Mizblog

On the way to my parents’ house yesterday, we witnessed an auto accident up close.

We were driving in moderate traffic, in the 4th lane (the one next to the slow lane) when I saw a car driving perpendicular to the flow of traffic, heading right! The rogue car missed all the other cars and slammed into the wall to the right of us, maybe 3 car lengths in front of us, before rebounding and coming to rest facing backward in the 2nd lane (the one next to the fast lane).

It was quite an adrenaline rush! I hope the driver was okay, but I couldn’t back up and check without risking my own accident with other traffic. Farther down the road, I noticed that after me there was only one other car which had made it past the accident. The rest of the freeway was completely vacant.

Theories on what went wrong seem to have focused on a too-close lane change, clipping the victim’s car and sending it off in a new direction, much like the CHP’s chase-ending tactics. Other theories included a stroke or a panicked braking, but these only indirectly account for the perpendicular orientation of the car. Anyway, I didn’t see the beginning, so I can’t be sure what happened.