Anatomy of a Car Accident – A True Story

If you follow me on twitter you’ll be aware that I had a certain “incident” in my car yesterday, involving me driving into a wall – not once, but twice. If you don’t follow me on twitter, well I’ve just told you anyway.

“But how did this happen?” I hear you ask. Well brace yourself – it’s a tale of horror, bad luck, near-tragedy, and incompetence. But mainly incompetence.

Step One – Stationary Car 

For the purposes of this reconstruction, my car will be represented by the yellow fella to the left. The other (blameless) car will be represented by a green hovercraft. I mention this just in case you think I parked next to an actual hovercraft. I wouldn’t want such confusion to creep in at such an early stage. In a similar vein, the books are not ACTUAL GIANT books, but they are buildings. Immovable buildings that can cause dents (spoiler alert there)

Step Two – All is Normal

 

So I turn right, seeming oblivious to the HORROR soon to come. I can’t complete the turn in one go though as I don’t want to drive into Bad Science…. I mean the opposite building.

 

Step Three – The final moments before chaos reigns

 Thinking it’s just an ordinary day, I nippily changing into reverse gear (see, I can change gears perfectly) I reverse back to make space for my exit. Note – I do not hit the hovercraft at any stage (spoiler alert 2)

 

 

Step Four – Impact IMPACT IMPACT

Moving out again to make my exit, my world changed forever. A noise. Scratching. Then scraping. Like my car was being ripped apart – the wall had somehow moved closer to the car and was viciously attacking it with all its might, the great big bastard. Reader, I shall never forget that noise for as long as I live.

 

Step Five – Second impact SECOND IMPACT – NOO.

Now if I’m honest, I’m not completely sure what happened here. In an attempt to stop the back of the car scraping on the wall, I think I turned hard right, hoping the back of the car would turn left. Sadly I slightly overdid this as I immediately drove the front half of the car straight into the wall on the right at quite some speed, eliminating my wing mirror, taking a huge gash out of the bodywork, and generously scratching all the front half of the car to match the back half.

 

Step Six – This didn’t happen but it COULD HAVE! 

The impact causes the car to overturn and catch alight. I manage to crawl free, also rescuing an orphan puppy before the engine explodes as I dive clear, suffering only superficial cuts and burns.

 

And now I have quite a mashed-up car. Who wants to buy the film rights to this little escapade to pay for the repairs?