My story!

RE: My Accident Story! – (Have you ever had an experience of being in car accident?)

Greetings!

My name is Emiel Kandi and I am a returning adult learner who is attempting to get a bachelor’s degree at age 46! I live in Tacoma, WA and was recently on a road-trip from Naples, Florida going cross-country back to Tacoma, Washington. So, I was being a good student …… enrolled at WGU (Western Governor’s University) and I was studiously keeping my head down, nose to my laptop, finishing school tests and projects while my friend drove the Infinity QX40 across the United States and back to the Pacific Northwest.

This system was working quite nicely until I felt the car fish-tail, run off the road onto the median’s gravel, attempt to get back on the road and crash into a flatbed semi-truck. Needless to say, that my friend who was driving kept all of the smashing on my side of the car!! No bueno.

As I tried to shake the glass out and away from my face, hands, and bare feet wearing nothing more than flip-flops I managed to cut my self even further than what damage had been done by the initial impact of the sir-bags and destroyed windshield & passenger side glass.

I stepped out of the vehicle by climbing out the driver’s side door. Luckily several people had seen the accident and had stopped to offer help. Really nice to see that people are still willing to help out in a crisis despite the generally self-serving bent of the world these days. As I continued to bleed from my face and arm (faces bleed a LOT by the way) I was helped by a good Samaritan who offered me water to wash off the glass with.

My buddy explained that he had been run off of the road by a semi-truck who had just forced its way over into our lane. I of course was focused on my (now destroyed) laptop and saw nothing until the impact with the flat-bed. The flat-bed truck driver also stopped and gave a witness report because he had seen the truck that ran us off the road.

I sat and looked at the obliterated car and was truly, truly, amazed that I wasn’t dead. The car was totaled and both my friend and I walked away with nothing more than some cuts and bruising. All-in-all we were very lucky. Luckily, I had a bottle of Jack Daniels in our back-seat travel box and a good Cuban cigar I had picked up in Florida. I downed a healthy swig to numb the pain and torched off my Cohiba Esplandido.

When the State Patrol and the local sheriff showed up, I had to explain that the drinking had occurred AFTER the accident and strictly for medicinal and pain-relief purposes only! The EMT’s showed up shortly thereafter and helped to get the rest of the glass removed and the cuts bandaged up.

The tow truck took almost two hours to arrive and the state patrol spent that time doing their witness interviews and investigation. Not much to investigate really and (amazingly) none of us got ticketed for anything! Accidents like these really give you an appreciation of how easily a person can be squished like a big without a second glance from fate.

The importance of driver education in reducing the number of annual car-accident deaths as a result of driving cannot be stressed enough. Simply put, the drive-time hours with an instructor are a valuable experience and those hours help a new driver gain the necessary practice to be a part of a safe-driving community.

The number of deaths related to driving can be reduced by maintaining enforcement of basic traffic laws and distracted driver targeting by state and local police. Traditional speed-traps and stops for texting or drunk-driving keep people aware of the fact that bad driving behavior can lead to gigantic legal fees and thereby alter or enforce positive driving choices in an effort to avoid spending 10-30K defending a DUI or other infraction.

I can take steps to be a better and safer driver as well as help others become safer on the road and those steps include but are not limited to: maintaining valid insurance, keeping a current driver’s license, regularly changing my car’s oil and brakes and completing the scheduled service procedures are all small things that lead to a well-maintained safe vehicle operated by a responsible adult?

I hope my accident story and answers are exactly what you want to hear! I’d really like this award; it would help a LOT. Everything has gone up so much in the last two years. The inflation year over-year is nearly 18% from 2021 to date and any extra money would be of great assistance and appreciated.