my car accident

When I was 17, my uncle got me a car for Christmas. It's actually kind of a funny story, because he neglected to tell my parents that he did it, until the week before:

"Oh, yeah, do you want to see your daughter's car?"
"Wait, WHAT!?"

Eric is hilarious, because he's really brilliant, but really absent minded and distracted sometimes. He's basically the most adorable man, ever. We started getting really close when I was 15 and his wife committed suicide. He always loved me, I know - but we started spending a lot more time together, and I think he started to see me as old enough to really talk to.

Anyway, (to go back to the topic at hand) I loved that car. It was a 2000 Ford Focus, 2-door hatch back, dark blue. I was SO SURPRISED. Like, literally, I lost power of speech and simply stared at the keys that were in the box he gave me to unwrap. He took me outside, and there it was - with the token, red ribbon on top. As spoiled as I felt, for getting a car as a gift, it was actually really necessary. I didn't go to school in my town, because my town didn't have a high school. My parents drove me to and from school every day, because there was no way to walk there. I was pretty involved in high school, and all of my friends, of course, lived in the town we went to school in - so as I got older, I ended up having to drive myself (and everyone else, as I was one of the first with a license and a car) around all the time. I really liked that I could use it to drive to my volunteer job at the pediatric facility (a live-in medical facility for medically fragile children) every Friday - and go afterward sometimes to meet up with Eric for dinner.

I have to now admit, I wasn't the best driver. I didn't think so, at the time, of course, but I now know this to be true. I got careless, I got cocky. I mean, I was an 18/19 year old - nothing was going to happen to me, right? I often drove too fast, was distracted while I drove, occasionally talked on my cell phone... ate while I drove. (I kind of got to be a pro at that last one, since I often didn't have time to eat lunch during normal-person hours during my job in the summers.)

Actually, the day I totaled the car, I wasn't doing anything stupid. My music wasn't too loud, I wasn't on the phone, I was paying attention - I was getting gas on the way home from work. My last day for the summer. The gas station was right near an intersection, and I needed to make a left turn (and cross an additional left-turn lane) to be heading in the direction I wanted. The light was red and the person stopped in front of the gas station held up to make space for me to pull out. I started to pull out, looked left and right, glanced at the light and saw that it had just turned green, and thought to myself "I need to make this turn quickly, because that light is short and people are going to want to make the turn." And then there was a minivan, practically in my front seat.

The rest of it is kind of a blur. I got out of the car, shaking. A woman across the street at the Rite Aid saw the whole thing and called the police for us. The other driver hit his head on the steering wheel. I started crying, because the thought of having done something to hurt another person was so horrific. I called my dad to come take me home, the man called his wife. The woman from the Rite Aid said something nice to me, like "It's ok. Accidents just happen sometimes." I got a $54 ticked for making an inappropriate left turn. (I strongly suspect that the police officer could have hit me with a lot of ancillary charges if he had wanted to. I sometimes wonder why that was. Did he feel badly for me? Usually, they hit young drivers who make mistakes hard, to teach them a lesson so that they'll really understand. Did he think that the accident was at least not 100% my fault?)

The accident itself was my fault, but I have a suspicion that the other driver was speeding, because of the force of the impact - I was only going a few miles an hour, having just started to move from a stop. Even if he hadn't been, the accident still would have happened - although our cars might not have been totaled. This doesn't make it any better, though, because I still think about it every day. I go through the "What ifs:" What if I hadn't agreed to work that extra week, when my boss begged me? What if I'd taken the other route home from work, when I'd thought about it? What if I'd thought "I have enough gas to get home, I'll get some tomorrow?" What if there hadn't been cars lined up along my side of the road that prevented me from seeing the man coming? What if I'd been less impatient, realized that I shouldn't make such an inconvenient left turn and gone a different way instead? What if...

This happened at the end of August, right before I went back to school for this year. I felt so awful about the whole thing, I basically didn't leave my room for an entire week. The guilt was tearing me up. Even as I write this, some of it comes back - dulled with time and distance, but not to the point that I'm ok with it at all. Luckily, I found out that the man in the other car is ok. He went to the hospital to get checked out, because with any kind of head injury, you can never be too careful. I still feel awful when I think of him, and the accident that I caused and the pain, inconvenience and frustration I must have caused him. It's a small consolation, at least, that there wasn't any permanent damage.

The only positive thing about all of this, is that I actually am a good driver now. Like I said, I didn't realize that I wasn't before until all of this happened, but now I've learned to think more about the potential far-reaching consequences of my actions. I drive the speed-limit, I don't make hasty decisions, and I'm careful not to be impatient, like I was that night when I made that left turn.

I miss my car a lot, not just because it was so convenient to have, but because it was a gift from Eric, and that made it one of the most special things I could own. I could tell that he purchased it carefully, looking for a good starter car for me, something that I could like, and it makes me sad not to see it every morning when I look outside.

In some ways, I do feel like I deserved this - I screwed up, I have to pay the consequences. My parents they could get me another car, but financially, it's just not feasible right now, and I'm ok with that. I broke it, I should replace it. I'm working a lot this summer, and hopefully I can pay for my own car and insurance (which I have caused to drastically go up) at some point within the next year.