OK, see when I'm doing driver safety classes I spend time telling people to choose correctly when they're going to have a crash. Choose to hit something soft rather than hard. They always look at me strangely and think I'm nuts. Whether I am or not is immaterial- my advice is sound, though. When a crash is about to happen, and we KNOW it's about to happen, many drivers simply forget to steer. Here's what happened this week to our family-
Our daughter was on her way to work in the morning and traveling down a steep scary hill. It was particularly scary this week because of the nasty weather. She's working really hard on being a responsible young adult of 24. She left for work in plenty of time and was keeping watch over her speed and distances. Well, the "other" driver, the one that we're always being warned about, came around the corner going way too fast for conditions and spun out. Now he was in her lane and now she had to decide what to crash in to. Yes, she HAD to decide, because there was most certainly going to be a crash in her very near future. She actually thought through the options of "hit the car, hit the tree, hit the snow bank?" She chose the snow bank.
So, what happened? The jerk in the slider continued on his reckless journey and Kimberly sat shaken but undamaged in the snow bank. A really nice driver stopped to help her extract her vehicle from the side of the road and get to work on time. Yes, she had allowed enough time to get to work even with a car crash. She did great. Yup, she took all of the appropriate precautions, but was going to have a crash through no fault of her own. Her choices from that point, though, saved a frightening situation from turning tragic. Like I said, she did great.
Be careful out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment