I have a relevant story, and I assure you every word of it is true.
When I was a teenager a friend of mine's father bought a lightly used 3-series manual-transmission BMW as a third vehicle for the family, though mainly to be used by my friend and his younger brother when the latter would get his license.
Approximately two weeks after buying the car (certainly it was inside of a month) we took the car one lunch time to the local store to buy some candy or whatever crap we tended to buy. The store was at the top of a fairly steep hill. We went inside, bought our stuff, came out, went to get in the car--wait, where is the car? We looked around, and 100-150 feet down the hill from the store there she was "parked" in front of a tree. A large, old tree, one that took very little damage from being hit by a 3000 lb car but, as such a tree, one that dished out massive punishment to said car. My friend ran down the street to the car, but alas it was a bit late by then. The car ended up totaled.
His punishment was a stern talking to, a half-hearted lesson from his father about learning a lesson, and subsequent replacement with a VW GTI VR6 which, in the mid-90's, was a hell of a car for a teenager to be driving. He managed never to crash that one, despite many apparent attempts while driving like an absolute clown (course, I enjoyed that, too).