Thursday, June 14, 2007
Right Before My Eyes
We were in a car accident last night. We were on our way to dinner and I was ragging on Bruce for missing the lane change to make the right into the parking lot. We took the next right to swing around the block. We were almost to the next corner and a truck cut across traffic to make a left hand turn down a side street. I saw the accident happening in slow motion and let out a scream. Fortunately the impact happened at about 5 miles an hour.
There were some minor interactions with the other driver wherein he wanted to minimize his involvement (“Can we say someone else was driving, I might not have all my papers in order”) but we managed to trade the appropriate pieces of information and take photos of the damage with our cell phones. I have to say, the photos came out much better than I would have ever expected. The damage to the car is a busted out headlight and a bit of denting and the hood is crinkled. The 5 mile an hour impact meant that the damage was pretty minimal, if the hood wasn’t wrinkled the damage wouldn’t even be noticeable.The car has already been traded out and will be looked over in the next few days, hopefully it will be back in less than a few weeks, we’ve got some things on our plate that need the car in fighting condition.
No one was injured (beyond my seatbelt bruise, and that fucking hurts) and Bruce was accepting of the situation (“this is what insurance is for”), but I was sort of surprised that Bruce was so copacetic about the whole thing. He was downright Yoda Zen about the situation. 6 hours later Bruce turned to me and said: “We could have been hurt! They could have been really hurt!” I knew it was a matter of time for that realization to set in, we basically T-boned their truck and I would guess that they didn’t have side impact airbags. Bruce later asked if he could have braked harder. I told him that the only way he could have braked harder would have been if he were like Fred Flintstone and kicked through the base board and use his heels to stop the car. He then said he should have braked .5 second earlier. I told him there was no way to avoid the guy who cut across one lane of traffic and into ours without looking. We were in the right hand lane and traveling at a responsible speed.
I just wish I hadn’t been ragging on him for missing the turn. Yay! Supportive girlfriend alert!
So today we are going to the dentist, Bruce needs to get a tooth drilled and filled. The dentist warned that it might already be at root canal severity. Poor Bruce is having a bad week.