Luck Factor

The dictionary meaning of Luck is "An unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that leads to a favourable outcome" , so is there something called as Bad luck ?

Well, the last few weeks my luck with driving the car is going to the dogs. Every single time I take the car out, I have a minor accident. The number of accidents I have had since Oct 08 , makes up for 5 years of driving with no accidents at all.

The images of the first ever accident I had is still vivid, something I'll never forget. We were 3 or 4 girls who decided to go watch a movie at a theater by the scenic highway called ' East Coast Road '.
Movie was average ( the lead lady dies at the end in an accident ). Anyway, it was just before dusk and in India we don't have automatic headlights, so I didn't turn the lights on either. Funny enough, the road was dark and didn't have street lights either resulting in my extreme irritation. Suddenly, I hear a loud thud and I see a crack on the windshield. Before I knew, 3 people down. All fishermen whose wives came from no where crying for their husbands. The lady doctor confirmed nothing happened and first aid was given. Yet, the crowd was increasing bit by bit.

4 young women - first experience of its kind - completely shaken up. Crowd now hit 80+ people. I called upon my best friends David and Matthew who were jazzily dressed to go for a party. It was now canceled thanks to me. We took them to a hospital and doctors double triple confirmed that there is not even a fracture or for that matter even a bruise. Yet, the crowd increased just to scare us young women who had 3-4 guys to support.

Finally, with some money we managed to go home. David's amazing lawyer dad helped me out of this whole mess. I still remember when we left for home, there must have been atleast 200 odd people waiting to thrash the guys. How we came home unhurt from those unruly fisher folk still a big question.

That day, I made my mind not to drive fast and I don't.That was my first and last accident until October 08.

Although not proud of it, I have driven at 115 Mph on I90W to Dakota for over an hour, didn't get caught by cops nor met with any mishap of any kind. Things were fine. But I knew I was taking my luck too far.

I landed home in Oct 08 and have taken the car out about 10 times and everytime I have had a accident. Most of them are minor , yet an accident. I know the dimensions of the car better than the back of my hand, yet I made mistakes while parking, hit the roof on low tree bark once and another time I hit the pavement. Another time, I signaled towards the right but missed to look over my shoulder and hit a guy. I can go on.

Does it mean, that last 5 yrs when nothing bad happened, I was having good luck and now bad luck ? I have never lost my confidence in anything but more than 5 consecutive minor accidents and today major , I can't help it.

My friend Jared in US , had a similar experience. He had never once even had a scratch on his car or any tickets from cop until one day he decides to take my roommates roommates to Chicago as it was still raining in GRB and the weather in Chicago was predicted to be sunny. One of the girls requests for a tiny drive for a couple of exits and within no time, the car twisted and toppled and damaged to a large extent but repairable. All escaped unhurt though. That was the beginning of car-bad luck for Jared. After that , he got so many tickets until his licence got suspended. Finally, he met with a major accident that damaged his car of 4 years completely and was taken to junk yard.

For 4 long years, he never had a ticket or a scratch and the same person had his licence revoked and car sent to junkyard all within a span of 3-4 mnths. What the hell do you call this ?

I am pretty much going through the same phase now, I have been careful to never even have a scratch on my car after the first one, and now suddenly within a span of 3-4 mnths so many.

Its scary, is it bad luck or plain carelessness ? If its carelessness, what changed ? If its bad luck - is there a charm that can get me through this quickly?