Close Call!

Close Call!

For once I am glad to be at my desk, in my little bunker, in darkest Walsall. This morning the sun is shining and reflecting off the yellow hard hats of the street workers midst the myriad roadworks, and, it is beautiful. For I have just survived a near death experience. An accident on the M6, around junction 15.

It was just last week that I was bemoaning my commute to work and the terrible driving that I had witnessed. Well, today was a shave too close for my liking. The last two mornings have been a little dodgy due in part, I believe, to the cold, icy mornings, and the bright sunshine. The winter sun is very low in the sky and there are certain stretches on the motorway where it catches drivers unaware. They are suddenly dazzled, blinded and yank on their brakes. Consequently the motorway goes from the national speed limit (or above) to zero in the briefest of moments.

Consequently, I do try and leave a sensible gap between me and the car that I am following. I also hope that the car behind me will attempt to do likewise.

Well, this morning I was tootling along in the outside lane (I am advised by the more politically correct members of the office that we shouldn’t refer to it as the “fast lane”) when, all of a sudden, the traffic in the middle lane slowed significantly. Without warning and without signalling a white panel van pulled out in front of me, and a Vauxhall Vectra pulled out behind me. The panel van had been travelling at a slower speed than I was and he immediately hit his brakes. I reacted instinctively and jammed my brakes on, making an emergency stop just as the white van ploughed into the car in front of it.

Unfortunately there was not any time for my life to flash before my eyes as I braced for the impact ahead and behind. I do remember thinking that it was rather sad that one of my very last images could be the words “Please clean Me” finger-painted on the van’s rear doors as my head made rapid progress towards the windscreen. I had a brief memory of an article that I had read during some driving awareness course or other which described the last thirty seconds of someone’s life as they were involved in a fatal car crash. It hurts apparently.

But there was a minor miracle. Praise be the engineers at Audi. In particular, those in charge of brakes on the TT. I was able to stop with millimetres to spare. I was able to keep the car in a straight line. The car behind me had swerved back into the middle lane to avoid hitting me.

The panel van had ripped the back end off the car which it had hit, pushing it into the middle lane. But somehow the driver of the car was sufficiently unhurt or so high on adrenalin that he was able to leap from the wreckage and drag the white van man out of his seat for a bout of fisticuffs, until he was dragged off him by the driver’s three other mates. Road rage, but understandable given the circumstances.

How I was not hit and how I stopped in time I will not know. My guardian angel was truly alert this morning. Fortunately, the hour long queue between junctions 11 and 10 gave me sufficient time to calm down and count my blessings. The coffee is beginning to kick in now, so all is well.

Drive carefully out there!