Tag Archives: driving

674. 19 Amusing Insurance Claims / Car Crash Vocabulary

Listen to some funny extracts from genuine insurance claims and learn some vocabulary to describe car crashes and driving (badly).


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Introduction Transcript / Episode Notes

Hello LEPsters, how are you today? The weather here is grey, overcast. The conditions are perfect for recording and listening to an episode of Luke’s English Podcast, so here we go.

In this episode I’m going to read through some insurance claims, which contain some very funny descriptions of people attempting to explain how they got into accidents while driving. I think it should be pretty amusing and as usual there’s lots of English to learn from it.

So we’re talking about driving and having accidents, collisions or crashes in a car. Have you ever been in a car crash? What happened? Did you have to do any insurance paperwork afterwards? Did you have to describe what happened in your crash?

If you have an accident while driving in the UK the insurance company sends you a claim form which you fill in, and often there’s a big space on the back that says “Give, in your own words, a description of how you think the accident occurred.”

So this is where people give their account of the accident.

And they always try to make it sound like it wasn’t their fault or they weren’t breaking any speed limits.

“I was driving down the road at 28mph…”

These are genuine claim form extracts from real people’s insurance claims.

I have to say that I got inspired to do this episode by Jasper Carrot, a comedian from the 70s, 80s and 90s in the UK.

Jasper Carrot (who used to live down the road from me, growing up) used to do a routine about funny insurance claims. He would basically read out the insurance claims on stage and bring them to life, make comments about them and stuff. He said all the claims were all true and I’d always been interested in finding some of those claim forms online, and after doing some searches I’ve managed to find loads of those real insurance claims so I’ve selected some and we’re going to go through them one by one. Some of these are the same ones that Jasper Carrot used to read out in his comedy shows.

The cool thing about this for learning English is not just that these are really funny and stupid descriptions, it’s that they include moments when the language becomes a bit ambiguous and can mean several things at the same time (like a joke) and also there are descriptions of movements and accidents that contain some nice bits of English.

And we’re going to go through all the vocab that comes up as we go along, including a vocab review at the end.

So if you don’t find these particularly funny, you can at least learn some English from it all.

And we’re talking about vocabulary for movements, accidents, collisions and driving, verb tenses for storytelling and all that kind of thing.

Just think about that for a second. How do you describe moments when accidents happen? They’re often quite difficult to describe.

Have you ever had an accident? Can you try to describe exactly what happened in English?

I was in a car accident once. Let me describe it to you.

I did end up with whiplash and I remember making an insurance claim for it, which I never applied for eventually, because I think I only missed about 2 shifts working at the pub and the whole thing didn’t seem worth it.

Anyway, what about these claims? Let’s go.

See if you can notice what is funny or strange about these claims, and also what is happening linguistically which makes it funny. It’s often due to slightly bad writing that these things end up sounding like something else.

Insurance Claims

Sources https://ackadia.com/humour/top-100-funny-motor-insurance-claims/

  1. “Going to work at 7am this morning I drove out of my drive straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early.”
  2. “The accident happened because I had one eye on the lorry in front, one eye on the pedestrian and the other eye on the car behind.”
  3. “I didn’t think the speed limit applied after midnight”
  4. “The car in front hit the pedestrian but he got up so I hit him again”
  5. “I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.”
  6. “I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way”
  7. “The pedestrian ran for the pavement, but I got him.”
  8. “In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”
  9. “Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.”
  10. “I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.”
  11. “The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.”
  12. “I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.”
  13. “As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before.”
  14. “To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck a pedestrian.”
  15. “I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the bonnet of my car.”
  16. “No one was to blame for the accident but it would never have happened if the other driver had been alert.”
  17. “I bumped into a lamp-post which was obscured by human beings.”
  18. “The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.”
  19. “A house hit my car.”
    (A house was being moved by a large truck. My friend had his car parked on the side of the road correctly. The house began to tilt off the truck and eventually fell off the truck, landing on my friend’s car. He eventually had the insurance paid, after lengthy explanation and the moving company confirming the story.) (Ben Keirnan)

Now let’s go through them one by one and break them down

Things to consider

  • What’s funny? (in some cases it’s obvious, but sometimes more subtle)
  • In the case of ambiguously or badly worded sentences:
    • What is the writer trying to say?
    • What does the writer seem to say?
    • How could it be rewritten?
  1. “Going to work at 7am this morning I drove out of my drive straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early.”
    Fairly clear. It’s funny because he blames the bus for being early, as if he doesn’t look, just judges traffic by the bus schedule.

