Rear-ended

I knew it was an inevitability; statistics taught me that much. And I'm thankful to have gotten off so easily, but still the fact that it happened was a little frustrating. I remember when I first hit a car on the road, sliding a good 25 ft. on ice at an agonizing 5 mph before colliding with the man in front of me. He got out and was all pissy with me, telling me he didn't want to report it (probably didn't have insurance), but then at the stoplight he got back out and took pictures of my license plate, "in case he came down with whiplash". Remembering my gratitude for not being written up for a silly mistake and yet hoping not to be as much of a jerk as him, I maintained my composure pretty well today.

It was obvious he was going to hit me and in retrospect, I should've known better than to imagine he wouldn't. On the SB widening of Rt. 23 into 3, then 4 lanes, he zig-zagged back and forth, unsure of what lane would be fastest and never achieving getting ahead of anyone in any of them. He seemed to think that his brand-new Chevy was a Corvette, but it was definitely just a cheap, American car like most of the rest of us. After trying to cut around me on the left - unsuccessfully since there was never any space for him in the first place - he pulled back in behind me again, visually aggravated and tailing me like none other.

Then I got over into the right lane, pleased with how smoothly it had gone. Usually I have to cut someone off, but I had all the space in the world and he tried again to zoom up ahead of me but realized that as he ran out of room before Campus View, he needed to get in behind me where there was room. But as he accelerated over into the right lane, traffic stopped in front of me. It does this pretty often, so you have to be on your toes watching for impending disaster. Needless to say, the guy behind me failed to do that.

In a flash, my mind made a million observations and decisions I probably wouldn't have been able to list if given the scenario ahead of time. I braked to not hit the car in front of me, saw that the guy behind me had gunned it in severe over-zealousness, knew that I would be hit and resigned myself to it. Then I braked enough that I wouldn't be hit into the car in front of me, watched the guy behind me try to stop in time, and then released my brakes at the last moment so that I wouldn't be hit with my wheels locked. I rolled forward, didn't hit the car in front of me and made my way over the side of the road, just after the intersection.

If you've ever been where I'm talking about, you would know that this is a severely unpleasant place to be for very long. No way was waiting for a cop a good idea - lest we get hit by someone else - especially as I observed no damage to my own car. I reached up underneath, saw where he had hit and matched it to minor scratches on my car. He seemed resigned to the damage, offered to give me his insurance info and I asked him to sign a sheet I wrote up saying that it was all his fault. This being only my second ever traffic incident, I didn't know what else to do about it. I'm sure I could've held him there until he was cited for it, but remembering how I felt on that end of the bargain and hoping that I could just get out of there without being tagged by a passing semi, I decided to leave well enough alone. And that's how my morning went today.