The day before I started college I was driving home from a meeting at a library–faster than the speed limit–and a guy on the side of the road started out in front of me, turned back, hesitated, and then burst out in front of my car. I braked hard and swerved into the lane of the oncoming traffic. (Where there was an empty space.) He crashed into my passenger side door, spun around, fell down and lay in the street. I remember jumping out of my car to stop traffic from running over him. I don’t remember details of what… Read more »

I was very, very, very lucky yesterday… My IT company bought a new Van to store equipment in and once my boss got the paper work done, I was responsible for driving it back. I put on music and drove back contently then like a shameful idiot I ran a stop light distracted by music and crashed into someone else, I felt like my heart shattered because the car flipped as I crashed into it…the force of it so great it actually flipped . I was okay but more importantly the 2 people in that car were these 2 girls… Read more »

I don’t know if I’m doing this format right, but I need someone to talk to. 4 days ago my family and I were involved in an accident that killed a man. We just learned of his death today. We had been out with our children taking them to see Christmas lights in a nearby state. We were at an intersection behind another car, the car turned left on a green light so we followed behind them. Out of nowhere an SUV came down the road so fast, he barley clipped us (we are all physically ok), the front of… Read more »

I was at fault for what I thought had been a pretty minor car accident. Today I got a letter from my insurance saying the other driver had 8% whole body impairment and pain in her head and neck. I have struggled with chronic pain for the past few years and it has been a very difficult battle. The thought that I have now doomed somebody else to this is completely horrifying. I had never imaged her injuries would be this significant. She was also a single mother, an immigrant and an uber driver. She already has so much to… Read more »

Ten days ago I reversed into a young woman in the car park of the town in Brittany where I live.  It was a stupid, needless accident; I approached the ticket barrier awkwardly, and reversed to come at it at a better angle. I’m pretty sure I did look in my windscreen rear view mirror, but she was somewhat to my right, perhaps in my blind spot, and I didn’t see her. I could blame other things, the low winter light and patchy shade, the fact that she was hurrying and maybe not looking or whatever, but essentially if I… Read more »

I was just in an accident two days ago and the guilt is eating me alive. I came to a complete stop at a stop sign and looked to my left to try to turn right, saw what I thought was an empty road, and went. A car coming straight slammed into the front left of my car, ripping off my front bumper and scratching up their car pretty bad. No one was hurt, but their car was brand new, and no matter how many times I think over the incident I can’t for the life of me believe I… Read more »

It’s been almost a year since I was in a bad car accident that I survived but someone else was killed. I got done work and headed out to meet friends at their family cabin for my best friends birthday. I was so close, maybe less than 30 minutes from arriving and my next memory is waking up in a hospital. I had no real memory but I think I knew a deer was involved or maybe I just heard doctors and nurses talking about it so it imprinted. I had shards of glass embedded in my forehead and hand.… Read more »

My niece died by suicide a month ago. When we were told that she had made two suicide attempts within weeks, without any previous attempts, we were concerned that she needed in-patient psychiatric care. Her husband was looking for a family member to provide a place for her to stay to keep her out of the family home. It was agreed that anyone who took her into their home would immediately have her placed in an in-patient psychiatric unit. This did not take place. I feel guilt that I didn’t fly to her and personally commit her when the plan… Read more »

My post seems like it will be the odd man out, and I beleive my story will be ostracized. The morning of July 5th 2018, i took my boyfriend to work. We had our best friend chanel(a pomeranian/chihuahua mix) with us. A normal day. We dropped him off and drove around to do errands before returning home. I need everyone to know that I beleived she had gotten out of the car, but she hadn’t. I returned home at about 12:30 and began my daily chores…by 2:30pm i realized the mistake i had made and ran as fast as i… Read more »

At the age of 17 (38 years ago) I let my boyfriend drive my car. He had no license, we were smoking pot driving around – skipping school. At some point he crossed the line and hit an on coming car. My boyfriend died and the young man in the other card died two weeks later. I’ve never made a distinction between who was driving. I always have felt the responsibilities of both deaths and all the ensuing misery are on me – 100% on me. At the time my mother called me a murderer. I managed to carve a… Read more »

I found this website about a month ago, but decided to write today as today its been 38 years since I ran over a little boy. I was 17 and he was my next door neighbor, 6 years old at the time, and the little brother of my best friend. I was driving home from work and was 3 houses from my house when I stopped as a large group of kids was playing in the street. I was irritated, yelled at them to move, they moved, I took off fast, as I was mad at the kids for blocking… Read more »

I found this site hoping that I would find someone who messed up as badly as I have. In December, I fell asleep at the wheel with my 24-year old daughter in the car with me. I was fine except for being bruised up and a few knots on my head. However, the seat belt caused severe internal injuries to our daughter that required two surgeries and 14 days in the hospital. She is still suffering from the after effects. She had gotten engaged two months earlier, and the fall out and stress from the accident and her PTSD from… Read more »

Last month I was on my way to work. I was going a little fast and got pulled over. As I was pulling onto the shoulder, I hit a pedestrian. She was wearing black and walking on the wrong side of the road. I have accepted that this was no one’s fault but was a horrible accident, though I still wish I could undo it. I’m sure I always will.

