“In the blink of an eye,” sounds like a cliché, doesn’t it? Having been on the other side of critical incidents for a lot of my career, it was a bizarre thing to be involved in one yesterday. In safety terms, we often say, “In slightly different circumstances, it could have been catastrophic.”
Here’s the context, my Facebook status yesterday early evening:
“Feeling very fortunate to be safe, healthy, and alive tonight, after being hit on my left by a rogue vehicle travelling at over 100kph on Roe Highway at Midday. In a split second, I saw him in my left-hand mirror and next thing I was rubbing along the wire rope barrier off the road which helped me stop on four wheels. He hit me because he tried to fit between me and the truck next to me. Absolute craziness. Later the driver said he was escaping a road rage incident where the other driver pointed a gun at him. The driver who hit me is unlicensed. He had hit a truck before me. And a number of drivers stopped and stated he’d been erratic for several kms. Witnesses later said they feared I would roll, and for a moment I was on two wheels. Neither I nor the guy driving the missile sustained any injuries. Both cars are write-offs.”
One moment I’m driving along the same highway I drive most days, back and forth 40 kilometres to work, 40 kilometres home, and the next moment, “Wallop!” And all I saw was a car fly up behind me in the left-hand lane, and my only error, an almost fatal one, was to simply assume he would slow down and simply see there was no way through. But even though I made this assumption, there was no time to do anything. I was in the line of the fire of a 2-tonne missile rolling at 120kph, with an impact force of between 217–436kN.
Not for a moment did I expect that he would attempt to push a truck to his left and me to his right and make a way through a gap of just a few metres. He hit us both hard. At the time of impact my only thought was to minimise the damage, never imagining the amount of damage the impact made.
When people are reckless on the roads, they are not usually suicidal, and those who are don’t implicate others typically. This guy drove like he had a death wish. The fact is there are dangerous people on our roads more often than we even realise. Those of us who are simply happy to live our lives and contribute to our loved ones’ lives, notwithstanding the stresses and anxieties we may carry, drive as sensibly as we can. Yet there are plenty of drivers high on drugs and smashed on alcoholic beverages, or unlicenced, who have little or no regard for the lives of those who drive on the roads as if tomorrow will always come.
The crazy thing about the whole experience for me, is that I’m only now picking up the fragments of my memory of what occurred, and there are still some pieces I’m yet to find. But as I recounted the event with a younger friend who called to found out what happened, bits and pieces are coming back, and the fuller magnitude of the forces involved and the potential is beginning to hit home.
The sheer shock of the impact is only now able to be recounted; it was far too quick at the time. As my tyres bit into the road after impact, I got a little swerve up, but my trajectory was still pretty much forward. I was hit midships. Had that driver hit me more in the rear end, my car would have spun and rolled. The fact that all four tyres were still pressurised, and that the car still rolled on its wheels. It could have been far, far worse, for both myself, the other driver, and for those behind us both.
I mean, I like to think that it was my skill that got me out of the scrape, but ego aside, I was so very fortunate I was hit where I was.
As I recount being in an out-of-control vehicle at 100kph, being on two wheels, leaving the road surface for dirt, I cannot believe that there were seemingly no forces on me. I felt like I was in a bubble. Divine intervention? That theory only really runs if we are prepared to accept that it’s divine intervention when someone perishes. And of course, that’s unconscionable. But I do praise God for having survived what could easily have been my demise.
It's funny the thoughts that occupy your mind the moment after when you’re involved in the near fatal crash. “What did I do wrong,” “could it have been my fault,” “Oh no, look at the damage,” “I’m in trouble now!” and of course all of this is the mind confused for context in search of perspective.
Seconds before the incident occurred there was no thought in my mind of my possible imminent demise. None of us think like this. Only occasionally does it dawn on us how fleeting life is because nobody warns you and nothing warns you, but life is short.
From the context of a sudden death that is eminently possible, life is desperately short. And it’s not just us, but it’s those of us who have lost someone tragically who we feel for. Nobody and nothing prepares us for that moment when our lives change in the blink of an eye.
As someone said, “Hug your loved ones a little tighter tonight,” and it’s so true. Make the most of every precious though seemingly banal moment. We never know when they’ll be all gone!
We never regret a thing until it’s too late to do what can no longer be done.
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