All the “What ifs” start to sink in
July 1st, 2008 at 09:01am
Following on from my car crash last night, all of the “what ifs” surrounding it have been running through my mind. I’m surprised that I managed to get any sleep last night with various parts of my body trying to punish me with pain.
Ultimately it was my own stupidity that caused that crash and I’m not going to try to diminish my responsibility for it. I am going to try to work through the “what ifs” though, so that I can try to understand what was going through my head at the time, and to help me learn from the experience.
After the crash it occurred to me that if I hadn’t managed to miss an appointment with a neurologist yesterday morning (which has since been rescheduled now that I have realised my mistake), I probably wouldn’t have had the money to pay for the tow truck. But what if I had gone to see the neurologist? Would I have then made my trip in to Weston once I was finished with the doctor? If so, would I still have crashed on the way home from Weston?
I believe that I would have gone to Weston and that I probably would have avoided the crash because:
1. The roads were dry at that time of the day.
2. With more traffic, I wouldn’t have been speeding.
Then there are the immediately more relevant questions:
What if I’d gone home a couple hours earlier rather than sticking around and going to the Weston Club for a while? (And before you ask, no, I wasn’t drinking…although I’m surprised that the Police didn’t bother to breath test me)
More traffic, and it was still raining at that time. I probably would have been driving slower…in fact the stupid thing is that I left Weston, drove around for a bit and went back, if I had just gone home, I doubt that this would have happened.
What if I had stayed in Weston for longer?
I doubt that it would have made a difference. I would have been driving just as fast, and the roads would have been slippery, not to mention the impossible winds on Parkes Way at the time. It probably would have been just as bad, if not worse.
What if I had a passenger at the time?
That might have saved me. I’ve noticed that I’m more cautious when I have a passenger than when I’m on my own. I knew that I was going too fast last night, and there is no way that I would have done that if I had a passenger in the car. With a passenger, I highly doubt that there would have been an accident to talk about.
OK, but what if I’d had the accident anyway?
The passenger would have come off worse than I did as pretty much everything that was loose in the car (eg the CD cases in the console, my mobile phone, my glasses which flew off my head, and even the dirt from the side of the road after the windscreen was pushed back a bit) flew in that direction. The structure of the body of the car survived, so the passenger wouldn’t have been too bad, but the debris flying in their direction could have done some serious damage. In fact it could easily have flown in the other direction and injured me.
There are more “what ifs” where they came from, but I’m going to wait until I’ve spoken with the Police today before I write any of them.
I should have known that yesterday was going to be weird from the moment that some drug-crazed nut interrupted me to babble about “gear” and “five dollars” before wandering off as quickly as they had appeared. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but I feel like telling the story anyway.
I’m lucky to be alive, but considering that I often struggle to feel safe in vehicles being driven by others, and that I don’t trust myself now (I’m still debating whether I ever want to drive again), I think I’ve just put myself in my very own psychological hell.
One day a time for now I suppose…and this one is not going to be one of my best.
Samuel
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