My Near Fatal Car Accident

My Near Fatal Car Accident
Winter, 1990
Hazelton, PA

It rains and snows a lot in the Poconos. From October to March, we have some sort of weekly precipitation. That leaves us with some combination of  snow delay, snow cancellation or school closing. And after a while, like everyone else, I became blasé about the elements.

When I leave the Bloomsburg Mall at dusk, I don’t really notice that the temperature is dropping suddenly.  I don’t really bother to anticipate what is next.  It drizzled all day but the temperature is balmy for Feb.  It is above freezing so the air feels warm to me. I am on the highway (RT 80) for about 30 minutes now.  The sun is clearly gone for the day and the temperature is dropping quickly. I am with a pack of cars but I pull away from them. Now I am traveling alone.  The other cars are behind me.

All of the sudden, my car spins around and around in a circle for no apparent reason. The trees are whizzing by me just like in the cartoons.  I can’t figure out what is going on.  I apply the brakes but that seems to cause more spinning.  I step off the pedal and surge forward at great speed.  I see that I am going down an embankment.  My car comes to a jarring stop because it is now impacted in the embankment.  I jerk forward with a force that I have never felt before.  but I am not hurt. I sit for a moment to collect my thoughts.  I catch my breath and look around.  There is another car in the ditch with me.  There is no movement from inside this car.  Then I am interrupted by honk.  There is yet another car in the ditch.

“Are you alright?” a man shouts to me from his rolled down window.

“I’m fine,” I assure him, “Just a little shaken.”

“How about the other car?” he wants to know.

“Sorry. I haven’t checked on him.  I am a little self-absorbed right now.”

“I hear ya”, he tells me. He rolls up his window, waves and drives off to check on the other car.

I get out of my car and climb up to the road.  A woman shouts to me, “Get back in your car.”  Her voice is loud and filled with panic. “You are going to get killed”.  She is on the other side of the road and she is waving frantically at me. “Get back in your car, “she yells again.  I am so bewildered that it doesn’t even dawn on me that I am conversing with a woman on the other side of the road on a busy, major highway.  Then I look around and see 10 or more cars that have crashed and are idling on the side of the road. They have landed in a multitude of positions on the shoulder.

Then I get what the woman is trying to tell me. Get back in my car before yet another car loses control and chorines right into me. So I slide back in my car, but I am not feeling any safer.  What if a car comes barreling down the road and lands on top of me?  I attempt to move my car and much to my surprise, I am able to drive it.  I didn’t break the axle. I am able to drive to the top of the road.  By this time, all traffic has slowed down to a crawl.  This makes it easier to drive cautiously, given the uncertainty of the condition of my car.

Within ten minutes, all traffic comes to a complete stop. No one is moving. I assume it is another accident ahead and feel certain that we will begin to crawl again.  I am really anxious to get home. But I am mistaken. We don’t move again for hours. Many hours.  Ten hours to be exact.  And no emergency service personnel check up on us. And we don’t check up on each other. It is dark and cold and raining and slippery.  We all stay huddled in our own cars. We are all tried and worried about getting home safely.  So we have completely isolated ourselves to cope with our frustrations, worry and vulnerabilities.

We were stuck there with no food, no bathrooms, and no way to call and alert family members and alleviate these fears about our whereabouts. There is no word on when we would begin moving again. We sat isolated in our cars, filled with uncertainly about everything.

Not knowing how long we would be here, I worry about keeping my car in idle.   Would I run out of gas? And then I worry about turning the motor off. Would I be able to turn it back on? Had it turned on just now as a flux?  I know I had done some damage to my car. I hit the embankment with such an impact that I am surprised that I didn’t break the axle.  Was there serious damage to the engine?  I didn’t know what to do.  I had too many unknown variables to make a good decision. So I decided just to take a risk.  I turned the motor off and then quickly try to start it again. It clicks right on.  So I turn up the heat, full blast and warm up the car. Then I kill the engine. I find a blanket in the back seat and bundle myself up.  I sit in a cocoon for as long as I could, then I turn the engine back on and warm the car again.

I don’t have any food and I didn’t have dinner yet. So now I am hungry.  I purchased a big ass coke at the mall and drank all 44 oz. about an hour ago.  Now I really have to go to the bathroom.  My car is a compact car so there really isn’t enough room to be clever or creative. So I find a position, without any luxury of modest and relieve myself into my 44 oz. cup.  Now what do I do with 30 oz. of urine.  Well, I open the door and pour it out.  The heat of my urine sizzles on the iced road.

Around 430AM. There is some commotion and people start their engines. We all get out and scrap the slush off our windshields. I don’t know if someone heard something on the radio or is this just an example of us working like a herd of cattle, we are just following who is in front to of us.  But we seem all busy and getting ready to get going.  Then there is some movement. It is slow but it is consistent.  I didn’t care.  I am elated to be moving.  The shoulder of the road is scattered with abandoned, broken cars.

I get to my house about 530AM, twelve hours after I left the mall. As I am crawling in the bed, the phone rings.  It is my boss. School is closed today due to the ice.

“Don’t go outside if you don’t have to,” he warns me, ”it’s really bad outside.  I nearly slipped on my balls trying to get the paper.”

I don’t tell him about my accident.  I just want to go to sleep and when I wake up several hours later, I check on my car for the first time. I marvel that I ever made it home. It is banged up, the door is bent and the front grill is mangled.  My insurance agent tells me that car is damaged beyond repair and quite frankly, so am I.  I am nervous and jumpy and now unsure of myself as a winter driver.

I take my car to my mechanic and tell him that my agents offered me a settlement for my five year old car.   “Do you have enough money for a new car, he asks me. “Nope”, I sadly tell him.  I purchased this car two years ago as a used car.  The settlement won’t pay for what I still owe on it. For some reason, my mechanic takes on the challenge of the insurance agent’s meager settlement and he patches my car back to life.  Its resiliency brings new life to me.  Now I find myself bragging about the durability of my beat up old car and me.