Car Accident

Airbags. Broken windshield. Okay. Shaken, very shaken. Car seems mostly okay. Dealing.

[UPDATE: Okay, thanks to everyone who chimed in. It makes it somewhat more embarrassing to fill you in on the details -- this was a one-car-collision, folks. I've never claimed to be a particularly good driver but nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I was pulling in to my parking garage, way up on the eighth floor open air top level, and turned the last corner. As I turned I noticed I was going a little fast and made a decision to brake a little, and a split second later I noticed I wasn't slowing down the way I should have been. It's a little snowy and icy there and I thought maybe I was in a slightly icy spot so I braked a little harder as I turned into my space and then had a horrifying flash and realized I was accelerating just before I hit the concrete wall and the airbags went off in a blast of powdery chemical smell. It was the impact of the passenger side airbag that broke the windshield -- it didn't shatter, but it had a serious spiderweb. Those things have some real force -- I'd never experienced it before. Anyway I don't know if my foot slipped from the brake pedal to the gas (I'd just stopped at the dry cleaners a block or two away and could easily have had snow or ice on my dress shoes) or if my brain just directed the foot to the wrong pedal when it decided to brake. That's very scary to me, and I'd rather not believe it's the case, but it's hard to imagine my foot slipping from the brake to the gas. Both scenarios are hard to imagine.

Okay so I got out of the car all quavery and expected full frontal crumple and was amazed to find just the fender casing displaced and a little cracked. Whatever else my driving faults, I was lined up perfectly in the parking space so the license plate hit the wall first and the load of the impact was very symmetrical. I wondered if my car might be driveable after all. It sure seemed to be. So then I gingerly drove back down and out the parking garage, with deflated airbags and this sharp smoky smell in the car from their deployment, and made my way home, where I called in to work and wrote the entry and called my insurance agent (a buddy of mine, who's already given me the new nickname "Bump") and began dealing. I got to an auto body shop where a guy looked at the car, told me I shouldn't be driving it, laughed out loud when I wondered whether the damage would exceed my $500 deductible, and got started on the estimate. The word "thousands" was used, and my car is just a late nineties Honda, not some fancy thing. Lordy these airbags are expensive little windshield-breaking buggers. So I spent the morning talking to the insurance company and gradually the adrenaline that had all dumped into my bloodstream and my fraidy-cat fragility started wearing off and embarrassment about the whole incident started taking its place.

I got a loaner car from the auto body guys and came home, where I had to meet a boiler serviceman anyway. So I decided to work from home all day, which turned out to be totally unproductive because instead the boiler serviceman gave me an enlightening and horrifying education on just why I'm not getting acceptable hot water and the litany of all the other things that I'll be wanting, perhaps urgently, to think about replacing or repairing. The word "thousands" was used again, except this time there's no insurance....

If bad things come in threes I'm thinking I should stay indoors lest a piano fall on my head. On the other hand, a brief look at my calendar tells me that almost exactly a month ago we had the Breakup / Food Poisoning one-two punch. February is Accident / Boiler. I tremble to think about what's ahead for March. I can't take twelve months of this.]

Comments

[transmogriflaw]

Yikes!

I'm glad to hear you're ok, but I wish you hadn't had to go through it. :(

[Scipio]

Rough.

Sympathies.

Is your insurance company going to repair or total out?

[BlueRabbit]

Horrors. Glad to hear you're ok...I can still remember the shock of hitting that deer in Montana two years ago...hope there's someone nearby to give you a hug.

[ijk]

S. Glad to know things appear to be ok. I've gone through it too (which triggered research on and much love for airbags). The still recovering atty in me hopes you were not at fault *wry smile*. Talk with you soon. Best, ijk

[Jenny]

Oh no! I went through this in November. Hang in there- are you ok??

Jenny in Austin

[Prof. Bainbridge]

Gosh. Hope you and car recover ASAP. Steve

[Womanofthelaw]

Glad you're ok. Take the day off and have a stiff drink.

[Scheherazade]

Glad you're ok.

[Katherine]

hope you're okay!

[Matthew]

Glad you're OK, given how serious it sounds like it was (air bags? egad!)

[Richard Ames]

S- Why your airbag was so spunky: "[Air bag] inflation happens when there is a collision force equal to running into a brick wall at 10 to 15 miles per hour. The inflation system is not unlike a solid rocket booster. The air bag system ignites a solid propellant, which burns extremely rapidly to create a large volume of gas to inflate the bag. The bag then literally bursts from its storage site at up to 200 mph (322 kph)."

See, think of the whole experience as being very INTERESTING! (And here I thought nothing stressful ever happened in Maine.)

Glad you're okay.

[David Edwards]

Yargh, I've seen what the airbags do to windshields in my '97 Civic. Yeah, totaled it. Went to wreck yard, removed audio equipment. But, the car handled well: I just stepped outside.

Problem is the airbag was a surprise (and smelled bad), I couldn't see, and thus didn't hit the brake, which may've somewhat prevented the car from continuing sliding.