Bill's Bulletin Board

We tend to hear a lot about what some people call pivotal moments, or those incidents that crop up in life that have some deep effect on a person.

I believe a moment can only be declared pivotal in retrospect, and after the passage of some time. One can't truly judge the significance of anything without putting it in the proper context.

But there are also the moments one never forgets, either because they were happy, sad or even mundane. They sometimes stick out and remain with you for no good reason. Others stick with you because they scare the hell out of you.

My wife and I were in a car accident a couple of weeks ago. We both walked away from it, but my car did not. It has subsequently been written off.

That incident did have an effect on me. I've had a couple of people I work with observe that I tend to bring it up a lot. I guess I do, possibly too much. But it's still very much on my mind.

One reason it's still on my mind, I believe, is I realize how lucky we were. We could have been going faster, thus increasing the force of impact. Traffic was very light at the time. There were a few vehicles following us, and the drivers all quickly realized the situation we were in and kept their distance while my car came to a stop. We were also lucky that a police officer was close behind too, and he sized things up quickly and took charge.

But another reason this incident still nags at me is it happened so quickly, allowing me very little time to react; like maybe a spit second, no more.

We all remember the admonitions we received when we were learning to drive, about being ready for the unexpected. Those of us who do a lot of driving, I think, get into the habit of keeping an eye on what's happening up ahead. We look out for drivers who we suspect might suddenly cut us off, for obstructions up ahead, for construction zones, etc.

I drive about 60,000 kilometres annually, meaning I get a lot of practice. There have been plenty of times when I've been able to avoid grief just because I spotted some potential trouble in the distance.

But I don't think there's any training that can prepare one for a barrel full of bricks lying on its side in the middle of one of the lanes on Highway 400 in the dark of night along a stretch where there are no overhead lights. Also, it appears the obstruction was only there for a matter of seconds, if that. Indeed, I had the impression of some movement in the split second between spotting the object and impact, leaving me with the fleeting hope that the object I was about to hit was hollow. I learned the hard way it was not.

It was a Thursday evening, and Beth and I were heading home from spending the day in Muskoka. It have been snowing all day up north, so the roads were a little on the slippery side. I was adjusting my speed accordingly.

We were approaching the merger between the 400 and Highway 11, commonly known as "the split."

The southbound stretch of the 400 before the split consists of a long curve, and since there was some question about the traction on the road, I was taking things easy. In fact, there were several cars bunched behind me, and I got the impression that those drivers thought I was maybe being over cautious. No matter, the curve wasn't going to last for ever, and I had no desire to put my car in a ditch or guard rail.

As we came out of the curve and passed through the split, road conditions seemed to improve. I picked up speed and moved over to the lane to my left, trying to get out of the way of the traffic I thought I might have been holding up. I completed the lane change, checked my mirrors and then I saw the obstruction.

It's hard to describe just what it was like, as everything happened so fast. The front of the car actually mounted this obstruction (it wasn't until several minutes later that I learned exactly what it was). One of the front wheels was right off the ground, and the other provided enough contact with the road that as we slowed I was able to move over toward the rail in the middle of the highway. Not that that did a whole lot of good, since we were still blocking two lanes.

Like I said, we were lucky traffic was light at that hour, and also fortunate that a police officer came upon the scene when he did.

As well, both air bags in the car deployed on impact. I had never experienced that before, and it all happened so quickly that I hadn't realized it had happened. The car came to a stop after the momentum ran out, and I thought I could smell something burning, so I told Beth to get out of the car fast (at this point, my biggest fear was the car was about to catch fire). It was only when I started to exit that I realized the deployed bag was right in front of me. I never felt a thing.

I don't know if it was some chemical from the air bags or the friction that occurred before we stopped that created the sensation that something might ignite. I just knew we had better get out fast.

The OPP officer was on the scene and taking charge by the time we got out (I wasn't joking when I said he got there fast), and he called for a tow truck, which was there with credible promptness.

I don't know where this officer and the tow truck driver learned their PR skills, but they learned them very well. My wife was upset, and so was I, at the thought of being stuck in the country, some distance from home, without a functional automobile close at hand. These two fellows clearly knew their jobs, however, and did a great job of calming a rough situation.

The obstruction was evidently a pylon at some construction site, and somehow it got snagged by a tractor trailer leaving the site, according to the information I was able to piece together. It was dragged for some distance before it fell off the truck and ended up in my path seconds later.

As things started to calm down, I realized we were in for some inconvenience, but we were also lucky it wasn't a lot worse. An incident like that in one of the middle lanes of the 400 could have been a lot worse.

There were still some troubling issues to deal with. The car was a writeoff, according to the insurance people. In fact, the tow truck driver told me to expect that, considering the fact the air bags had deployed and the car was 13 years old (I inherited it when my mother died four years ago).

So on top of everything else, I've had to go shopping for a new car, a mission that was accomplished over the weekend. I guess that's a positive, at least it will be once the new wheels are paid for.

But when I'm driving, especially at night, I find my mind returning to that split second, with a certain realization that if it happened once, it can happen again.

How good will our luck be the next time?