The Crash

It started out as a normal day. Coffee, music, chatting. I drove down the same road that I take every single day to work. I passed each traffic light with ease, thanks to the early morning emptiness. The pre-rush hour calm lulled me into a false sense of security, as my grey Nissan Kicks cruised lazily along. I watched the car in front of me drive off from the green traffic light, and I followed slightly behind as the car beside me attempted to cut into my lane – of course with no regard for me already being there. Annoyed but hardly surprised, I began to slow, allowing him access. Acutely aware of the roadworks restricting my movement to the left, and already accommodating the obstruction in front, I seemed to be well prepared to flow straight across the junction to the next set of traffic lights.

A flash of white out of the corner of my right eye was suddenly in front of me. Too close to me. Everything stopped. My thoughts blurred. My words morphed into a scream. My foot instinctively found its way to the brake within a nanosecond, but it was not fast enough. I don’t know if I heard the crunch of my car or felt the jolt of the impact first, but it seemed as if several whole minutes passed before I connected what had happened.

“MY CAR, MY CAR, MY CAR!” I cried finally, my voice cracking as tears flooded my cheeks. I wrenched the door open, found my footing and lurched towards the truck that had impaled the front right side of my less-than-one-year-old car. The driver grinned at me nervously through his window, and I launched a useless tirade of abuse towards him. My first brand-new car that I had bought for myself 11 months prior was destroyed. I was destroyed. My brain reconnected for a moment, and I rushed to my friend, Alex. Was she okay? Yes, she was getting out of the car unharmed but dangerously close to the impact. If I hadn’t braked when I did, she might not have been walking out so easily.

My brain lagged. What was next? I needed to call the police. I needed to get out of the middle of the road, vaguely mindful of the cars trying to squeeze past the inconvenience we had caused. Alex said something about calling work to let them know I wouldn’t make it to my 7am class. I agreed, not fully conscious of what she was doing. The traffic police turned up just as my mum was reassuring me chirpily on the other end of the line – 250 kilometres away – that it would all be okay, knowing exactly what I needed to hear.

The traffic officer was clearly displeased that I had given him something to do on his shift so early in the morning. After him shouting and throwing me further into a state of panic, I found myself back in the car, trying to reverse my way off the truck’s frame as I shook and sobbed and screamed. I relinquished the impossible task to him, his mocking tone towards my defeat matching the emotional intelligence of a small child.

Alex’s husband arrived as extra support and backup transport. My car was towed, while the truck drove off unaffected. We all regrouped at the Serious Traffic Department, which was in serious need of a new building. We stepped through the empty doorframe into half a room, a plastic sheet hanging from the wall not even pretending to conceal the construction work in the other half – and doing nothing to mute the sounds of clanging, drilling, and banging.

While I waited inside for something to happen – no one seemed to know why we were there – Alex reported that the previously clear morning sky was now black, and a very big storm was brewing. I poked my head back out of the doorway into what looked like the apocalypse.

The longer we waited, the faster the wind picked up, the heavier the rain fell, the less secure the building felt as it leaked from every open corner, and the more I questioned why this had happened to me. I had done everything right. It should have been safe. My light was green. It should have been safe. There shouldn’t have been any hazards from that side. It should have been safe. But it wasn’t safe. All because someone decided to ignore the rules and risk our lives. He would probably go to prison, but honestly that didn’t make me feel any better. It couldn’t take away the damage already done.

The storm worsened and extreme floods took hold of the city, leaving the car stuck at the police station overnight (if it didn’t float away), and me to go home in a sort of limbo. I tried to make sense of my emotions, but all I could do was replay the horrific scene repeatedly in my mind. I kept trying to brace and avoid the impact, but instead I was crashing on a loop. Sleep evaded me as I awoke at the scene of the crime multiple times per hour, unable to fight the fear gripping every corner of my mind, every bone in my body.

I was a good person. I was happy and positive most of the time. The day before the accident I had been saying how great my life was. So why did I deserve this? How was it fair that someone else’s poor decisions dictated what happened to me that day, and consequently every day after that?

I did not know how long it would take me to recover. To be able to drive down that road again, to even get behind the wheel at all. To not panic at every traffic light junction. I don’t know how much time I lost replaying the trauma in my head. How many nights I cried myself to sleep, feeling helpless against the debilitating fear. But eventually I remembered that being happy was a choice, and no one was going to take that power away from me again. Anyway, it wasn’t all bad; I got another (better) brand-new car named Harvey, and the insurance money paid for my trip to New York, so I would definitely call that a silver lining.