My 1st Car Crash

Call it a car crash, a car wreck, or an accident. Whatever you wanna call it, my first car accident was a scary one. So, let’s get to the point, you wanna know what happened – I got it. So, here’s the story.

Oh, before I start this, this is almost two weeks old, but just not got around to actually writing this out.

The Crash

I was on highway 75, this was right before Royal Lane exit. The roads were dry, but it was cold outside; it was November 22nd, Thanksgiving Day. I was on my way to work, since I was scheduled on Thanksgiving and I work at an “Essential Operations” type of business, so to me, it was a normal day. I was in what you could call the middle lane. Highway 75 is a four-laned highway, with various “exit only” lanes here and there. We were all maintaining the healthy speed limit of 60MPH. There was a car or SUV in front of me (really can’t remember; everything happened so fast). Out of nowhere, he swerved into the third lane (to the left), revealing a huge tired, with a rim. If you have ever driven a truck, you will know that a car can swerve out of the way and still keep from losing control, a truck, not so much. I truck is not necessarily “top heavy”, but the weight sure isn’t proportional. My right-front tire clipped the random tire in the middle of the road. This is where it all started. Traffic was moderate – not heavy, but it was quite busy for it being Thanksgiving holiday. My truck lost control due to clipping the tire in the middle of the road. My truck fishtailed to the right, where I gained about 1/2 a second of control back on the truck, when it fishtailed to the right, when I uncontrollably sent into the two (to the right), where another car tried to get away from me, ended up right in the path of my truck (he should have just slowed down to avoid me). I hit him on his left side, causing me to shatter his windows. This is the scary part. The fact that the truck was still doing a good amount of speed (remember, if you do not have control of the vehicle, the worst thing you can do is slam on your brakes) and the fact that when I hit the car on the front-right side of my truck, this pushed the front part of my truck to turn. I did a 180 in the middle of the highway (lane 2 to the right), causing me to slide backwards, while at the same time, watching traffic come towards me. From here, I had no way of gaining control back of the truck. For all that it was worth, someone could have been playing the song “Jesus, Take the wheel”, since I really couldn’t do anything, but let this take the course of action (don’t worry, I never let go of the steering wheel). While sliding backwards, I was still probably doing about 45MPH, when the highway sidewall stopped me as I slammed into the side of the highway wall and my airbag had deployed. Smoke poured into my truck, and for about 5 seconds there, I really didn’t know what had just happened. I guess I was in a little state of shock. I looked out my door, and found that all types of oil, antifreeze, windshield wiper fluid, transmission fluid, and whatever else goes in the front of you truck came pouring out.

I have to admit something. The ambulance, firetruck, and two cop cars were there within 3 minutes of the wreck. Not too shabby.

Life Lessons

This has been a learning lesson for me. Not one of “don’t speed” (cause I wasn’t speeding), or “look before you change lanes” (since I wasn’t changing lanes). Nope, I have been learning about why insurance pays off. First off, I want to say this: I have Allstate Insurance, and they ROCK. They have been there for me throughout this whole ordeal and have taken care of pretty much everything, and that is what they are suppose to do. Truth is, I’m lucky. The paramedics told me I was extremely lucky that I was able to walk away from the wreck without any issues, much less without a scratch on my body. So, now you probably want to know a little bit about the truck’s condition, whether it’s totaled and whatnot.

How did you feel afterwards

Actually, I was in so much shock, that my brain had to catch up. I never really believed the whole “you’ll feel something the day after the wreck”. It’s so true. I might not have had a scratch on my body, but I ached in places I didn’t know existed. My neck was killing me for a few days as well, but that only lasted for a few days, probably some form of whiplash. However, my leg hurt, too. I think I might have hit it on my dash or the steering column. It still hurts, and there’s actually a knot and a big brush on my leg – actually it’s my shin. Anyways, as you can tell, I’m doing alright.

How’s the truck doing and was it totaled?

The truck was not totaled, which was a big surprise to me. See for yourself, that the damage was pretty bad. Allstate did a quote on my vehicle, and I don’t want to really give away actual numbers, so I’ll just say this – they wrote me a check for an amount that exceeds $10,000. Currently the truck is being worked on and I await to hear anymore information regarding it. So far, there are no additional issues with the truck, but they haven’t taken the whole thing apart yet. What I do know that they are going to be repairing are the real left side panel of my truck (it hit against the wall as well), the whole major front-end of my truck, and the running boards (these are the stepping things that help us short people get into a high-rised vehicle.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my Vacation.