2. “The accident happened because I had one eye on the lorry in front, one eye on the pedestrian and the other eye on the car behind.”
How many eyes do you have?

3. “I didn’t think the speed limit applied after midnight”
Just dumb.

4. “The car in front hit the pedestrian but he got up so I hit him again”
Sounds like it was intentional. He hit him again because he got up.
“So I couldn’t avoid hitting him” “He got up and I couldn’t avoid him”

5. “I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.”
Again, it sounds like it was intentional and that he did it because of his mother in law. I think it should be “I lost track of where I was going when I glanced at my mother in law and then went over the embankment”. Headed sounds like he chose to do it, maybe.

6. “I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way”
Technically the truck couldn’t have been coming the other way because it was stationary.
The whole “coming the other way” thing should be dropped.

7. “The pedestrian ran for the pavement, but I got him.”
Haha. This sounds like he’s glad or that he intended to do it. Bad choice of words.
He ran for the pavement but I still couldn’t avoid hitting him.

8. “In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”
Sounds like the fly was on the telephone pole.
I was trying to kill a fly that was in my car and I hit a telephone pole.

9. “Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.”
I accidentally drove into the wrong drive and hit a tree I didn’t expect to be there.

10. “I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.”
Self explanatory really.

11. “The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.”
Again, it sounds like he did it on purpose.
The guy was driving very erratically and I had already had to swerve a few times to avoid him before I eventually hit him.

12. “I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.”
I was a very experienced driver who had never had an accident until one day I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.

13. “As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before.”
Self explanatory? I didn’t expect to see a new stop sign in a spot where there had previously been none.

14. “To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck a pedestrian.”
I accidentally struck a pedestrian while I was attempting to avoid hitting another car.

15. “I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the bonnet of my car.”
No comment.

16. “No one was to blame for the accident but it would never have happened if the other driver had been alert.”
Contradiction in terms and sounds very petty and vindictive.

17. “I bumped into a lamp-post which was obscured by human beings.”
Sounds like The Day Today
Sounds like he might have hit some people.
It’s just weird to call them human beings, why not people?

18. “The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.”
Haha.

19. “A house hit my car.”
Actually true (as we heard before)

Vocabulary

  • The bumper – the front of the back or car – the part which might bump against another car when you’re parking (badly)
  • The bonnet (USA – the hood) – the part at the front which covers the engine
  • The boot (USA – the trunk) the part at the back where you put your luggage
  • To drive straight into something – “I drove straight into a bus”
  • A lorry = a big truck for transporting goods. “I drove out of my house and crashed into a lorry”
  • To have one eye on this and the other eye on that – “I had one eye on the lorry and the other eye on a pedestrian”
  • A pedestrian = someone walking on the pavement
  • To pull away / pull off = drive away from a stationary position
  • To pull over / pull up = stop at the side of the road in a car
  • To glance something = 1. look at something quickly “I glanced at my mother in law” 2. hit slightly – “The bullet glanced his helmet and didn’t harm him”
  • To head = go in that direction – head for, head to, head off, head over – “I glanced at my mother in law and headed over the embankment”
  • To collide with / a collision = crash – “I collided with a stationary lorry.” “There was a huge collision today on the M6 outside Manchester”
  • To crash into / a crash = collide – “I crashed into my own house.” “During the escape I collided with a police truck and had to murder them all before escaping on a motorbike while I threw grenades at an army van and stole an ambulance from a crime scene. That’s right, I was playing Grand Theft Auto 5.”
  • To drive into something = could mean crash, or could mean enter somewhere in your car. “I drove into the vicarage. I drove into the vicar.”
  • To swerve = turn suddenly, maybe to avoid something – “I had to swerve three times to avoid Tom Cruise, until I finally got him.”
  • To do it on purpose = to do something intentionally “I hit the pedestrian three times but not on purpose.”
  • To do it by accident = do something unintentionally “I drove into the bank, unlocked the safe, took all the money, shot 3 cops and drove off, but I did it by accident.”
  • To fall asleep at the wheel = to fall asleep while driving – “Be careful not to fall asleep at the wheel. Take regular breaks. Tiredness kills.”
  • To bump into something / someone = to meet someone by chance, to collide with something but in a small way = “I bumped into Tony the other day, he says hello.” “I bumped into a Rover in the car park. The owner was not happy. He had a Rover.”
  • Erratic / erratically = moving or behaving in an irregular or unpredictable way

