An Almost Accident

Tuesday May 11th, 2010 - Lake Villa, IL

I’ve had a healthy helping of spectacular car crashes in my life, and today I just missed another by a margin so close I still can‘t believe it. If that wasn‘t a miracle, I don‘t know what is. I thought for sure I was going to die and I had to pull over to let my heart recover.

My bank is located on Highway 132 in Lindenhurst, IL or maybe Lake Villa. I know it’s one of the two, but I’m not exactly sure where the border is. It’s next to a strip mall where a lot of people heading east make left turns to get to the stores there. It’s often a hassle for people who want to go straight and they dart around the turning cars. It’s very dangerous.

There are a lot of minivans and cell phone blabbers in the area and I’ve seen a lot of bad driving on that particular stretch. The speed limit is posted 35, but very few come close to obeying it, even though there’s a police station just a few blocks down the road on 132.

It isn’t an uncommon occurrence to come out of the bank and observe a fresh car wreck in the process of being cleaned up off the road. People can’t seem to handle the left turns in combination with the cell phones, texts and whatever else they’re doing while driving.

I stopped at the bank today and was thinking about a million and seven other things as I drove east on 132, trying to catch up with the flow of traffic. I’d glanced away for a half a second and looked back to see there’d been a chain reaction wreck when a minivan turned right to avoid someone turning left. It blocked the whole road and I stomped on my brake.

I had a split second to decide whether to slam into the car that slammed into the van, or opt for door number two and take my chances by swerving into the oncoming lane to miss it but possibly get hit by oncoming traffic, which I was unable to see because it was being blocked by a pickup truck that had also managed to get into the wreck. It was a big mess.

I chose to take my chances and swerved to the left, not knowing what was there. That’s similar to what I did last December on an icy road up in Wisconsin and an oncoming car hit me square in the hinder at about 60mph. That wasn’t pleasant, and I hoped it wouldn’t happen again today. It’s funny how time slows down, and I was coherent through it all.

My swerve was successful, but there was traffic coming the other way and I had to gun it past the accident and then over into my lane again. I narrowly escaped getting hit and it made my heart jump up into my throat because it all happened so fast. I just missed being a big part of the festivities and that’s the last thing I need right now. I caught a big break.

I’m not going to try and analyze anything, but this was really a close call. If there was a car coming closer in that oncoming lane, I’d have hit it head on, probably about 45 miles an hour. All kinds of unpleasant possibilities could have happened, but today I dodged it.

The funny thing is, I just had my oil changed yesterday and filled up with gas. I’d have lost that money too. It’s happened before. Often. Maybe my luck is changing for the good.