An old school friend invited me to his engagement party somewhere near Birmingham. So off we went in a nice German car (I'm always impressed by German engineering) that weighs about two tons. We are on the motorway for no longer than 20 minutes when we notice we are pulling up on the car in-front at an alarming pace.
As I see smoke coming from the tyres for the car in-front, I realise that this is an emergency and he's probably reacting to the car in-front of him trying, ever so hard, not to hit it. He failed; and as he slams into the car in-front of him, my big concern was weather we will be able to stop before we slam into him.
Alas, we failed and with a 'thud' we come to a complete stop. This is where the German engineering really came into it's own, the breaks on this car seem to break the laws of physics as when the car behind us slammed into us (at a decent speed), we didn't budge an inch; that is to say the car didn't budge an inch, we were thrown forward and caught sharply by the seat belts.
The last two car accidents I've been involved in have left me unmoved, I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing but so long as I'm not hurt, I'll get out of the car and carry on as usual. I asked my friend if he was ok than stopped out of the car. The guy in-front of us seemed fine, the family behind us (though the father was `f'ing and blinding`) seemed fine as well. The front of their car was completely obliterated, unrecognizable, that really made me thing. If the kids weren't in car seats for if the parents weren't waring their seat belts, given the force of the crash, someone would have gone through the windscreen so I was quite thankful that they were all ok.
The lady in the front car was the most shaken up so I spent a few minutes chatting to her while the ambulance and police arrive (standard procedure for a motorway crash). The police arrived and everyone swapped insurance details, the cars were dragged off the road. Given the amount of twisted metal in-front of us, it's a testament to the car manufacturers that no one was badly injured.
It's at this point I should mention that Newton's first law was well and truly adhered to as, when the seat belt caught me, my head did go through what they call “rapid acceleration and deceleration”. In short, my neck is killing me (no worse than a heavy session at the gym).
We made it to the party though, five hours late but we made it!
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4 comments:
Glad you're (mostly) okay. Can't believe you still went to the party though!
Fuck, Josh, that's awful! Are you sure you're okay? When Graham and I had our car crash (that makes us sound like a couple - we're not) we were shaken up for ages afterwards. Hope your neck's feeling a lot better now.
i'm glad you walked away from it - after all, i need my RMOAJ fix.
its fair to say i wouldnt have fared the same had my corsa been involved in that bumper to bumper kiss!
Thanks guys! I'm fine, the pain's all but gone now and at no point during the weekend did I reach for the pain killers.
I think like all things of this ilk, a lot of it is down to luck, where your body is at the point of impact and such. I was facing forward but it's quite possible that if I was looking to the left or right, I'd be in a neck brace now.....
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