Hotel California Chords

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/eagles/hotel-california-chords-46190

Have you ever had a car crash? What happened?

139. Hard Driving / Car Vocabulary

One Man. One Car. One Destination. Lots of vocabulary.

Small Donate ButtonRight-Click here to download this episode.
In this episode you join me in a BMW Mini as I attempt to drive across Paris, through some of Europe’s busiest streets, on a very hot July afternoon. My mission is to deliver the car to a car-park while avoiding angry Parisian drivers, pedestrians with prams, and busses full of Japanese tourists. The ultimate goal – a glass of cold beer on the terrace of a cafe, and to save the world through another episode of Luke’s English Podcast, of course.

Do I manage to complete my mission? And what driving-related vocabulary can you learn during this episode?

Listen, and you will find out…

Vocabulary
Here are extracts of the transcript for this episode that contain all the driving-related vocabulary.

  1. Hard Driving – driving vocabulary

 

[5:42]

The car is on. I’ve got my hand on the handbrake on my right. I’m in the first gear. And I’m going to get moving, so I just lift the handbrake up. I’ve got the clutch. My left foot is on the clutch. I’ve put myself on the first gear. Handbrake is down.

[6:00]

 

[16:05]

So, [the] vocab is, what I’m holding, what I’ve got in front of me, the wheel. The thing that I’m turning in order to control the direction of the car, that’s the steering wheel, folks. The steering wheel. Turning the steering wheel to go left and right.

[16:27]

 

[16:45]

The gear stick to control the gears.

[16:51]

 

[17:32]

Gear stick. First gear, second gear, third gear, fourth gear, fifth gear, sixth gear sometimes and reverse gear, of course. Handbrake, I’ve already mentioned that. That’s the way you can sort of… how you stop the car when you’re on a hill, or you park, you pull the handbrake up. Sometimes, if you’re in a Hollywood movie and you need to like turn the car around very quickly, you might pull the handbrake and do the handbrake turn. It’s very dramatic and exciting. But I’m not going to be doing it today, folks, no! I’m going to try drive safely.

[18:08]

 

[19:35]

So, the pedals on the floor to…

[19:37]

 

[20:40]

So, the pedals on floor, the one on the furthest right is the accelerator pedal or the throttle, which is the accelerator.

The accelerator pedal, the brake pedal on the middle and the clutch on the left. OK. I’ve got some switches behind the steering wheel. You can hear the indicator switch, which sounds like this: “Indicator sound” Yeah. This is the indicators, they indicate left and right. And I’ve also got things like headlights, and stuff like that. I’ve got the speedometer in front of me, I’ve got a fuel gauge, rev counter which tells me how I’m revving the engine.

[21:40]

 

[24:07]

We also have the glove compartment on the right in front of the passenger seat, which never contains gloves. They call it the glove compartment, you know, it’s like a little box that little storage cupboard thing in front of the passenger seat. I don’t know why they… I know why they call it the glove compartment. It’s because traditionally that’s where you keep gloves. I’ve never ever seen a pair of glove in the glove compartment. Usually, it’s just like an old map or some boiled sweets or something like that. Never, never any gloves in the glove compartment.

