The lucky ones

I went to pick up a Behringer BTR-2000 in Dongen, today. It’s a 90 kilometer drive that takes about 80 minutes or so, depending on traffic.

When I come back, leaving the A27 and turning onto the A28, a woman in a dark Ford Escort (I think) is in front of me. When she moves out of the way, I start to overtake her when she suddenly comes back to the lefthand lane. I’m thinking “no way, she’s NOT going to just drive into me” but she continues to go to the right and finally it hits me: She isn’t going to stop, and then SHE hits me. The back of the driver’s side of the car hits the front of my car’s passenger side and she starts swirving around. She’s forced to the left which she counters with a jerk to the right. That jerk sends her off into the soft shoulder where the car loses balances and tips over. The car stops, on its passenger side, some way further down.

I brake hard and park the car in the soft shoulder. I grab my jacket and run to the car. At this point, I’m really scared that someone is at least going to have a nosebleed in that car. When I arrive, other people have stopped to help and are trying to open the passenger door. (The one the car isn’t lying on, obviously) When the car opens, the first thing I hear is a child crying. I go crazy with fear and nerves thinking “OMG OMG OMG I just hit a car with a child in it and it’s crying!”. But when the child is lifted out of the car, it’s almost smiling and it says “We did a flip with the car!” in that very boyish “that was amaaaaazing” way. A second child emerges from the car, also unscathed, and then the mother is helped out of the car.

I end up with some bodywork and a flat tire (which I got replaced an hour later) but the woman’s car is less lucky. Still, I guess we’re all lucky since no-one got seriously injured in the accident.

Click the images below for larger versions.

The trajectory of the car that hit me
The damage to my car (Tire already replaced)
The other car
I NEED to make a doctor’s appointment tomorrow because various parts of my body start hurting now, notwithstanding the fact that I got the better end of the deal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 17:49:07 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.