By PHILIP WINTERSTEIN, Staff Reporter.
Snow had started falling on a late fall afternoon. I pulled out of the college’s entrance on Delta Rd. and began to head for Bay Rd. No one was driving particularly fast—ten or fifteen miles below the speed limit. I was following a few cars, the closest being 50 or more yards ahead of me. I watched red lights ignite on either side of that car and, naturally, applied the brakes to my car. It took five seconds for me to lose control.
The rear of my car swerved right while the front slowly drifted into the other lane. A few seconds later, after a profuse amount of ‘NO’s, each one louder then the next, I had done a 180 degree spin and crashed into a power line pole.
I couldn’t believe any of it. The sight of losing control while heading for a wooden pole at 40 miles an hour, the sound of the glass of the front passenger door smashing in blowing glass in my face. My first car crash. It was a nightmare that lasted for seconds, and now I won’t be the same driver in winter conditions again for a while.
After getting out of the car, checking another Delta student who similarly did a 180 into a ditch just across the road from me, and stepping into an ambulance a few minutes later, I was on my way to the ER.
“What’s your name? Where are you? Emergency contact? Hospital?”
Eventually my parents met me in the ER, and they put some things in my mind at ease with much needed good news.
“Insurance will pay for this and that. At least you didn’t hit the oncoming traffic. It’s a good thing you didn’t end up buying new tires. At least you’re alive. Unharmed.”
Every one of those was true. I could have gone the other direction off the side of the road, and with scattered driveways separated by lengthy expanses of ditches the outcome could have been a lot worse. I didn’t hurt anyone else and somehow I walked away from a totaled car without a scratch. My family and I still laugh about the tires I, thankfully, never bought.
There are two lessons to be learned in any story regarding dangerous mishaps on the road. One is to be cautious and responsible as a driver. Texting, eating or drinking, and sometimes even listening to music is a distraction. I will always be thankful that even though I was a cautious driver and still lost control that I didn’t hit anyone along the way.
The second lesson is to be thankful for what does or doesn’t happen. My accident, admittedly, was caused on my own. I was going too fast when the conditions on the road had gotten icy. Now I go 30 in a 55, and I have no intention of speeding up anytime soon.
To faculty, students, family, friends: drive safely. Not for your sake but for everyones. For someone who just had his first accident, it isn’t fun. And I can’t imagine how much worse I might have felt if I was injured, or more importantly, if I injured or even killed someone else. It took five seconds for me to lose control. It can take a lot less, and it can cost a lot more.
