To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m posting this, except that I have to share it with some friends, and Facebook just feels too public. I also need to deal with this somehow, and maybe some of you have had similar experiences.
On Saturday 11th February I was driving from Devon to Essex to celebrate my cousin’s 60th birthday. I had my son alongside me, my wife in the back, and the iPod was on shuffle. It had been a good journey, and we were on the M4 not too far from London. I was in the middle lane, doing around 70, and about to overtake two cars, when the first car suddenly swerved towards us just as I was alongside….I instinctively swerved to the right to avoid a collision, and I was now heading for the central barrier and was swiftly turning sideways, so I managed to turn the car out of that, and now it was now fishtailing down the road and I was convinced it would flip over….somehow I managed to bring the car under control from that, and we carried on. The enormity of what COULD have happened soon sank in…if there had been a car to my right….if it had flipped over and had following cars plough into us….the affect on my family of the consequencial accident….suddenly all those incidents you see on the roads and on tv became horribly real and personal.
I was amazingly calm afterwards, and didn’t even stop, but I woke up last night sweating and reliving all the above, and I’m not sure how to deal with all of the thoughts around being so close to disaster.
Has anyone had a similar experience and had to deal with it..?
Phew. I’m glad to say nothing like that has happened to me but I am glad you are okay and able to relate the story. Get it out of your system and get back on the horse.
Glad you’re ok.
I escaped death by inches on my commute to work about 20 years back. I was driving down a dual carriageway doing about 60 mph when a huge juggernaut pulled out ahead of me to cross the carriageway left to right; he had failed to see me coming at all. Instinctively I realised that braking would be useless – I would just hurtle into the side of the lorry. I don’t remember making a decision to do this – no time to actually think – but I put my foot down and accelerated in front of the oncoming juggernaut. Somehow I passed in front of the nose of the lorry without making contact. I remember coming out in a cold sweat thinking about how close I had come to disaster and just continued on my way to work. The pellmell madness of the teaching day probably did me good as I didn’t think about it again until I got in the car to go home.
To be honest Nigel you clearly did all the right things last night. It was a bit of ace driving for sure, albeit largely instinctive, like my experience. I skidded on black once – ironically on that same dual carriageway – and must have done all the right things too to avoid vehicles, although I did end up stationary facing the wrong way! I discovered what hazard lights are for that day!
Give yourself a pat on the back. It was clearly the other car’s fault and you can give thanks you coped so capably. Life goes on.
I think it’s just delayed shock. You didn’t have time to “feel” it when it happened, so I think it’s just your body letting you know about that danger, once it feels the coast is clear, in case you hadn’t noticed!
On a lower level of terror – on a quad bike a few years ago, this rock jumped out from nowhere and I up-ended the bike. I was pinned to the ground with it revving away on top of me. I got out fairly easily I wasn’t too badly hurt, but I had been knocked about a bit. A couple of hours later at dinner I started shaking and quivering. I thought I was absolutely fine and relaxed…but a medic friend said that this was pretty normal. So I would say that experience you had was hopefully just a one off delayed shock reaction.
Definitely.
2 incidents for me. Only one worth repeating.
One late afternoon in summer 1978, I was front seat passenger in my friend’s VW Beetle travelling along a twisty minor A-road in West Wales, heading into town to visit my friend’s youngest daughter and his wife, who had been in the local hospital overnight after the little girl had been taken (not seriously, as it turned out) ill.
My friend’s tyres were rather bald and he took a sharp bend too fast and lost control.
We spun round in the road and hit a telegraph pole backwards, which snapped just above ground level and also about 8 feet up. We went flying through the space where the pole had just been (the top few feet remained, hanging on the wires) and through the wire mesh fence behind it.
The car rolled over and over down the field for about 100 yards before coming to rest right-way-up with a section of telegraph pole wedged underneath it.
Both of us were spark out for a few seconds and then came-to, relatively unharmed apart from whiplash, bruises and minor cuts. I was not wearing a seat belt, so it was lucky for me that we hit the pole backwards.
As soon as my friend regained consciousness he saw that his older daughter, aged about 5, was missing from the back seat of the car. There were no rear seatbelts.
He leapt out and ran back up the field and found her sitting on the grass verge at the side of the road, crying but with nothing worse than some bruises and a lump on her head. I staggered groggily back up after him. She had been thrown out through the back window when we hit the pole, the weight of her knocking the rear window out completely without breaking it.
We flagged down the next passing car and the driver took us to the hospital, where we were all checked over.
His older daughter was kept in overnight, but my friend and I went home by taxi.
For years afterwards I had whiplash-related problems with my lower back and neck. Now they seem to be OK, or have just blended in with my age-related aches and pains.
Crikey..
I love how you end on a complaint. 🎩
Once, in the morning after the new years eve the chains on my car’s wheels broke and my car began to slide on ice, it was on a mountain road, we got stopped from the big jump because of snow. i could have killed myself and my friends.I thought directly before the jump that there was stuff that
I haven’t done and that I would never do.
I continued a very calm life, just everytime I had a choice I would compare it to dying in a crash. That lead me never to miss a chance to shag and begin to learn anything I want (mostly languages) and travel to the places I wished to but never dared.
The other time I avoided death, I feverishly searched the reason why I made it alive.
I guess that the first time it happens ones can use it as a thrust, I still do. I hope that it helped you @NigelT
Wow! Casanova!!🎩🎩
I think it best not to wallow. What if this terrible accident before my eyes turns out okay and no one is injured?
What then?
Look at it this way, Nigel – at the moment when it was needed, you controlled the car, protected the family and prevented all the awful what-if’s that sneak into your brain when its got nothing better to think about. You did everything right and you probably will again. Tell your head to trust itself a bit more.
Exactly this. Wise words.
My only brush with this kind of thing was being wiped out by a Polish double-trailer artic lorry on the M25 on the way to a festival about 15 years ago.
My coping strategy was to go to the festival and spend 48+ hours absolutely off my tits. Sounds like it wouldn’t work, but it really did. Funny old thing, life.
Back in the mid-80s, I was a passenger in my mate’s car. We were heading north up the M1. It was not long before Christmas, so although early evening it was already dark.
We were in a steady steam of cars, in the outside lane.
I saw this car pass us on the inside. It carried on then pulled into the outside lane as well a few cars ahead. Seconds later it turned into the central reservation barrier, bounced off it went careering across all three lanes, started up the embankment, span through 180 degrees then rolled a few times.
On the motorway it was mayhem with cars swerving all over the place. I’m pretty sure there were no collisions. We certainly neither hit anything nor were hit.
We carried on in silence for about 20 seconds, when I said to my mate Andy, “You’re my hero”.
Another time on the M4, again as a passenger, we were the middle lane approaching an HGV which was on the inside, when an offside rear tyre on it exploded. There was a surprising amount of, what appeared to be, smoke but I guess it may have just been dust, while huge chunks of rubber flew everywhere.
It didn’t cause any damage to anyone as far as I could tell. It was the idea that if we’d been a few seconds ahead of ourselves and it had exploded as we passed that gave us food for thought.
Thanks everyone for the stories and thoughts. As I said above, I’m not sure why I had to post this, but it helped me to describe it to people – a bit of closure I suppose, a release in a way. I’m fine, getting on with doing stuff that might have been denied me and just thanking my lucky stars. Booked another gig – Spencer Davis doing an ‘evening with’ in Whimple, if you’re interested! – and planning our first ever Copredy, as well as probably going back to Looe in September (great event – stage is on the beach, so no mud!). Life continues too for my son and Mrs. T which is the main thing!