I almost died a year ago
I was driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We were just past Santa Barbara, nearby Los Olivos. My wife Lisa was in the passenger seat. Jackie, our neighbor’s dog — a small Boston terrier — was on her lap.
We were chatting about something. It was a normal day, January 18th, 2016.
All of a sudden, a white pickup truck, driving in the opposite direction, loses control and invades our lane, pointing at me. With reflexes that I didn’t even know I had, I maneuver right and then left again, managing to dodge it by what I thought were mere inches. The whole things lasts for less than a second.
The pickup badly smashes into the bus behind us. I see it in the rear mirror. I tell my wife “That guy is really hurt”.
I stop the car. I get out immediately, looking at the accident scene, maybe 100 feet from where I am. I run there. I see the bus driver getting out of the bus. He doesn’t look hurt.
The guy in the white pickup has been violently ejected out of the seat through the rear window, and hit his head against a black steel frame. Gushes of blood are coming out of his head.
I immediately know that he’s dead.
Other cars around the pickup are stopped. People come, trying to see if they can help. Someone says that his wife is calling the police.
After only a few minutes, both the police and then an ambulance arrive.
The bus driver asks me “How did you avoid it?”. Somehow, he thought that I would be hit. I’m not sure why he’s asking it, but I will understand it later.
I get back to my car. My wife tells me that she only saw the headlights through my side window, pointing at me. She heard the tires screech twice (once when I steered right to avoid the pickup, once when I steered left to avoid ending up in the field next to the road).
Much later, we are in San Louis Obispo, walking and stretching, trying to calm our minds after such a strong emotion.
Then we go back to the car, and I notice this.
There is a clear sign of the pickup’s tire on my car’s bumper. It goes diagonally because the pickup was tilted to the right, and my car to the left. It might be hard to explain in words, but having witnessed the scene it makes perfect sense.
There is some burned rubber and some of the paint has been scraped.
This is how close we were to being hit. Well, technically, we were hit, albeit just lightly.
If I had reacted ten milliseconds later, we would have been hit. Our car would have steered heavily to the left, and invaded the other lane. At least two, maybe three other cars would have hit us on the right side, perpendicularly, at a relative speed of maybe 70 miles an hour, or more.
My wife would be dead. Jackie, dead also.
Me? Dead.
It might seem that I’m stretching this possibility.
I am not.
Being there gives me an almost certainty that this would have been our fate.
And I was shaking so much in the hours after the almost-collision precisely because I realized how bad it could have gone.
A fraction of a second determined our fate.
Most probably, that fate would have been the end of our lives.
It took me a few days to recover from the shock. The day after the accident, I discovered that the dead man’s name was Simon (to his family: I am sorry for your loss).
Nobody knows why he lost control of the car. Heart attack? Fell asleep? Drunk? Distracted by the phone? Nobody will know.
What do you do when you almost die?
You think a lot. You try to make sense of it. You try to use the opportunity to live your life differently.
That’s what I thought in the days after the accident. But then, as with all human things, it all fades away. You get back to your routine. You get distracted again.
Life happens, and you mostly watch it go by.
This is why I’m writing this. January 18th has become my personal anniversary. My Life Anniversary.
Every year, as long as I’m alive, I will use this date to think about my life.
I want to remind myself that I could have been killed in that accident. Or — worse — that I would have survived without my wife.
And then, I want to look at my life, and ask myself two questions.
Are you doing the right things?
Is this how you want to spend the second hand you’ve been given?
Thanks for reading. I hope that this could help you ask yourself the same questions. I hope it acts as a small, gentle stimulus to live your lives, and mine, in a more meaningful way.
