Skip to main content

Another Car Accident

I've had my share of car accidents recently. Two years ago I side-swiped a car that had been abandoned on an inner lane of I-40, seeing it after the car in front of me changed lanes abruptly and reacting as fast as I could at 65 MPH.  Last November I hit two deer nine days apart.  This past Friday my daughter had a car accident.

First the important thing: she was checked out thoroughly at a nearby hospital and while in some overall pain has no specific trauma from the accident. She was alone in the car and no other car was involved.

Her car skidded off the road near her apartment into a ditch. Another driver stopped and stayed with her as she called 911. EMT's took her to the hospital to be checked out and the police filed a report.

Before going to the hospital she called the family friend she was on her way to visit who met her at the hospital and stayed with her until my wife arrived. (Both my wife and I have hour commutes and this was mid-afternoon.) I am able to text hands-free in my car and as I was heading to her my wife assured me that dealing with the car would be best so I agreed to go and get it towed out of the ditch.  

It took a while for me to find the car; I had a rough description of the area but it is a desolate stretch of road, near a curve, with no shoulders. (Back around 2000 or so I had hit a deer there---no shoulder to veer on and oncoming traffic in the other lane; I don't drive that road at night any more if I can avoid it.) I found it before the sun went down, then drove around looking for a safe place to park my car, settling on a side street about half a mile away.

When I was young I used to hike around cities more and have some sense of how to safely hike along roads; this one was treacherous as there are no shoulders, high weeds, and ditches you don't always see because of the weeds. I brought a good strong flashlight with me from my car and walked along the road facing traffic, stepping into the weeds whenever a car passed.

My experience with AAA that evening was not good. For two hours after contacting them I was assured that once they found a tow truck driver they would give me an estimate any minute. (It was a Friday evening at that point and not surprising in retrospect that they would be in short supply.) I would rather they had given me an honest estimate and I would have said I'll try again tomorrow morning. After standing in the darkness in the weeds leaning on a car in the ditch I canceled my request and repeated my hiking along an isolated road in complete darkness except for my flashlight back to the side street where I had parked my car. (I should note that about 15 or so drivers stopped when they saw me by the car to ask if I needed help. I like my community.)

By that point my wife said that they were finishing up at the hospital and that I should just go home.

The next morning AAA was very prompt (I had shared some strong feelings about the value of my AAA membership with a dispatcher the previous evening) and the car was pulled out of the ditch. We do not yet know the extent of the damage. The front fender was pulled loose in getting the car out of the ditch but is still attached to the car. There may be undercarriage damage; we'll find out this coming week and either work with insurance or take care of it ourselves for our daughter depending on what we find out.

Afterward my wife and I spent some time with our daughter, who is still very achy but otherwise okay.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Accountability

Mathematics as a discipline teaches accountability. Every claim, whether it be a computation result or a statement (theorem) about how things work is accountable. We teach this accountability developmentally, with lower expectations at the beginning, and sometimes folk who study mathematics casually don't understand this. In my multivariable calculus classes, which I teach most frequently, I usually phrase my expectations as "give me a reason to believe your answer", citing my time working at an investment bank where my recommendations had financial repercussions and my supervisor never took my word for anything. In higher-level mathematics classes such as Abstract Algebra or Analysis I can be more explicit: these are the things we all agree to assume, these are the proof techniques which we understand; can you make an argument that convinces the community who have accepted those axioms and rules of inference that what you claim is true? We work hard to remove the ego fro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Contents of Most Recent Email to NC Senators

 Sent to Senators Tillis and Budd of NC this morning: My uncle was a police detective in Philadelphia before he retired. He showed his face and his badge to all he talked to on the job; he gave his name and business card to the public he served. This is what law enforcement officials have done in this country as policy until now; what if anything has changed?   The violent thugs serving in ICE are not law enforcement. They do not protect and serve; they attack and refuse to identify themselves. They are a paramilitary force responsible only to President Trump and his minions, who reflexively desecrate the memory of their victims. All dishonor themselves daily, all lack integrity. Immigration is a serious issue. Using brutal thugs to deal with it is like using a chainsaw to remove an appendix. The appendix may need to come out but using a chainsaw is a silly solution that kills people. It is painful to think of all the children incarcerated by ICE. It is unthinkable to all...
Post a Comment
Read more