Daughter Xenia called me a few minutes ago. She was crying and could barely talk. She was crossing the street as she walked to class and a car turned a corner, didn’t see her, and missed her by a couple feet.
Other than the psychological aspects she is fine but it sure makes you think. What a difference a few seconds can make…
Update: Xenia has more details.
Ouch.
I don’t know any stats, but I believe that by the time you reach middle age, you’ve dodged maybe a dozen of these types of situations, many of them involving motor vehicles. Each one tending to leave you more likely to survive the next, or so we hope. Welcome to your new, extended life, Xenia!
From a family member, who currently teaches driver’s ed:
“I am safer on a shooting range than behind the wheel of a car.”
There is an art to avoiding dangerously incompetent drivers. I learned it, and so far I’ve only been hit twice–both times I was trapped and could not avoid the collision. Once in a drive-through line, and another time when I stopped (as required by law) to let an elderly gentleman traverse a crosswalk. Both hits were less than 5 miles-per, and caused only cosmetic damage.
I have avoided many more than a dozen accidents in my lifetime. In one instance I traded a wheel to avoid being crushed by a bumper coming through the driver’s side door. The Nobel laureate who nearly killed me yelled, “are you okay?” from fifty feet away, then sped off–leaving me to swap out for my donut spare in the middle of the night. (I had to find a new wheel and tire in time to sell the car one day later.)
When I was a freshly-minted driver and a dipshit teenager, my father was not understanding of excuses that started with: “but I was expecting…” His advice was, “Anticipate!”
A few seconds can make a big difference. I suggest that daughter Xenia finds a way to cross that is distant from a blind corner. It is still entirely the fault of the driver, but she needs a sufficient moron buffer.