My wife was driving me to the airport when a guy made a left hand turn in front of us. we hit him going 50mph(the speed limit BTW). Several things saved our lives:
1)We were in a large vehicle–a minivan. A well designed minivan. The whole front end was pushed in but nothng entered the passenger compartment.
2)We were wearing our seatbelts.
3)We had airbags. I don’t care what Dan Rather and the rest of them say, airbags work and they saved our lives. My wife, who was driving, had no injuries at all (by the way, she’s 5’3"–in the at risk category for air bag injuries. I walked away with just a bruised sternum.
The problem is, even though I know I’d have been messed up without the airbag, I’ll get reported as an injury caused by airbags–I’ll be a negative statistic against the thing that I firmly believe saved my life.
Nope, it was a Ford Windstar. We’ll probably be buying another very soon. We found out the guy who hit us had stage three alzheimers. The accident happened at 9AM, and a 2 PM he forgot he even had an accident.
Another newbie narrowly escapes a random dose of chlorine in his gene pool.
Glad you were both wearing seatbelts. People who don’t are lame. They open themselves to injury and break the hearts of people who inadvertantly kill them in accidents.
When I’m older, I’ll gladly submit to yearly examination of my acuity to qualify for my driver’s license. There should be a program whereby people who voluntarily comply with annual testing get a significant discount (above and beyond the usual senior reduction) on mass transit passes when they eventually forfeit their license.
Welcome to the boards, I hope you’ll be able to stick around some more.
Same thing almost happened to me. I was driving along a road. I’m in the left lane of a two lane road, but the lane is either turn left or go straight. The light turns green. The guy in front of me turns, and I start going forward. The car in the other direction is making a left turn also, and he doesn’t see me or something, until its almost to late. We both slam on the brakes. Missed each other by inches. Wouldn’t have been a real serious accident, but I was driving someone else’s car. That big dent that almost happened would have been tough to explain.
I can sympathise. I was hit by a mini-van today on my way to attend our company’s annual general meeting. The driver veered across five lanes of traffic (from being parked at the curb) and struck my car on the rear passenger door. Four or five other cars were able to screech to a stop, although one of them ended up touching the rear bumber of the van. The driver (who was from out of town) said he had to go north to the other end of the hospital he was parked in front of, and “thought {I} saw {him}” (we were both southbound on a street that is four lanes in each direction, seperated by concrete medians).
I’m glad you are okay. We were rear-ended by a moving van a couple of years ago. We were sitting still on a bridge and were hit at 35 mph. We were in a Dodge Caravan. It was totaled, and the other driver didn’t have insurance. What a piece of junk that car was. Yes, you were incredibly lucky.
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Originally posted by Zenster
**When I’m older, I’ll gladly submit to yearly examination of my acuity to qualify for my driver’s license. There should be a program whereby people who voluntarily comply with annual testing get a significant discount (above and beyond the usual senior reduction) on mass transit passes when they eventually forfeit their license. **
I’d be perfectly happy to have someone drive me around. I actually wouldn’t mind someone driving me around now.
