Close Shave

Khatri Bhaiyya asked me if I could drop him at the airport today for his flight to SFO and I said yes. I took the car from K2 and after dropping him off at the airport at about 6:10, started back towards home. SD airport is south of the place I live, about 15 miles away and I-5 connects the two places. At the point at which I entered I-5 North, it is a 4 lane freeway with average speeds generally in the high 70s (mph). I started speeding up and merging in the traffic, changing lanes so that by the time I was in the left most lane I was doing about 80 mph. This was also probably the first time that I had my earphones on and was listening to songs from my phone while driving. As I prepared to settle in for the next 10-12 miles of coasting at the present speed, BANG, and it wasn't difficult to tell that things had taken a turn for the worse.

The windscreen was shattered and there seemed to be glass all around but that was hardly the major concern. What was really concerning was the fact that my complete field of vision was blocked, I couldn't see what lay in front of me and when you are going that fast on a crowded freeway, it's not something that you can brush off easily. The repercussions are almost immediately palpable. The hood, it seemed to me, had broken off the latch which holds it fastened, and driven by the fast winds, had lifted up and smashed into the windscreen. As I said, I was in the left most lane and there is narrow shoulder beside it upon which drivers can stop in case of an emergency. There is a concrete wall about 2 feet high that runs parallel to the shoulder and serves to separate the oncoming traffic on I-5 South. I remember noticing, just before the hood came crashing, that the freeway was turning right not very far in the distance, which meant that I would have crashed into the wall, if I had kept driving straight. It is often amusing to remember your first thoughts and preferences when such things happen. As soon as I heard the bang, my first reaction was to take off my earphones and actually press a series of buttons on my phone to pause the freaking song. Don't know why I did it-was probably saving the battery. But very soon sense prevailed and I realized that doing 80, blindfolded, with traffic all around and an oncoming turn is indeed serious. I pressed the danger lights on, took my foot off the accelerator but didn't want to break hard for the fear of getting rear-ended. In the absence of any frontal visual inputs, my only frame of reference was the wall that was visible on the left. Funnily enough, I didn't want to crash into it not just because it would have hurt, but also because I seriously didn't want the car to get any more scratches. What followed was a delicate maneuver where guided by how fast that wall was moving towards me, I managed to traverse the turn as best as I could and slowly brake to a halt on the shoulder.

I jumped out of the car to see the damage. The hood was badly dented, the windscreen shattered, even part of the roof caved in from the impact. For a while I stood there, unable to make sense of things while cars whizzed past me at breakneck speeds. I noticed that the shoulder was too narrow for the car and the right tires were actually uncomfortably close to the traffic. I probably shouldn't have done that, but I decided that I needed to take the car to a safer place-on the wider right shoulder. The hood won't attach but I, perhaps foolishly, took the risk. I distinctly remember my heart racing crazily, time running painfully slowly. The hood came back on the windscreen again and luck gets all the credit for my being safe after 4 lanes of probabilistic driving.

It's a dangerous situation for anyone to be in. Not just because of the possibility of the worst happening to you but also because if you do manage to survive with not even a single scratch, there is a temptation to see more into it than chance and a bit of skill. I guess it's human to seek reason in survival and the strings of a higher power when the odds seem to be so loaded against it. I would still thank probabilities. But more importantly I would thank the car company which made such a shitty system that even the air-bag didn't inflate (it's a known problem for which Huyndai has recalled the cars). I would be dead meat if it did.

K2, I'm sorry that the car is wrecked. I could only save the scratches on the left. Roli, if you read this, no one who can be unnecessarily worried needs to know.