, I simply reversed back down the left side of the road with the two left wheels straddling the pavement.
Half of my attention was on the left mirror to make sure there were no pedestrians and the other half on the right on checking for cars.
I couldn’t help but notice though that the lovely man who helped me was waving, so as I reached maximum speed in reverse I raised my fingers from the wheel to wave back.
And just as I did that was an almighty bang and the van stopped dead.
My head smashed into the headrest and miraculously the back of the seat didn’t break from the inertia.
From 30ish to 0 in an instant.
A weird feeling that I’d never felt before and hope to never feel again, I sat there dazed and totally confused.
I was carefully looking in both mirrors and there was nothing there, I was 100% sure. And why was the man waving at me?
None of this made any sense.
As I got out, nothing would have surprised me.
Was it aliens?
Was it a huge giant that stopped the van like that?
No, it was a concrete lamp post, which looked like it was being eaten by the back of the van which was folded around it.
Amazingly the van still worked, so I gently drove it back to work and told the manager that I’d reversed into something.
Angry and confused he failed to understand how reversing into something could cause that much damage. It was so bad that the doors and the front of the van only opened with a good kick.
I don’t really remember what exactly happened then, it’s all a bit of a blur, but I do know that they gave me another identical van which.. well broke itself in a similar way.
