Just had my first car accident :(

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You don't like tailgaters...let me guess you tapped the brakes.

A few months after I first started driving regularly (I got my license at 16 but didn't start driving much until 18 ), I totalled my new car. Emotionally it was awful, so I get where you're coming from. I was trying to turn left out of a parking lot onto a 4-lane road with a center turn lane. Traffic was really bad and there was a turn in the road preventing me from seeing oncoming traffic since there was a car blocking my view as well. The traffic in the lane closest to me stopped and the driver turned, looked, and signalled that it was okay for me to pull out, and the cars behind me were honking at me to go, and I knew I shouldn't have gone but I panicked and pulled out juuuust enough to see around the car to verify no one was coming... as you can guess, there was indeed someone coming! Thankfully they weren't injured and I only had a bruised bone, but the whole thing was awful. On top of that, my phone had died, so I had to use the police officer's phone to call my mom. She didn't answer, my sister didn't answer, and I didn't want to call my dad because I knew he'd be furious and was busy at work, so the cop had to drive me home. He was really friendly and sympathetic, and I held it together enough to give them all the info they needed, but as soon as I got home and saw my mom I started sobbing haha. I felt horrible for the next few days because of the mixture of frustration with myself, guilt over wrecking my car (though the insurance refunded the full value of it), and embarrassment. I already hated driving before the accident, and afterwards I was TERRIFIED to drive... actually, I've only driven like once since then, and that was 2 and a half years ago. But I'm relearning this summer and I'm no longer scared to try driving again. Basically I just had to give it time for the really bad feelings to fade. I was positive that day that I'd never get over it, but I have. All of the feelings of guilt/embarrassment went away after a few months, but I'd imagine it'd take much much much less time for a minor accident like yours, everyone has those!

To the OP: Yeah I remember my first car accident. It was in a parking lot, no indication for me to stop, no common sense to say "hey uh, that's on-coming traffic." Totaled my car by t-boning a lamborghini. You're far from stupid, even NT people (if some of my friends are any indication) make incredibly "stupid" mistakes that cost them a car from time to time. I've been in a few other accidents (one was much more life threatening, but no others were directly my fault, though just last week I almost caused a severe accident that would have been my fault). Anxiety for people prone to it I would imagine is always going to happen after some kind of car accident, but I feel for you in that it's so bad it's causing panic attack. Just know you aren't stupid, and mistakes exactly like these happen to NTs too.

And to auntblabby - this is definitely true for me too! I'm okay if I know the roads extremely well, but heaven help us if it's a new area. Before I was diagnosed, a few years ago me and some friends went to New York City over new years since one my friends got us a hotel room in time square for free (yeah, aspergers + NYC + new years = my first panic attack). I drove us out of DC with no problems (it was too early for traffic), so I figured, "I'll drive us through new york, why not?" During rush hour... the absolute worst driving experience of my life (it topped even the car accidents, which I fortunately avoided in NYC). It took like 45 minutes of me uncontrollably shaking while driving at the same time before we could finally find a place to park. Never again...

I don't drive but I've walked into a few lamp-posts as a pedestrian instead. Much to the amusement of the nearby bus queue! It was funny. I didn't even take evasive manoeuvres because I didn't see it. It was a head on collision I am afraid.

I am a little clumsy

I don't mind.

I'm not a confident driver and prefer to go by walking, bus or (finances permitting) train much of the time. I am getting more comfortable with it than I used to be as time goes on but will never feel like a natural driver. I recently had to drive across Norwich to get to a training course three days one week and I took the main dual-carriageway road as I hate the ring road.

Still, I haven't been in an accident yet, so I can't be all that bad

LOL yes, I have done that sort of thing occasionally It seems to me that all of us ( or those who might be "us" ) can be a bit clumsy; for me at least it seems to be 50% neurological and 50% daydreaming with our clever brains always making us think about stuff. I once heard being "absent minded" described as really being "present minded, elsewhere"

I've always had very poor spatial awareness, even when walking, but since getting a mini cooper my driving is much better. It helps being able to see all the boundaries of the car from the driver's seat. Unfortunately, I'm getting sloppy now I'm more confident and scratched up my wheels on the pavement while parking yesterday.

This... not to demean people who have had fender bender type accidents, but Lupa is right. Imo I've been in one accident. I was driving on super slick ice at around 35 mph (56 kph) at 5:00 am. I was in a rear wheel drive stick shift tiny pick up truck... like <half ton size and I saw these joggers running in the middle of the freaking road. I applied my brakes and surprisingly didn't slide very much. Then I swear I just touched the accelerator... I mean just a light touch to get going again and my truck totally lost it. I did this 180 turn whilst sliding off the road right into a ditch. Driver side door hit the bank full force and my seat belt did nothing to mitigate the impact. My truck ended up on it's side with me on the lower side. I hit the door fairly hard and ended up getting the wind knocked out of me. My could feel this throbbing pain internally (no external pain or bruising at all) right in my chest. It hurt quite a lot for around five hours after that, but it completely stopped in the end. I'm just glad I didn't hit my head.

I suppose it was my fault... but I'm still slightly pissed at those idiot joggers.

Other than that... I've had scary moments, but no collisions. No fender benders either, driving on narrow farm roads have really taught me where the edges of my car are so I can actually drive very close to cars, trees, buildings etc without hitting them.