I haven’t had a car accident of any kind since December 1993. My streak came extremely close to ending on the way home from work Friday evening.
The Cliffs Notes are that my attention was divided between trying to change lanes and watching the traffic immediately in front of me, and I started paying sustained attention to making the lane change at precisely the moment traffic was slowing in front me for someone making a turn.
I’d estimate my speed at 35 mph when I finally detected the imminent collision, and it was straight into the ABS and a lurch to the left, missing the left rear of a Hyundai Santa Fe by perhaps one foot. (I’ve always wondered whether if faced with an imminent accident, I could unlearn progressive braking and “stomp and steer,” as you’re supposed to with an ABS-equipped vehicle. Now I know. Doubtless I drove poorly to put myself in the situation, but I was pleased with my recovery.)
After a one-second down-in-and-back-out tour of the shallow drainage ditch dividing the highway, it was over. Ultimate end results were about 50K miles worth of minor scratches on the lower edge of the front bumper cover, and a healthy refreshing of the importance of proper driving mindset.
I’m minorly pissed off about the bumper cover (though I was able to improve its appearance 50% or so with buffing and touch-up paint), but I’m mostly relieved that no one got hurt, because it was really damned close. I’m secondarily relieved that the car’s not significantly damaged. There is no evidence anywhere but the bumper cover—in appearance or operation—that anything happened. I’ll check the tire wear at the first rotation, but I don’t even think I messed up the alignment.
I’m quite thankful that having some key aspects of my driving perspective restored, evidently necessarily, wasn’t any more expensive than that.
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So I’m not the only one who had an eventful trip home on Friday. Seems I was moving a bit too slowly (45 mph) into the turn lane for a left from County Line Road onto Old Hwy 20. The black sedan that’d been sucking my tailpipe blew by less than an inch from me. My instinctive reaction was to honk because he very nearly took my front bumper off as he passed. The driver slammed on his brakes and stopped in the turn lane just past the Old Hwy 20 turn. As I completed my turn, I saw him in, my rearview mirror, take the cut through the corner and peel out behind me. Oh joy. I continue down the road while he comes up close behind me then backs off to a more leasurely pace. I turn up Segers and he follows. I know now that FOR SURE I’m not going home, so I continue at a leasurely speed-limit pace up Hardiman, up Burgreen, over to Old Madison Pike, and to the Publix shopping center … with this same jerk following every turn of the way. I pull into the first space I find that is surrounded so he can’t pull in next to me. He pulls a U into a spot 3 down in the row behind me and sits there looking like he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. I knew damn well I wasn’t leaving my car, so I back out and drive up the lane towards him. He looks up, startles when he realizes it’s his followee. I don’t stop behind him, but go to the end of the lane and pull over, having caught all but one number in his license plate. As he pulls out and heads toward me, I hold up my cell phone and make sure he sees me dial 911. He peels out, takes a right onto County Line, peels back east on Old Madison Pike, and takes off. Chicken shit. I follow way back, just enough to see him fly a right turn through the stop at Burgreen and, up the road a bit, fly a left onto a road in the Copperfield subdivision and onto another road. I continued up to Hwy 72, cruised around Madison some more to be sure he’d not doubled back and that I wasn’t in any way being followed, then made my way home, locked my car in the garage, locked myself in my house, and proceeded to shake and quake for a couple of hours. Still freaked out some, but gawd, what the hell is this world coming to? For the record, it was a white male, shortish blonde hair, average build, likely around 6 ft tall, driving a late model black sedan with AL God Bless the USA tag 44?409B. The only other thing I’m pissed about is I don’t know the make or model of the car. Damn witness syndrome. That and knowing that I should’ve driven to the fire station that was just down County Line Road from the Publix, but, well, I guess automatic pilot takes you to the first somewhere public that you think of when you need to.
I’m still pissed. And scared.
Ooof! I’m glad you missed – and that video made me gasp. I’m so glad that no one was hurt…
Tami: Never know who “that guy” is, do you? I’m glad you weren’t hurt.
Mrs. Chili: Indeed. I wouldn’t have posted it had it been anything but property damage.
Glad the “near miss” was relatively harmless. It’s a jungle out there.
Saw that video on the teevee. What a scene.
LONG STORY but funny: Tami, I had a similar occurance in high school that ended up being funny. My friend Amanda and I had been “cruising” around on a Friday night and we started “flirting” with 2 guys in another car. I remember the car because it had some sort of red light that went back and forth kind of like Knight Rider. Anyway, we messed with them for a while and then it was time to go home. She was driving me from Oxford to Weaver which was about a 20 minute ride. It didn’t take long for us to realize the guys were following us. At first we though it was funny but, the further we got the more nervous we became. We started going faster to try and get away from them and we went to my Mom’s boyfriend’s house thinking they were there and we could get help. Uh, they weren’t there. The guys followed us all the way to Mom’s boyfriend’s house. We sat in the driveway completely scared and almost crying because they sat a couple of houses down and watched us. THEN we decided to go to the police station and they followed us again until they realized where we were going. The funny part: my Mom married the boyfriend and she and I moved into his house. About a year later, my homecoming date came to pick me up. He said “how long have you lived here?” I told him a few months. He said “Whew, I was about to get nervous, my friend and I followed some girls here once.” I said “THAT WAS ME!” Told you it was funny. 🙂