[24:50]

 

[25:16]

There’s the horn, which makes the car go “Beep beep beep” this is the horn. The seatbelt, which can obviously save your life if you have a crash. Hopefully, that’ll never happen. You also have mirrors, don’t you? Mirrors, what you can, which allow you to see behind you. You’ve got the wing mirrors on the left and the right. And then you have the rear view mirror.

[25:41]

 

[37:02]

So, the windows, the window in front of me, we call it the windscreen, in front of me, it’s the big window at the front of the car. The windscreen. In America, they call it the windshield, but we call it the windscreen. Then the other one, it’s just this the window in the back window. It’s just pragmatic. The front part of the car that you open if you want to look at the engine, it’s called the bonnet. But in America, they call it the, what do they call it, the hood, hood, but we call it the bonnet. The front of the car is the bumper. That’s the part which is used to sort of bump other cars.

[37:43]

 

[53:46]

Summary

 

I’m just going to run through the vocab of the car that I attempted to teach you during the journey just as a summary.

  1. You got in the car. You’ve got the steering wheel, which you use to turn left or right or to steer the car. You have accelerator pedal, the brake pedal and the clutch pedal. You use the clutch to change the gear. And also you have a stick on the right if you’re in Europe and that’s the gear stick.

You have the seat-belt to keep you safe. If you have a crash, then the airbag will come out and protect you so that you don’t get badly injured in the event of an accident. You have mirrors, the rear view mirror in the middle, the wing mirrors on the left and right. You have the indicator to show which direction you’re going to turn, left or right. Tick, tick, tick, tick, like that. The indicator. You’ve also got things like the windscreen wipers, which are those things that clean the water of your windows or the dead insects after a long journey, you use the windscreen wipers to wipe them off. You also have like jets of water which spray onto the windscreen. And if you angle the jets correctly, you can spray pedestrians as you drive past them, which is quite good fun, isn’t it?

 

You’ve got the… the back window with a windscreen wiper on it, you’ve got the brake lights, you have bumper at the back, bumper at the front. You’ve got the boot of the car or in Ameri… that’s the back, that’s the storage area at the back of the car. We call it the boot. In American English, they call it the trunk. The front of the car, you’ve got the bonnet, which covers the engine. And in America, they call that the, what do they call it, the hood. That’s right. You’ve got also the petrol cap, which you remove in order to fill a car up with fuel.

 

Let’s see, what else? So, the number plate on the back and the number plate on the front, they have the registration number of the car. Also the wheels, of course, they’re very important. If you want to actually travel anywhere. You got the wheels… the wheels have, what are do they called it?, alloy covers, often if you’ve got like you know very nice cool car, you might have alloys on the wheels, which look cool. Then you’ve got the rubber bits that go around and they’re filled with air. Those are called tyres [tires in US English], of course. The tyres that go around the wheel. Just the same as a bicycle, in fact. Headlights on the front help to illuminate the road as you’re driving.

[57:23]

 

[57:27]

There are some verbs we associate with driving, as I mentioned before you. You accelerate. You brake, brake means to stop [or slow down]. You turn left, you turn right, you steer the car. You reverse, I mean, you go backwards. Mirror signal manoeuvre. Mirror, obviously, check the mirror before you move. Signal, that’s to indicate which direction you’re going to go. And manoeuvre, that means to turn or to make some sort of specific movement in the car. A manoeuvre. A manoeuvre might be, for example, a 3-point turn or a U turn or a… if you reverse into a parking space, to parallel park, which is one of the most difficult things that you can do when you’re driving is parallel park. When you’re learning to drive, that’s very difficult. If you have a space in the road and you have to try and park the car in that space. So, that’s nicely positioned, close to the curb, without too much space between the car and the curb and you don’t actually touch either the car in front or the car behind. That’s… if you can master that art, then you should be able to pass your driving test, how to parallel park.

[58:36]

 

Other vocab:

  • traffic
  • traffic lights
  • zebra crossing
  • satnav
  • petrol

A listener has written a finished transcript of this episode. Click here to read it. Be aware that it hasn’t been fully corrected yet, but is about 90% accurate.