Crashing my car - not part of the plan

[charis_kalos]

Winding country roads; torrential rain; excessive speed for the conditions - I ran my car off the road yesterday. I took a bend too fast, last control, hit the barrier, bounced across to the other side of the road, and ended up halfway up an embankment. At one point during the embankment climb I was sure the car was going to flip, but it was a very

Comments

[tigriswolf]

Holy shit, dude! I'm glad you're alright.

[charis_kalos]

Freaked me out a little - or more than a little. I'd never lost control of a car before, so finding out that it really does mean you can't control what this enormously powerful and heavy thing is doing has scared me a bit.

[pdragon76]

I am so incredibly glad only your car is mangled. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason with things like this. The ones that have happy endings and the ones that don't.

Five years ago, a very good mate of mine was killed seven days into his honeymoon in Tassie in a car accident. It would have been really easy to be angry at the other driver if he'd been drunk or high or something like that, but he was just young and inexperienced and driving too fast and he made a horrible error in judgement on an unfamiliar stretch of road.

It made me realise that nothing at all separates any of us from that kind of mistake. Any one of us is capable of doing that.

And that's not a bad thing to remember. The price we all paid to learn it is disproportionate and unfair, but I'll take that reminder through every day and I like to think it makes me a more thoughtful and cautious driver, and might save someone else's life down the track. Maybe your experience will too. :)

Also, OUCH for your hip pocket. :(

[charis_kalos]

It made me realise that nothing at all separates any of us from that kind of mistake. Any one of us is capable of doing that.

I don't think I'd really understood that before Friday. We lost three college students at Easter a few years ago, and that was absolutely horrible and made me think a lot about car accidents, but it was because the kid driving made a mistake. The other vehicle involved was a truck, and while the driver of that was traumatised, he wasn't physically hurt. I hadn't really computed that me making a mistake could lead to other people being hurt or killed. And now I've been reminded of that - and will definitely be more careful driving, especially in the wet on country roads.

[just_ruth]

*hugs*

[charis_kalos]

Thanks. I've been lent an old car by one of my congregation members, which feels a bit like I'm driving a tank after my tiny, modern car, but it suits my mood of driving slowly and carefully around the mountain.

[authoressnebula]

Oh god sweetie I'm so sorry. *hugs tight* I know that game all too well. It's so hard not to play it, but you didn't hit them. God put you in a situation where only the car was hurt: you made it out okay, and no one else was injured. Fretting is okay, but the car did what it was supposed to do. I'm so damn glad you're okay; I know how scary those things can be.

*hugs really hard*

~Nebula

[charis_kalos]

It freaked me out! Not so much at the time, when mostly things were happening too fast, but afterwards. But I'm now going to chalk it up as a life lesson (my mistakes in driving could hurt other people, so drive carefully) and move on. Well, that's the plan!

[caffienekitty]

*holds you tight* I'm glad things weren't worse than they are.

[charis_kalos]

Thanks. I was really lucky that the car didn't flip; that I wasn't hurt; that no one was coming the other way. So I'm remembering that, as well as taking this as a reminder that driving is a dangerous activity that can harm other people so I need to do it carefully and responsibly. (Possibly Dean isn't the best role model for that - he seems to do a lot of speeding.) And it helps that the car I've been lent feels like a tank to me after my zippy little 'chick' car, so I'm automatically driving more carefully than I usually do!

(Sherlock last night did help to make everything better.)