Motor Vehicular Accidents

Yesterday, I alluded to some times where I had some near misses in a car, and I figure it would be worthwhile to recollect those as well. Why not? But before I get to those, I figure I'll cover when I actually experienced an accident. It's worth noting, however, that in none of those incidents did I have an "accident." My pants remained unsoiled.

In my life, I've had what amounts to four actual accidents with damage. The first was in 1994 when I got my first car. It was a Subaru Justy and I was driving in a snowstorm in Colorado. I had no reason to be out in the whether. I was young and stupid and just wanted to drive in it. I could rank this as one of the times I could have been killed, but not in the accident. It happened when I was returning to the barracks (I was in the Army at the time), and instead of going straight, I decided to follow some guy. Well, when we went to stop, he slid off the road, and I slid right into him. Dented the front of my car. The dent remained till I traded it in.

In 1996, I was driving the Justy's replacement, a 1986 Camaro. It was cool. Cruising down the highway in the middle of the night when WHAM! I had no idea what happened, but the car buffeted all over the place, and before I know it I'm limping to the side of the road. There are no other cars around me that were hit. I had two passengers and they didn't know what happened either. After a time, we learned (from the wrecker guy who picked my car up) that logs had been falling off the back of a truck or something, and I was the second car he had towed for this reason. I further learned that when I hit said log (which was about the size of the car's wheel), it was flung into the other lane, and someone else had hit it too. The Camaro was totaled.

Number three was not until the end of 2006 in a 1996 Lincoln. Nice car. I was late for work, and this was the job where I was being hounded about my attendance. One more lateness, and I was toast. I charged out of the house as fast as possible without the time to get everyone else up so the Queen could keep the car (we only had the one at the time). She said she'd call a friend who could help them get around that day. I am really bad about red lights. I don't know why, but when I drive, I hit a lot of red lights. That day, I could not afford red lights, so as I was approaching an intersection, the light went yellow. I went a little faster and made the yellow light. No crime committed there. I passed in front of the QuikTrip that has since moved, and I saw him coming a split second before he hit. A truck came out of the QT parking lot and I swerved, but not enough. He slammed into the back of my car and the poor thing just shut down as I coasted to the side of the road. I forgot about the reset switch in the trunk till later. It was his fault, and his insurance was the one to take it, but the Lincoln was totaled. The hit bent the frame.

The last was, I think, the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011. We'd had another one of those horrific ice/snow storms, and we were almost through it. I was driving to work in the 2002 Impala, which was the nicer of our two vehicles at the time, since the other option was a 1986 Lincoln (aka a tank). Wish I'd driven the tank. I was sitting second at a stop light facing north when someone else turned south onto the five laned road I was sitting on. He hit an icy patch and slid across all of the lanes to smack into the front of me. If I had the foresight, I could have avoided his slow approach by just backing up. There was no one behind me. He crumpled the bumper, but the car was driveable. Because the roads were icy, the police were on "slick streets" mode which means they only respond to injury accidents, and neither of us were even vehicularly incapacitated. I ended up dealing with the guy's brother who paid to have the car fixed, and it was back on the road. Could have been timed better since I had eye surgery at exactly the same time as the fixing of the car meaning the Queen had to drive me home in the old Lincoln which was large and unwieldy in that hospital's parking garage.

That's all my actual accidents. I suppose I've been lucky in that I haven't had many, but I've come really close more than once.

Those were the hits, so tomorrow, I guess I'll cover the misses.