Auto Follies

The first automobile accident that I participated in happened on the 4th of July in 1967. My mom was driving us home from a fireworks show in our old red and black Rambler Station Wagon. The man behind her was spending too much time watching the fireworks and not enough time watching the road. No one was injured and the Rambler survived with a few dents and scratches. His insurance company was so relieved to find that my mother was not asking for more than the cost of repairing the car that they paid for our family to visit Disneyland.

Accident number two occurred several years later. After work my mother had picked us up from our grandmothers. On the way home she noticed that in the distance a car was veering into our lane. She slowed down and guided her car (a Cadillac) towards the side of the road. The oncoming car veered farther into our land and my mother continued to slow down and moved all the way on to the dirt shoulder. All her maneuvering was to no avail the car still hit us almost head on. By this time both cars were going rather slow and fortunately once again no one was hurt. The one humorous aspect of the event happened when my stepfather came to pick us up. While checking on the car a police office approached him and proceeded to explain that his "daughter" (my mom, his wife) was going to be just fine.

My first accident as a driver occurred when I was returning home after completing a twelve-hour shift at the restaurant I was working at. I was exhausted. Besides the work schedule the previous day I had just returned from a three-day camping trip in which I had very little sleep. All I remember is turning onto Norumbega which was just blocks from our house. Elton John was on the radio and before I knew it I was fast asleep. I was rudely awoken by my '63 Valiant plowing head on into a parked car, my car was totaled and the other car was damaged but salvageable. I was not hurt just a few bumps and bruises both to my body and my ego.

My next accident as a drive happened on the way to work at one of the worst freeway interchanges in the country. To merge onto the 10 east you must as a driver deal with commuters merging on to the 605 south from the 10 west. There is on average an accident a day at this interchange. In my case I was on my way to work and was part of a five-car pileup that occurred when the first driver stopped short. No one was hurt and my new/old '63 Valiant was the only car to drive away from the wreck.

The next accident I was involved in happened while my best friend was driving. We were just blocks from his house and for some reason when we came to the last intersection he kept going even though the light was red. We made it passed the south bound traffic without incident and we would have been fine if we had remained at the center divider but he kept going and we were broad sided by a north bound car. We spun completely round and the car came to rest against a telephone pole. The impact occurred on the passenger side of the car caving in the door and badly bruising my ribs. Fortunately that was the only injury I suffered.

The last accident I was in occurred in October of 1988. It was the day after the Dodger's won their last world series. I was merging onto the freeway on my way to work. The Eagles were playing on the radio and all was right with the world. Unfortunately disaster was just a few hundred yards ahead. The other driver was having mechanical difficulties and as his forward movement was coming to an end he tried to cut completely across rush hour traffic. He almost made it. I hit him going about fifty miles and hour. My pick up truck spun completely around and ended up two lanes over but facing in the same direction I had been heading. I banged up my knee and developed a touch of whiplash but as in all of the car accidents I have been a part of nothing important was hurt. My truck however was totaled.

It has been sixteen years and counting since that last accident, knock on wood, hopefully that was my last.