Wreck on the front straightaway

Every great racecar driver has at one time or another, limped home with a wrecked car. This past Tuesday, I did just that.

MsNscr has now been involved in her very first accident with another person. <sigh>

SS and I were out for an afternoon drive, when the GMC Sierra 1500 truck in front of me, suddenly came to a complete stop in the middle of the street. Dead. Stop. I slammed on the brakes, but since I don’t have ABS, my car slid right into her trailer hitch. Totally my fault. Fuuuuuuuuuck!

The damage is not great, but it’s definitely not horrible. I was able to drive away with no issues, and although the radiator is cracked on the top, it’s still full four days later. I’ll need a new radiator and fan assembly, a new a/c condenser, a new hood, and a new headlight housing. I’m hoping the bumper doesn’t need to be replaced, but we’ll see once we get things taken apart.

Thankfully, nobody was hurt. All parties drove away with all limbs still attached, and no headaches. Yet.

Now the fun stuff. Let the rebuild begin…..

Happy Friday!

4:19 - incoming text: “I’ll be there in 7 minutes. just crossing the intersection.”

4:23 - phone rings: “I won’t be there. Just totaled my car. I’m bleeding, but feel fine. Car is smashed. My fault. Gotta go. Will call you back soon.”

This was a moment in time that seemed to stand still. For the next five minutes, everything happened in slow motion. Images of body parts laying on the floorboard of the driver side, flashed through my head as I tried to gain some sort of composure. I was, after all, still at work.

Tears started streaming down my face. A couple of coworkers tried to console me, but the irrational thoughts and fears had already taken up residence inside my mind. I wanted to drop everything and drive down there, but knew I’d just be in the way.

I phoned a friend to help calm my nerves. One I knew would be rational. Naturally she was concerned, but once she realized he was okay, her focus turned to what was actually making me so uneasy about it. Would I have reacted this way if it had been the guy I went out with last night? What about if it had been the person I met at the bowling alley last week? Probably not. And then she said it. She said those words that I never in a million years thought for one second anyone would ever say to me.

You love him, Val!

A phone call about 20 minutes later, put a little bit of relief to the situation. The ambulance had already been there to check him out. The car was up on the flatbed and being taken away. His dad showed up to take him home.

Know how many people in his family knew? None. Two phone calls were made. One to me and one to his dad.

I’m so happy he’s okay.

 

 

Dear bff@work: if anything happens to you, I’ll be real mad, please take care of yourself.

Back to Drivers Ed.

So, I’m driving to work the other morning, doing my typical 70-75+, when I noticed up head that the left lane was closed. Bright orange signs for as far as the eye could see, once you came around the mountain, so no surprise to those of us that were paying attention. For over a mile there were orange cones and flashing lights. Cal Trans made it very easy to distinguish between the working lanes and the lane that was closed. Simple. Or so I thought.

Why? Why must there always be the ONE freakin’ idiot that can’t wait in line or wasn’t taught how to appropriately merge into traffic? (This same thing goes for people that can’t merge correctly onto the freeway. NO! IT’S NOT THE PERSON ALREADY ON THE FREEWAY’S RESPONSIBILITY TO SLOW DOWN FOR YOU. IT’S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO MERGE SAFELY WITH HIM!) Geez – get the damn laws straight if you’re gonna drive a car here.

Moving on… So, a few dumbass drivers, who have to rush to the end of the lane and cut in between drivers who OVER CORRECT, caused a big 5-6 car pile up right in front of me. Cars in my lane were slowing down because they knew there’d be people squeezing in, but did you really have to SLAM on your breaks instead of just applying a bit of pressure and moving to the next lane? I watched the whole accident…you are dumb! You, as the driver in the lane NEXT to the ending lane, should have enough common sense to know that you’ve not only got to be watching YOUR lane for idiots up ahead that love to break-check, but you have to watch the idiots that are merging into YOUR lane. Pay attention people! They taught you this in Drivers Ed. If you don’t remember…take it again.

When I took drivers training, I was taught that you needed to keep your eyes moving/scanning AT ALL TIMES. At any given moment while I’m driving, whether you think I do or not, I know every single car in every single lane around me. I’m constantly watching to see which cars change lanes and which ones stay safely behind slower cars to prevent themselves from speeding. I watch for cops on a constant basis. I know when I can change lanes and I know exactly how much room I have between two cars when I want to make a last minute decision. I know the length of my car and I know exactly where my car needs to be in order for me to get the tires to hit the center bumps (or run over something). I pay attention to the lines in the road that other people follow, and often wonder why someone would chose to run over a large open pothole (and risk damaging their rims), instead of slightly moving their car to the other side of the lane and going around it…never having to leave your lane.

One of the greatest things about being a bit into cars, is I can tell what cars are on the road by their headlights or tail lights (at night) or their shape (during the daylight hours). I’ve become real good at that (thanks to JK for making me  play that game all the time).

Ugh. Will the horrible driving ever stop? Nope. Why? Because the DMV doesn’t care about the actual “driving” skills of the person they’re giving the license to. Until they do, we will continue to have people on our roads that drive like idiots and have no common sense when it comes to NOT PULLING IN FRONT OF CARS/TRUCKS THAT ARE GOING FASTER THAN YOU. YOU SHOULD GET REAR ENDED FOR THAT!

Moral of the story: Dumbass drivers caused a big wreck on the freeway the other morning and it was TOTALLY unnecessary. The car in front of me had the whole front end of her car smashed in, and something from inside exploded all over the back of the Jeep that was in front of her. The Jeep was trying to get over to the side of the road, so I stopped on the freeway and over they went. I remember thinking as I drove off…”There are at least 3 cars involved in that wreck that need to go back to Drivers Education, cause if they did it once, and cause a wreck like this…it’s gonna happen again.”

Never heard another thing about it, so if anyone reading this knows the outcome, let me know. Inquiring minds want to know.

Talk again soon