Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

DATELINE: Indy, 3 June 2006

Tried to spend special day with son Kevin prior to his Monday surgery (to correct a structural birth defect that would otherwise grow worse as he got into puberty). It involved much money spent at a comic book store (4 days in hospital post-surgery, then a very quiet month in bed), whacking two big buckets of balls at the local golf driving range, and it was supposed to end with an Indy Indians AAA baseball game.

Instead, I decided to total the Pilot by smashing into a late model Ford that had slammed on the brakes in front of me when the car in front of him decided to make a U turn--apparently without giving the driver in front of me enough warning. His car was badly damaged too.

The Pilot crumpled quite nicely. The windshield collapsed a bit and the air bags went off, protecting me and Kevin in the front seats (Kevin recently got tall enough to sit in the front), and Jerry, second son, faired just fine in his second row seat. My watch snapped off from the air bag, and my left wrist seemed to get a slight burn from it, but that was it. No fire or anything, but lots of smoke initially, I think mostly from air bags.

So we faired well enough. Other driver okay, but he suffered from being unable to produce a driver's licence. Unable to speak English, his account, when relayed to the Spanish-speaking accident cop, corresponded to mine (U turn seemingly out of nowhere, setting off the chain reaction). I think what baffled me and initially slowed my reaction was that there was no left turn to be made, as it was a T intersection. So no left turn lane and hence the difficulty of pulling off that maneuver safely on a road with cars traveling with some speed through a solid green light. My guess is that this guy decided he was heading the wrong way and tried to double back to the stadium (I was heading farther away to park).

So we miss the game, and probably never see that nice black Pilot ever again, given the damage. Sort of an abrupt finish to a beautiful relationship. I'm insured against accidents involving uninsured drivers, which I'm guessing this guy was. Since his ID consisted of a credit card, I'm wondering if he'll pretty much disappear. But I let the cops handle all that, meaning the other driver got a summons for not being able to produce a driver's license.

Still, the big thing is, no one got hurt. Cars can be replaced, but lives cannot. I was quite impressed with how well the Pilot took the crash, but it will be missed. If I had it to do over again, I would have crashed the bit older Odyssey with over 100k. The Pilot had only 79k. My wife, picking us up, said the same thing after making sure we were all okay.

I can't be sure, but I think this late model Ford's brake lights weren't working on top (the rear window one), because as I initially braked, I had the distinct feeling I was just approaching a slower car, not a braking or stopped one. Then, as we kept getting so much closer so much faster, I realized too late that I needed to be slamming, not just braking. That red light that goes on in your brain thanks to the rear window brake light hadn't gone off in mind--at least not in a way that I felt it should have. Or maybe it did, and the time provided by events simply wasn't enough for me to process it.

That's one possibility. The other is that the glare from the low sun directly into my windshield made it hard for me to interpret the Ford's rear lighting. One thing I am sure of, as I started to brake, I had every intention of slowing, not slamming. It was only deep into the braking that I realized that wouldn't do the trick, meaning I realized I was screwed.

The final possibility (most likely) is that everything worked just fine but that the chain reaction simply couldn't be avoided. Maybe it was all just too fast and my brain is still trying to make it work out. Afterwards I thought about all the times I've narrowly missed bad things like that. Perhaps, after 28 years of drving without an accident, your luck just runs out.

It's probably to avoid that feeling that I keep trying to come up with extenuating circumstances to explain why, despite having both hands on the wheel, not being impaired in any way, and seemingly reacting in time to have handled the event, I still couldn't. If that's the ultimate sense you get from an event like this, it can be a lot more scary than than that one, extenuating circumstance that seems to explain it all. In the end, the randomness is more frightening.

It's that inherent need for a seemingly safer explanation that gives rise to conspiracy thinking: a single guy can't just kill a president, a bunch of guys can't just take down the World Trade Center, and so on. There must be some simplifying conspiracy that explains it all, making the reality melt away, reducing its fear factor.

Vonne warned me about this on the ride home. She was in an accident with Jerry a couple of years back, and it really shook her for a couple of weeks. Then, she just realized she had to get over it, because driving was just something she had to do in her life. You can basically do all the right things, as fast as you can under the circumstances, and you can still simply get smashed by circumstances.

About the only thing I take away from this that I like is the usual realization that all the flying I do is so much safer.

But the real bitch of the whole thing is that the driver who sets this all in motion is sitting at the game right now, probably enjoying a beer. Me? I'm wondering about having to get a new car fast.

Still, gotta feel good to walk away from anything that profoundly kinetic with no one getting hurt.

Now, on to the surgery.