Perspective

I’m back, and Blog-Fast is over. I learned a few things (eg. never do another Blog-Fast) but tonight it doesn't seem to matter anyway: my sister J had a car accident yesterday afternoon and could have been killed. She wasn’t. She wasn’t. Thank all the gods in heaven, and anything else that might have helped. She’s okay, except in pain: stitches along a cut down her head, and sore ribs. Plus a grazed knee from where the front of the car got pushed in. I was over at her place with her kids till she and her hubby got home tonight, and we knew the basic details: another driver ran into her car, head-on, in a 60km zone**. We knew she’d probably be okay: taken to hospital in an ambulance, needing attention for cuts and bruises and an x-ray to rule out anything more serious. We heard from people who’d driven past her car that it looks like a wreck.

But it wasn’t until she got home that I actually felt what it meant: a car accident even at a slow speed can kill people. The front of the car smashed in and grazed her knee; if it had smashed in much further she'd now be dead. What are cars made of, that the whole front can get pushed back through the dashboard like that, at 60km? Sobering is not the word, but a better one is beyond me.

Drive carefully, reader. It's important.

UPDATE

In fairness to J's car, it didn't try to kill her. Regarding "the whole front can get pushed back through the dashboard like that" - in fact it didn't, and perhaps couldn't. The driver's side of the engine was smashed, not the whole front (so technically it wasn't a head-on? I'm not sure) but nothing was pushed back through the dashboard. What's it bloody matter? Well, yes. But it was a great little car, and not the bad-design monster I suggested. Sorry, car.

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**No details yet. The other driver has no memory of the accident and thinks he might have blacked out before crossing to the wrong side of the road. J only remembers seeing him driving straight towards her, as if he was doing it deliberately. He wasn’t seriously hurt.