These Are Your Messiest In-Car Food Disasters

Last week, we asked you to tell us all about the weird and wild food messes you've endured inside your vehicle; the biggest consensus we gathered from your answers is to double-bag your dairy products and make sure you remove all of your groceries as soon as you get home. There were also lots of vomit stories, so those with a weak stomach might want to look elsewhere.

Another common thread was the messes caused by children and drunken passengers. If you ever have either of those in your car, please check your back seats and cupholders every now and then so you don't end up on this list. These are your worst in-car food-related disasters. May the squeamish proceed with caution.

I don't know if this is exactly food related and I have already said this before. But kids throwing up all over themselves and their car seats and food being lodged in car seats. The best/worst part is kids throwing up is just like an "Ehh, oh well" event for them. My daughter used to get car sick a lot and there were times we would pull up at school and she would just throw up on the street and then be like, "can we go into school now?"

As far as food in car seats, I once found maggots in my kids car seat from who knows what that was in there. That was not the most fun time I have had cleaning my car.

Submitted by: Big Block I-4

Finding a chocolate milk from a happy meal that had rolled under the seat over a month previously. It had finally burst and was slowly spraying congealed rancid chocolate cheese all over the bottom of my seat.

Submitted By: Segador

Sort of food related....in high school, I went fishing on a Sunday but did not take the leftover frozen squid out of my trunk. Typical Florida spring, it was cool overnight and in the morning so no heat to thaw and "ripen" the squid in the trunk. But after a quick warmup in the 80's and sitting in a school parking lot for hours, I opened the trunk and the entire school parking lot was nearly gagging and dry-heaving from the smell. It took weeks to get the smell out as the now-rancid squid juice had leaked through the trunk liner into the innards of the rear of the car including the rear seat cushion. 30 years ago and I remember it like yesterday.

Submitted by: Whammer

This was a case of instant Karma. I stopped at a gas station in the downtown area late at night right by the freeway entrance. I fill up, get some snacks, and the largest size (at that time 44oz) Mtn Dew from the soda machine. I get back in my car and start driving up the on ramp when I relaized, Mtn Dew tastes like shit, and I hate it, and I don't know why I even got it so, screw it, Im gonna throw it out the window (hey, I'm not out in nature, this is industrial area city, who's gonna care or so I justified it to myself).

So, I just toss this whole massive drink out my window, except... I hadn't rolled the window down.

I just threw 44oz of radioactive green stickiness at my window. It exploded against the glass and shot back like a wave across my and my entire car.

This was a 1977 Honda Accord hatchback with the most plastic of vinyl seats. I was starting about a 30 minute drive back home and I just got on a freeway where stopping is rather sketchy. I got to do that drive while my ass marinated in the dew and my mind on lifes little choices

Submitted by: WayDude

I got a bottle of whiskey at trader joe's, and I put it in the backseat (in a bag, with the seatbelt on it so it wouldn't move). Everything was fine until I pulled over the bump in the alley behind my house, when the bottle slipped out of the seatbelt, fell out of the bag, and fell directly onto the seat rail slider of the passenger seat where it promptly split the bottom of the bottle off and spilled the entire contents into the carpet.

I tried to shopvac, towel, and clean as much as I could, but it stunk. If BMW interiors weren't so needlessly difficult to take apart, I would've pulled the carpet out to clean under it. The smell eventually went away, though I drove extremely carefully for quite a while after because the car reeked of whiskey and there was no way to believably explain why if I got pulled over.

Submitted by: BigRed91

Pretty hot Summer in the UK. Got back in my car after work and it stank to high heaven. Literally eye watering.

Inexplicably, I mentally chalked it down to "I dunno, therefore, doesn't exist" and started driving home. I made it about 3 minutes down the road before I was retching and had to pull over.

Turns out, my wife had filleted a whole salmon and left the carcass in a plastic bag in the boot, where it had been rotting and slow cooking all day.

Ironically, she left it in my car by mistake because we were doing a run to the local landfill as she didn't want to stink out the trash can in the house with it.

She missed it when we were emptying the car of the other garbage, so it lived in my car for a few days until it got hot enough to ruin my commute.

Submitted by: Dabamash

My cousin Bill went to pick-up Chinese food for eight people in my aunt's Pontiac Parisian, when he got cutoff by a delivery truck.

Cousin hits brakes and the container holding a large order of Tangerine Chicken went flying and spilled in the passenger footwell. the sugary, syrupy sauce going everywhere and soaking into the carpet.

Despite the best efforts of my cousin and the contents of my aunt's vast inventory of cleaning supplies, the car faintly smelled of Tangerine Chicken every time the temperature got above 70 degrees.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

I was helping my mom get ready for a big event and I had to go pick up food from a local caterer and they spilled a 5 gallon pot of fish stew in the trunk of her Escape. They first paid to have the carpets shampooed, that didn't work so they tried it again. That still didn't work so they paid to have the carpet in the trunk torn up and replaced. That STILL didn't get rid of the smell, so they paid for one last interior detail before we traded the thing in because even months later the smell was still there.

Submitted by: AlphonzeMephesto

As I don't see it here yet, I did do the cliche "left the case of soda in the car overnight in the winter" to find frozen coke covering the entirety of the hatch area. The head liner was dark tone, thank god, so it came out of the experience well. But at the time I thought all was lost.

Submitted by: GameDevBurnout

Shaking up a fruit on the bottom yogurt cup not knowing the peel off lid wasn't fully sealed... Life lesson learned that day.

Submitted by: OutForARip

Giant pot of homemade chili spilled because the person I was giving a ride to failed to secure it properly after I told them to do so.

Damn right I made them clean it up.

Submitted by: ArtistAtLarge

I once hid a dead fish in the wheel well of my headmaster's car when I was in high school, does that count? In my defence, he ought to have locked it. Or at least kept his keys somewhere other than the hook just inside his office door.

Submitted By: Plant_Daily

Not mine but I knew quite a few guys back in the 1980s that had girlfriends puke peach schnapps into the front seats of their cars. It was a common enough of an occurrence that is stuck in my memory.

Submitted by: 4jim

I've got another one – also commute related.

Was driving to work and went to take a sip of coffee from my new flask. I hit a pothole as I was sipping and scalding hot coffee poured all over my lips, neck and torso.

I somehow stayed in control of the car, but the coffee had stripped a 1cm squared section of skin from my bottom lip down to the flesh. I had very mild stinging burns everywhere else it had touched.

Absolute agony, do not recommend.

Submitted by: Dabamash

Buddy and I went out for wings and beers; he had far too much of both and passed out on the way back home. So soundly was he out that he vomited all over himself and the seat and didn't even wake up.

Having to carry him inside basically while knowing the literal/figurative chunks soaking into my seat changed my chemical makeup as a human. I had to replace the seat because the smell persisted for months regardless of what cleansing agent I used to douse it with.

Submitted by: King-Ginger