Incident, not ACCIDENT, Thank God!

You know how I was telling about me being accident prone in my last post and worried that things might get worse. So, I was extra careful all these days taking advice from all of you (Thanks everyone BTW). But then I can’t help it when someone else makes a mistake.

Yesterday, I was booked to get a massage at 6.00pm. So I left home at 4.30pm as I had to go through peak hour traffic. The time to travel to this place is normally 40 to 45 minutes from home but I thought I better leave early just in case.  And unfortunately, the traffic was so bad that it was 5.25pm and I was still on the highway. I was going so slow like 10km/hr that my GPS asked me twice if I want to switched to pedestrian mode. I was just hoping that I would be able to make it on time. I was looking at so many cars in front of me and hundreds behind me as well. There was no escape. As I was scanning the road and crawling through the traffic I looked at my rear view mirror. I saw the driver behind me and he was talking to someone in another car on the next lane while his car was still rolling. I knew even before he hit me that he was going to hit me but I couldn’t do anything. There was hardly any room in front of me to move. I felt so helpless. Then I just heard a BANG.

For a few second I was just shocked and I couldn’t do anything. My hands were shaking. I haven’t had an accident for a long time (touch wood). The only one I was in was a while back and I had to write off my car then.

For a while I was in a confused state but then I gained my composure, took my mobile and went out to see the damage. It was a bit dark already and the other driver was still in his car. I am not too sure what he was expecting or maybe he was in shock as well.

I was so proud of myself when I realised that I needed to take the photo of the other car and its rego if he decided to do a runner (the traffic was so bad even he wanted to, he couldn’t but I have heard about it so many times that I need to be smart). So I took the photo of the registration of the car first (thanks to smart phones these days). Also on the back of my mind I knew I was running late for my appointment for the massage which I might I have to cancel. Anyway I started assessing the damage on my car and to my surprise I couldn’t see even a scratch. It was a bit dark so I was not sure what to do and we were on the middle lane in the highway. We were holding up the already crawling traffic.

Finally the other driver came out of his car. He checked what had happened and apologised blaming the other driver who was distracting him for the accident. He was relieved that there was no damage.

Just to be safe in case I wasn’t seeing anything due to darkness, I asked if I can have his licence number or phone number. He was a bit hesitant. I told him I would not call him if things are ok but I just wanted to be sure nothing falls off while I drive home.  He said, “You can see nothing has happened” and tried not to provide his details. I told him I won’t contact him if there was no problems. I am sure he thought I was such a pain in the a** for asking his details when clearly he could see that no damage was done. I just wanted to be safe than sorry later so didn’t really care that he was annoyed. Anyway I pushed him harder and said I can wait for the cops to come or he can give me his details and we can go our own ways. So finally he gave me his mobile number.

While I was typing his number on my phone I decided to call the number right then to make sure he had given me the right number. I was glad when his phone started ringing. Finally we both got back to our car and were on our way. I am so glad there was so much traffic that we were literally crawling on the highway that even though the car hit mine, I was fine and so was my car.

I checked my car again in day light today and nothing was damaged . I am so glad that I don’t have to chase anyone up to fix my car. Also I made the appointment for my massage. I was in front of the shop by 6.05pm where my hubby was waiting for me. It was so great to get the massage after the whole ordeal and my 14km run on Sunday.  I am just happy that it turned out to be an incident only, not an ACCIDENT. I thank God for looking after me.