Vehicular insanity
Aug. 17th, 2009 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgHad a curious experience on the road this morning. Someone drove through a red light at pretty much the same time I was driving through a green light. Do not try this at home.
In hindsight--pretty much the only kind you have time for following a road incident--it could have been Very Nasty Indeed. A second or two of spacetime, a bit more acceleration here, a bit less paranoia or road sense there, and I might have T-boned directly into the other driver at 70km/h.
The main bit of luck was that there was no-one on my flank, for I had time to swerve around the other car all the way into the next lane and back again, but not enough time to check my mirrors to see if anyone else was about to occupy that particular space at that time.
Actually, there were quite a few different bits of luck at play: it's a huge wide open dual carriageway intersection so there was room to move without running into oncoming traffic as well. I had room enough to see her fail to stop, and because the lights had just changed I wasn't travelling fast at all. The Catmobile is also low-slung and nippy; in fact she was purchased with Welshpool commercial traffic avoidance in mind (to possibly misquote Tim Powers, "AOP. Accelerate Outa Problems."). For all I know there *was* someone on my flank but everybody avoided each other so that's all right then.
I had enough time to see the face of the driver at fault, and she looked more than a little shaken. From her perspective it must have been a frightening view: she was the one who must have suddenly found herself in the middle of the road possibly in the process of being killed. She must have been daydreaming rather than trying to race the amber light, for there's a roundabout and a curve on approach: racing the amber would have required a truckload of speed which was not indicated by her braking distance (sharp rocking, but no screeching or travelling). She was stationary by the time I reached her; if not, things might have been different.
So *many* things might have been different.
Rather to my surprise--in hindsight--I experienced no adrenaline rush, so it couldn't have been a very close thing really. I remember having time to contemplate and then reject the idea of beeping the horn. That was about the same time I noticed how shaken the middle-aged brunette female driver looked. While I was steering around her white 90s hatch. Perhaps it was one of those "everything happened in slow motion" moments.
I'm quite pleased, all up, although I'm now much more freaked out by what I might have run into coming from my blind spot. I prefer to look where I'm going.
In hindsight--pretty much the only kind you have time for following a road incident--it could have been Very Nasty Indeed. A second or two of spacetime, a bit more acceleration here, a bit less paranoia or road sense there, and I might have T-boned directly into the other driver at 70km/h.
The main bit of luck was that there was no-one on my flank, for I had time to swerve around the other car all the way into the next lane and back again, but not enough time to check my mirrors to see if anyone else was about to occupy that particular space at that time.
Actually, there were quite a few different bits of luck at play: it's a huge wide open dual carriageway intersection so there was room to move without running into oncoming traffic as well. I had room enough to see her fail to stop, and because the lights had just changed I wasn't travelling fast at all. The Catmobile is also low-slung and nippy; in fact she was purchased with Welshpool commercial traffic avoidance in mind (to possibly misquote Tim Powers, "AOP. Accelerate Outa Problems."). For all I know there *was* someone on my flank but everybody avoided each other so that's all right then.
I had enough time to see the face of the driver at fault, and she looked more than a little shaken. From her perspective it must have been a frightening view: she was the one who must have suddenly found herself in the middle of the road possibly in the process of being killed. She must have been daydreaming rather than trying to race the amber light, for there's a roundabout and a curve on approach: racing the amber would have required a truckload of speed which was not indicated by her braking distance (sharp rocking, but no screeching or travelling). She was stationary by the time I reached her; if not, things might have been different.
So *many* things might have been different.
Rather to my surprise--in hindsight--I experienced no adrenaline rush, so it couldn't have been a very close thing really. I remember having time to contemplate and then reject the idea of beeping the horn. That was about the same time I noticed how shaken the middle-aged brunette female driver looked. While I was steering around her white 90s hatch. Perhaps it was one of those "everything happened in slow motion" moments.
I'm quite pleased, all up, although I'm now much more freaked out by what I might have run into coming from my blind spot. I prefer to look where I'm going.
