Car Crash, continued

I was promising you the story of the car crash. A little bit late, I know, but here it is.

It’s probably better to start with the picture. On the following satellite view lifted from Google Maps I’ve overlaid a small blue car and arrow to represent me and my direction of driving. The red car is, of course, the other car involved.

The green cross is in the front of my apartment’s building, the spot I had just left one minute prior to the accident.

Satellite photo with crash schematics overlaid. Moving the mouse over the picture reveals a slightly larger version.

So, this 25 year old dude driving his girlfriend’s VW Polo rushes into the crossing not only completely ignoring the Yield indicator, but also looking towards his right for incoming traffic! What a stupid fuck! He literally jumped right in front of me, from beneath a line of parked cars!

Of course, there’s no excuse for me driving a little bit too fast, but it was 1 P.M. on a Sunday, the street was virtually empty, and I was on my way to the office, to get it over with my weekly chore of replacing the back-up tapes.

Anyway, so I was driving a little bit too fast, and although I have stepped on the brakes immediately and turned the wheel to the left (there was no incoming traffic at that time, luckily), I couldn’t avoid the crash. I don’t think he saw me until I was inches away from his car, already way too late…

My feeling is the dude got lucky that day, although the whole picture might suggest otherwise. If I hadn’t turn the wheel to the left, I would have probably crushed right into the driver’s door. And we all know the cars aren’t performing very well when it comes to sideways impact… I think he would have sustained serious injuries.

But we both got out without a scratch, thank God! We spent the next two hours of our lives in a police station filling up piles of papers, my car stayed in a repair shop for the next two weeks (and I suspect there’s still something wrong with the front right-side wheel), but that’s OK.

I don’t want to think about how my life could have changed if I’d killed the mother-fucker!