I can relate all to closely.
Tonight, my daughters did not come home as expected. When they were 45 minutes late (the 8 year old was supposed to be in bed already - the 17 year old had taken the 8 year old to softball practice) I set out to see if they had a problem or something. I drove to the field where they were supposed to be practicing, but no one was around, and there was no sign of the car.
I'm starting to get pretty worried, because I had expected baseball practice to have been canceled. A big rain storm, with lots of lightning, had passed through, just as the practice was to begin.
So, I start to head for another field that they might have been at, when I get a call from home that the kids have been located, and the 17 year old just didn't think to call home, and tell us why they were so late.
So, I headed for home. I came to a busy intersection, just 3 blocks from the house, and started to proceed through it. Suddenly, a large van, GA license 823MKW pulls right out in front of me, turning left... and totally blocking my lane.
I'm in a little Z-3 and I'm 25' from this monstrous van, heading 35 MPH into it, and I don't know how fast it was going.
The streets are wet.
There are cars lined up both ways on the street we are crossing, so there are a lot of witnesses to what happened next.
Somehow, I managed to steer to the right of the van, missing it totally, and I skidded across a curb and up a small hill onto the edge of a cemetery. In the process of all of the sudden steering and braking I was doing, I also managed to miss the cars on the right, who were waiting at the stop light, and I managed to miss a telephone pole which was directly in front of me, when I missed the van, and I missed a support wire for the telephone pole and some trees on the edge of the cemetery. But I did not miss the high curb at the intersection.
Now, I was not speeding or doing anything out of the ordinary, when the woman (I am told by witnesses) just pulled out in front of me. Certainly a head on, with our combined speeds would have been quite dangerous for me. My car is just about totaled, but I only suffered some mild pains in my left leg, which must have hit something in the 2 seconds of confusion with brakes and clutches.
But in 2 seconds time, I saw a lot of things go in front of me. And the main thing I was thinking about was my kids. I think everyone on the thread who has kids knows what I am talking about.
Five different people stopped to ask if I needed any help, and to check to make sure that I was OK. Someone had already called 911 by the time I got around to it. They even gave me the license plate number and description of the lady driving the van - who did not even stop.
The police man, who got there an hour later, looked at the car with his flashlight, (since it was now dark) and wrote up a single car accident report. Now I can take the rest up with my insurance company. It seems, that since I did not hit the other vehicle (choosing life over the absence of it) there is nothing that can be done with the woman driving the large dark van GA Tag # 823MKW.
I'm glad to be here tonight, to post this message.
And somehow, the market's activities just don't seem as important as they did earlier today.
And disputes between fellow SI'ers don't seem very important either.
And now here is one thought to be passed on to the thread:
Do your actions ever make you just like the lady in the van?
Jack |
