Thread: Near misses

There was a period in my late adolescents and mid twenty's the point at which a huge number of mates shockingly kicked the bucket and various them through vehicular mishaps - came to the heart of the matter you thought when me.

Here’s one for ya:

I was driving along northbound on the Vibhavadi-Rangsit elevated expressway earlier this year, Sunday afternoon, nice weather, heading to golf, listening to some tunes and life is all good. Just cruising in the middle lane slower than usual as I was strangely ahead of time and suddenly a tiny Mazda (1 or 2..) flies past on the inside doing perhaps 130-140kmh, as it passes it already looks like it is losing control and misses my car by a couple of feet, then the front suddenly kicks out sending it into first the right hand wall, then bounces back just in front of me, slams the left side wall and then rolls 5,6,7 times, nearly goes over the barrier (would have been a hell of a long fall..) and all this happening like a movie in slo-mo with glass, metal flying and screeching everywhere all around me as I am breaking furiously. I stopped my car about 50yards down the road, damn shaking and automatically I got out and started walking / running towards what was left of the Mazda, mentally was trying to gear myself up for dealing with bones, blood, death and carnage.

The car had ended up on its wheels pointing the wrong way trapped halfway up the wall and was making a nasty sound from the engine and radiator, there being no hard shoulder the other cars flying past where hitting shards of stuff and throwing it around, was a extremely dodgy environment with other vehicles passing very fast and close and no one else stopping. As I got to the car I was ringing my wife frantically as I didn’t know the right number to call to report and emergency, shame to say that but I never needed to before, and of course my wife spending most of her time on her mobile didn’t answer! At first I banged on the glass as couldn’t see in and saw some movement from inside, breaking part of the frame and window then I could force the door open and absolutely amazingly, there inside is a young teenage girl, totally shaken, staring like she’s seen a ghost, screaming then gasping and trying to use her phone to call someone- she obviously doesn’t know where she is but I slowly realise that she is basically unhurt! no gashes, slashed arteries, broken neck, nothing! I can’t even see a single scratch! I tried to calm her down and decided it was best she stayed in place so asked her name, her age, where she was going and she started to talk rapidly and confused in Thai asking me what happened, did she hit my car, who was I and that earlier that day she had hit something hard on her front wheel but thought nothing of it.. that seemed to make sense as certainly something sudden and strange happened with the car to make it veer off so sharply.

Finally a Driver of a government minivan stopped up the road with his emergencies on, that really helped to reduce the traffic speed and move people further away from the wreck, he had a walkie talkie and I could hear he had already called in an ambulance and the cops, he looked very non-plussed and probably had seen similar many times over but was also as shocked as me that this girl was a-ok! After a while I could leave as in haste my car was slightly blocking an exit and it was apparent that I could not add much value there anymore, the girl, still bamboozled took my number and later I asked my wife to call her and check she was still alright, she was much bruised and in pain coming out of shock but otherwise cleared by the Docs to be fine! A very very lucky first time driver indeed. As for me, for the rest of the day I still had matrix-style replays of the crash going through my head as I tried to putt a stupid ball into a stupid hole.

Morals of the story I learnt; make sure you check out any damage properly on your car (she of course was very inexperienced but worth to tell the youngers..) and know your local emergency numbers people, you never know when you will need em!

191 - Police and General
1669 - Emergency Services