Car Accident Memories
Nov 29, 2022 16:03:39 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 29, 2022 16:03:39 GMT -5
Car Accident Memories
by Radrook
by Radrook
None of us wants to be involved in a traffic accident either as a passenger, pedestrian or a driver. We watch all those horrific accidents described on the news where people are being carted away in gurneys or shown in hospital beds all mangled or paralyzed, and we cringe. Yet, as much as we might try to avoid them, accidents aren’t entirely up to us. Why? Well, because two many factors are simply out of our control.
Two Car Accidents
Let’s face it, some people aren’t too keen on keeping their vehicles in safe functioning condition as the law demands. Brakes might be shot, tires might be almost bald, exhaust emissions might be flooding the passenger area with carbon monoxide, signal lights might be non-operational or missing, doors might not be locking properly, windshield wipers might be broken, windshield de-fogging might be absent, rear-view mirrors might be missing or else too dirty, seat belts might be absent or defective. All of these increase the risk of a disaster occurring in which passengers are either killed or seriously injured.
Then there are the non mechanical factors such as driver intoxication, sleepiness, senility, distractions via text, using the phone, surfing the net, or being engaged in having a very heated squabble with a spouse. All these can cause a driver to plow through red lights and stop signs ramming into both vehicles and pedestrians. Or else senility or drunkenness, might be involved.
I remember the drunk taxi driver who was driving my mother, grandmother and me home late one night when I was approx. four-years old. He ran a red light and we were hit on the rear right side where my grandmother was sitting. I was knocked out and my grandmother took the brunt of the impact on her hip. The drunk driver was thrown through the windshield and the taxi kept going with us inside. I still remember him returning to the taxi spitting blood and windshield glass and reeking of alcohol while asking us.
“Are you OK? Are you OK?”’
The passengers of the other car were all killed. A whole family mother, father and kids were gone. All disappeared in a flash, just because the taxi driver felt he needed to be drunk while driving.
Defective Vehicles and Heated Arguments
Defective cars and arguments are two other things to avoid. Both converged one day as we were making our way home from a family visit which had caused an argument based on my father’s flirting tendencies.
My father had not fixed the door on the right hand side of the front seat where my mother and I were sitting He kept telling her not to put any type of pressure on it because it would fly open. He also had not fixed the car’s emergency brake for some reason. Just moments before the incident, their argument almost made my father plow through a mother and her two kids who were crossing the street and had the right of way.
Despite this hair-raising event, the heated argument continued. I remember how we were traveling over the cobblestoned pavement under the shadows of the tracks of the elevated subways in New York. I was a small child sitting on my mother’s lap at the time. I clearly recall my mother leaning lightly on the defective door. It flew open and we had to stop to close it. My father told her to be careful.
Moments later, perhaps during an argument or because of it, the car suddenly swerved to the left. All I remember is being seated on my mom's lap in the car one moment and sitting on her lap while she sat on the cobblestoned pavement in the middle of the street under the New York elevated train railway the next. Why the memory of the transition from seat to pavement is blocked out is beyond me.
She had landed in a sitting position and took the brunt of the fall on her buttocks and her elbow which was lacerated and bleeding profusely. I landed still sitting on her lap, and totally uninjured. I remember my father’s car still pulling away from us, stopping ,his getting out and leaving it behind then looking back and seeing it rolling down the incline and rushing back to intercept it. Finally parking it where no emergency brake was necessary and running back for us. Luckily for us, no car, truck or bus was passing us on the right-hand side at that moment-otherwise we might both have been fatally crushed, or paralyzed,
“Why did you go back for the car instead of coming to see how we were?” my mother said as he appeared at our side.
“The car started rolling down the hill.”
“So the car is more important to you than our welfare?”
“Your welfare means a lot to me, but if I let that car role down that hill it might kill somebody or do property damage.”
“So that means more to you than our welfare?”
“I told you not to lean on that door. Didn’t I?”
“If you know the door is defective, why did you have to make that turn so energetically-eh?”
“Because I assumed you were not going to lean on the door for support-that’s why.”
The argument that had been going on previously for approx. half an hour merely shifted to a new subject and continued all the way home with a brief pause to buy stuff to treat my mom’s elbow.
At another occasion the heated argument occurred on the highway on our way back home from s family reunion. Infuriated by my father’s blatant flirting, my mother began physically attacking my dad while he drove. In order to defend himself, he began releasing the steering wheel and the car began swerving to the left and right with me terrified and screaming since it was obvious that death was near.
And there is the problem, a car on the move at 60 mph is not a place or time to be arguing with the driver. The driver needs 100% attention on what he’s doing-otherwise grave, [no pun intended] damage can be done to passengers or to pedestrians. True, the car should not have been in that condition in the first place and my father should not have been flirting. But still, arguing with a driver while he's driving is an invitation to a disaster.
Sheer Stubbornness Reinforced by Stupidity
I was sideswiped by a lady whose car was waiting in the lane provided to make left turns at an intersection. Double yellow lines indicated clearly that no right turns from that lane were allowed. As I approached her on the right lane, she started to pull out to the right.
I accelerated in order to prevent a collision, and she rammed into me anyway. In court she said that she had rammed into me because I had tried to get past her. Needleless to say, se lost the case. She also told the judge that the reason she had gone to court was because she didn't want my insurance to cover the cost of the damage to my car. The judge asked her why, and she had no answer.
I accelerated in order to prevent a collision, and she rammed into me anyway. In court she said that she had rammed into me because I had tried to get past her. Needleless to say, se lost the case. She also told the judge that the reason she had gone to court was because she didn't want my insurance to cover the cost of the damage to my car. The judge asked her why, and she had no answer.