Crash

The crash

All my neighbors said it sounded like a clap of thunder, real close. Not to me, as I was sitting on my deck around 11pm enjoying a cigar and glass of Scotch. I could tell immediately- from the tire squealing to the bang to the sound of rolling, crunching metal- that someone had just had an accident, half a block away.

I grabbed my flashlight and dashed up the street. My first thought was someone had hit a garbage can, since it was garbage day and plenty of bins were still out at the street.

It was dark, I couldn't tell what had happened. My flashlight exposed a black shape, and I realized that it was a car, upside down, leaning against the streetlight. That is why it was so dark. All of the bodywork around the engine had blown apart.

The man who lives in the house where the accident happened walked outside as I ran up; he was in shorts and a t-shirt. His wife had already called 911. There was debris everywhere in his yard- concrete, metal, glass. From the rear of the vehicle, I could see the airbags had all deployed and were hanging inside the windows. I couldn't tell how many people were inside.

I am not ashamed to say that I felt great fear going up to the window and looking in. I recalled the shock and scare movie we watched in driver's ed called Mechanized Death, grainy videos of car crashes from the 80s, and some of the victims. Getting down on the passenger side, I couldn't see clearly what was in there due to one of the side curtain airbags hanging over half the window.

We were still the only two people on the scene, but I figured we should try to get the door open in case there was a fire. We grabbed the door and wrenched it open, bending it near the hinges because it was partly stuck in the ground. And then we saw the feet, and the legs and up popped the complete man out of the door!

Seemingly unharmed, we moved him away from the car and I talked to him, seeing if he was hurt, which by all indications he wasn't. An older man, but not elderly, neatly dressed, he looked like a doctor, which perhaps he is. He had already called his wife, while he was hanging upside down by his seatbelt. There were no other passengers. I clapped him on the shoulder and told him how happy I was to see he was ok, and I meant it!

The sequence of the accident was now clear. He had been driving down the street at a speed that I wager was too fast. Where the road bends to the left, there is was a standing mailbox made of concrete and metal right on the boulevard- we are one of those suburbs where all the mailboxes are contained in this central one, so it is a big structure, with a second parcel box next to it. The driver failed to make the turn, hit the mailbox at an angle, rolled the car and stopped against the streetlight pole.

The parcel box, lying 20 feet from the crash. 

Now the neighbors started wandering over. Several of them recognized the driver, who in fact lives nearby and was driving home. The cops and fire department rescue crews arrived shortly afterwards.

All told, the crash went about as well as possible for the driver. The front end was completely destroyed, but the passenger compartment was intact, and even the roof didn't crumple as it sat upside down. There was no fire. He was wearing his seatbelt. The car didn't crash into the house. The surge of adrenaline I experienced had turned into a spirit of elation once it was clear nobody was hurt. "God bless Mercedes-Benz!" I said to one of my neighbors, as we chatted about the lucky escape the driver had made.

After standing around for a while watching the firemen and police working, we all sort of wandered back to our homes. I was pretty keyed up, so I resumed my cigar. Way past midnight, closer to 1am, I finally felt tired enough to sleep.

My wife had slept through the whole thing.