Avoiding Mayhem

A quiet beautiful evening. Melinda and I left home at the same time, she heading to work, me off to meet friends for dinner. Fate had slightly different plans!

Less than a mile from home, I was stopped at a light when I heard the screech of tires, and a view of what appeared to be movie special effects with flying cars in my rear-view mirror before I got hit from behind. Fortunately I was fine, and formed the front end of a field of auto damage. Behind me was a mess of twisted metal, shards of plastic and shattered glass. A pickup truck, evidently causing a rollover accident a half mile to the west moments after Melinda had turned south to work, fleeing that scene hit another car at a high rate of speed causing damage to a dozen cars in total. The fellow fled on foot but was apprehended a block or two away.

Meanwhile, the flying car I saw in my mirror landed a few feet from the van and was a crumpled mess, requiring an hour to extract everyone, though all seemed stable on their way to the hospital. The fellow behind me who was similarly struck from behind, hitting my van, was also fine, airbags all deployed (with the rear impact!), though his little Nissan will likely be totalled out. The van suffered a dented rear fender, rear door and latch seems fine. I lucked out, as did all of us who walked away.

I was delayed an hour till the police dismissed me with a copy of the report number. I was still able to join Chuck and Joey for curry. 4 hours later (was at work writing reports), they were still sweeping up after the accident! We're scheduled to fly tomorrow - after an incident at work today and the near catastrophe, I'm rethinking those plans!