Nov. 17, 2011

An adventure on the way home from work.

Well I had an accident on the way home tonight from work. I was very blessed in that I got out of the car as soon as I came to a stop. I was coming toward the intersection of Maple and 1600 West (by the Conoco and Model A Cafe) when a truck pulled out in front of me trying to cross from the west side to the east onto Maple. He was driving a chevy truck that was made to carry glass on the sides as you can probably envision. Well I looked at my options in the fraction of a second that I had before certain impact. Having had this happen once before in my life I only hoped that I could be as blessed ( I was going to say lucky but I know better). So I swerved to the right since the truck appeared to be moving forward and going left would have put me right into his cab, a place I didn't want to be since I wasn't really that excited to meet him that way. Well as I went right I went into a slide and was not able to get around him but because I was pushing on the brakes the front end of the car was slanted well toward the ground. So I went under the very back end of his truck breaking off about 2 and a half feet of a piece of 2x10 board that was used to walk on while loading the glass. I was glad that I was in the saturn since it was built low to the ground on the front end and thus went clear under the truck and as you will be able to tell from the following picture it actuall slid the truck off of the car before it went through the windshield where I was sitting. Yes, I was truly blessed, far better than being lucky.

Here is just a note to put into the back of your brain so that it becomes an instinct rather than something you have to think about when the situation comes up. The investigating officer told me that I had made the right choice by veering to the right and not the left. Now why would that matter, well going to the left would have put me into the traffic which was quite active since it was when everyone was on their way home. The traffic was very heavy. Once again I was not lucky I was blessed.

Written Nov 17, 2009. It was on my blog: mytreasuredphoto.blogspot.com

Another note:  Written Dec 13, 2009

Maybe today should have been a Friday the 13^th as all the rest of the world sees it but not me. Today started out with Marie riding to BYU with me so that she could have the car to come later after going to our home ward to listen to Jeff and Brittany speak.  It had snowed a little last night and was almost raining as I shoveled the sidewalk.  Then the drive over at 6:30 A.M. was pretty slick to say the least. On her way home Marie was almost unable to drive the car up the hill out of Springville into Mapleton.  The roads were not a lot better when she went back over at 1:oo P.M. However on the way home tonight the roads were fairly dry and driveable THANK GOODNESS because as I approached the intersection at 400 South and Main in Springville with a Green light for my lanes of travel I had to stomp on the brakes as a young lady made a left turn from the opposite direction of travel right in front of me. Marie then looked at me and said WHY YOU?. Again we were blessed in the fact that the roads were dry enough that my stomping on the brakes didn’t turn into a sliding experience right into the passenger side of the young ladies car.