This is the first time in nearly 19 years that I am sharing my story. It was the late 1990s, I was approximately 8 years old and my brother had just turned one. He needed a bottle warmed up and I wanted to do it myself therefore I didn’t alert my aunt. I proceeded to place his bottle in a cup of hot water and set it on a nearby table. I turned around for literally 3 seconds, but that was enough time for him to roll over to the table in his walker and pull the table down. In… Read more »

I am someone who did not kill someone else, yet I hurt them gravely in an accident. Last year I hit a pedestrian with my car – I was distracted and at fault. I learned from my insurance she is still recovering from some pretty major injuries, and is suffering severe emotional trauma. I feel absolutely responsible for the accident and want to talk to her to express my sorrow and apologize, and yet I also dread the possibility of this conversation. Would she yell at me, tell me how hard her suffering has been? Does she know how horrible… Read more »

I hit and killed a 16 year old in 2002. He pulled out in front of me while riding his bicycle. I remember the ER as if it were yesterday. I kept asking about the boy. When they finally told me that he passed away, I screamed as if he were my own kid. I went to counseling for two years. I was on anti-anxiety meds, struggled with PTSD, I blamed myself for killing a kid even though the state police determined that I was not speeding, and I know that I was not distracted. Doesn’t matter. I killed a… Read more »

My Name is Heather. I was involved in a car accident this early morning at 4am as I went to pick up my son from his work at UPS. While driving down a highway I hit and killed a women who walked out in front of the car in dark clothing on a dark street I did not see her at all until I felt and heard a thump and saw her body crash into my windshield. I screamed and stopped the car and got out and tried to call 911. The women was unconcious crumpled on the ground with… Read more »

17 days ago while driving along a familiar route, a man was pulled over on the shoulder of the road and standing on the outside of his vehicle. Somehow, I struck him and his car. I can’t remember the moments before the impact. His leg was severed in the accident, and he has also suffered injuries to two of his remaining 3 limbs. I’m suffering from not only physical injuries from the accident, but from emotional ones. Most days I feel like a monster that has destroyed someone’s life. Even when the feeling isn’t that intense, I suffer tremendous guilt… Read more »

This past summer my husband was coming home from work as always on his bike. I had texted him to hurry. He had bought me tickets to a concert I wanted to see and I wanted him to have dinner with the kids before we went out. I was dressed up and excited. Then I received a text – “There’s been an accident.” My first thought was that someone had hit him and taken his phone to tell me. But then he wrote more and told me he had hit a pedestrian. The pedestrian had ran across the crosswalk on… Read more »

I come to this site because I just finished reading an article in the 18 Sept. ’17 issue of the ‘New Yorker’ magazine, ‘Accidental Killers’ by Alice Gregory–this piece hit a nerve and pierced a heart–mine. Ten years ago I went through a red light signal because I believe I experienced a micro sleep. My only memory is driving along slowly, thinking this street is very dark, then suddenly I seem to come awake from traffic noise: I am in the middle of an intersection with cars and a motorbike whizzing in my field of vision, then braking, turning, just… Read more »

After becoming addicted to pills, my girlfriend and I quickly moved on to heroin. A few years ago, we decided to get clean after a friend of ours overdosed and died. About a week before we planned to come home to get help I fixed myself a shot and blacked out, which happened to me frequently on heroin. It’s a very jarring experience, as if my consciousness were a television that turned on and off whenever it pleased. It could be in the middle of a conversation or while standing at a bus stop. On that night the black out… Read more »

I read the story in the New Yorker and felt compelled to comment from a different perspective. In 1974, when I was 13, I was riding my bike home from a convenience store, frozen coke in hand, and turned off a sidewalk directly into the path of a car in a 40 mph speed zone. I smashed into the windshield and was throw over the car. By all accounts, I should have been killed, but survived with only cuts and scrapes. In the hospital, I was able to tell my parents it was all my fault and my father called… Read more »

2 a.m., July 2, 1978 – I was in my senior year of high school and driving my girlfriend/high school sweetheart home at after we had worked a double shift at a local restaurant. I stopped at a T-junction: if I had turned left, I would have followed a well-lit avenue all the way home. But I chose to turn right and take a winding, unlit, rural road to home. That bad choice changed everything. Halfway home, I grew more interested in talking to my sweetheart than paying attention to the road. I went off the road and hit a… Read more »

I did not know about this website or that there would be anyone like me out there. I know there are all kinds of accidents, but one does not stop to think that there are others out there that have experienced this same thing. I am truly not at the point where I can talk about this for any expended period of time nor can I think about it too much. If I do, I completely shut down and I cannot afford to do that. You see, I am the Superintendent of Schools for a rural school district in New… Read more »

April this year, I accidentally killed a lady in her early 40’s. Her name was Melissa. We were travelling in a 100km/ph speed zone, approaching a 60km/ph speed zone. Melissa and her partner were riding their motorbikes in front of me, I had been following them for around 20km at the time of the impact. We came around a bend approaching the 60km/ph speed zone, Melissa and her partner slowed down by easing off the accelerator, I hadn’t noticed the rate they had slowed down at when I looked down to check my speedo. Then it happened, I tapped the… Read more »

Almost 50 years ago my twin brother was accidentally shot and killed by my 15 year old cousin. It tore the fabric of my family. Since my family cut all contact with my cousin’s family I never knew what became of him but then, 40 years after the incident, I received an emotionally unbalanced letter from him asking me to forgive him. At the time, I still couldn’t face him. I wrote him forgiving him but an irrational fear of meeting him still nagged at me. I have since heard that he was a drug addict and homeless. Now my… Read more »

This is my story. I was headed to New Holland to take my two children to their babysitter so I could go to work. I drive past the Dakota Christian school handfuls of times a week. That day a truck pulled out in front of me. Inside was the 14 year old driver, his 11 year old sister, and 10 year old Andrew. No one in the truck was wearing seatbelts and I T-Boned them at 65mph. I had my seatbelt on and my children were in car seats. We walked away with minor injuries. All three children in the… Read more »