by Barry Henderson
Don't think it can't happen to you. You're a good driver, a careful and alert driver. Even a defensive one. You keep your car in top condition. You've done it for nearly 50 years and more than half-a-million miles. You've had a few fender-benders, mostly when you were young and all but one involving only your own fenders.
That's me. It can happen. It did.
In a matter of two or three seconds, a drive home turned into a test involving a matter of inches between existence and...the alternative.
I saw the truck come across the centerline. It was in a line of traffic, and I thought the driver must be tuning the radio or talking on a cell phone and would see where the truck was headed and right it with a jerk of the wheel. Even so, I got on the brakes and steered to the right, out of my lane and onto the broad berm. The truck had been 12 car-lengths ahead. It wasn't speeding, but it covered that 200 feet in a second and a half at about the 50 mph limit.
It looked as if my car would pass the truck before it got to me. Then it didn't. For about a tenth of a second I realized out of the corner of my eye that collision was imminent, left-front-to-left-front. That's not time to react further. Not time for a whole life to flash before one's eyes. Not even time to feel fear.
The sound of the crash dominated all of the next second. It was as if lightning struck tin roofing right outside my window. It was so loud there wasn't anything else for an instant, not even a sensation of abrupt deceleration, then there was nothing except the showering of falling glass and the rising of steam and oil smoke from under the hood in front of the shattered windshield. And the crumpled Subaru, my favorite car in a long while, gone, I knew immediately.
Then the fear hit. It was impossible for a half-second to even try to move my legs. I was unsure if I had legs. Then, slowly, my feet moved. Then my arms and hands. I turned my head, swiveled slightly at the waist and was overcome by a feeling of elation that displaced the fear as quickly as it had arisen. I was alive. I wasn't paralyzed. And my joints seemed to work.
I tried to tug at the door handle, but it wasn't where it used to be, and when I found it, it did nothing. A woman's face appeared outside my car and asked if I was hurt. I told her I didn't know of any injuries. She asked if I had a fire extinguisher. I pulled out the keys and handed her the one to the trunk. She came back and set the fire extinguisher down, and a sheriff's deputy appeared in her place, telling me not to move. I did anyway. I pulled out my cell phone and called my wife, who was in her car at our mailbox at the time.
"I've been hit a ton on John Sevier. I'm all right, and they're cutting me out," I told her. She did not take that well, but it was true. By then a pair of Rural Metro emergency techs were deciding how to cut my door open without hurting me further. The passenger doors were pinned against the guardrail, and I couldn't get the sunroof open. The deputy told me to tell my wife to meet me at University Hospital—my choice to be checked over—because, "You don't want her to see this car." She was already on her way, and the deputies helped her to turn around at the scene to follow the ambulance, once the door was cut away and I got out and walked. Even I was astonished at that. I walked.
The other driver, a man in his 20s who towered over me, was apologizing. He'd dozed off, he said. Was there anything he could do? I told him not to worry. It could have happened to anyone. Was his truck insured? He said yes. I didn't realize it at the time, but I must have looked awful, with blood streaming down my face from little glass cuts on my scalp, cheek, nose, and lip.
I was X-rayed in the hospital emergency room, and no broken bones were found. My wife took me home, with me thanking her profusely, almost absurdly, for coming to get me. I'm stiff; I'm bruised, including my chest where the shoulder belt held me from worse harm; I'm lucky to be alive. It happened on Sept. 11. I now have another reason to remember the date. Luck.
I have little flashbacks of the truck heading into my lane, and the sound of the collision, less frequent now. I still flinch, a week later, when I see a motorist crossing the centerline, even touching it. I don't think I was hurt badly. I don't really know. I'm seeing my own doctor, who'll do his own assessment, based on our 25-year relationship.
What I know is this: I'll always buckle up. Every time. Do that for yourselves. You never know. It can happen to you.
September 18, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 38
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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