The following is an account of my car crash April 16, 2007.

The accident is still replaying itself in my head, but not to the degree that it was yesterday. Now I’m a little less shaken up, and I can actually concentrate on pragmatic things like how to get to work and how my schedule is going to change as a result of this.

I guess I should describe what actually happened. It was Friday, and I had just gotten off of work. I drove home after a long day at the office and was preparing for a fun night of playing around with my new computer. However, about five minutes after I got home somebody from the office called and told me that I had forgotten to do this one little task. I was very pissed, because I had just gotten all comfortable. I had made a sandwich and had just settled in to do what I had been waiting for all day long: to play with my new computer. But no. They made me go back. Incredibly perturbed, I finished my sandwich and then got in my car.

Earlier that day, there had been two disastrous accidents, one on Highway 199 and one on Highway 101. I remember thinking to myself “what idiots… getting into a car accident.” The four people in the Highway 101 accident died, but the people on 199 got out unscathed. Anyway, as I rounded the bend coming up to the Lake Earl Store I noticed that there was a car stopped in the middle of the road. I started slowing down, but I realized that I wasn’t stopping fast enough, so I slammed on my brakes. It had been lightly raining all day (obviously a factor in the other accidents), and when I slammed on my brakes, nothing happened.

I started skidding across the slick pavement. I tried to aim away from their car, and go into the ditch… but I didn’t make it. The bumper of the car was slowly growing larger, and I realized that I had never seen another car this close going this fast. It was slow, underwater silence. The car seemed to have gone over a giant speed bump in the road. The airbags exploded, filling the cabin with a smoky, stale smell. I was now stopped. The car was still on, blasting a Depeche Mode song. I pulled out the audio jack from the stereo, silencing it. The door. Tugging at the handle, I couldn’t get it open. A thousand television scenes of people burned alive in cars flashed through my mind. Was gas leaking out of my fuel tank? I lunged against the door, pushing and kicking. Gradually, it creaked open.

I was free. Everything was blurry…I felt for my glasses on my face, but they were gone. I held my arm close to my face, bringing it into focus. It was scraped pretty badly. Was it broken and I just couldn’t feel it? Dazed, I walked over to the driver’s side of the other car. I wasn’t really quite sure of the social graces involved in a car crash, but I went over and asked if they were OK.

“You’re standing in the middle of the street,” he said. After a moment, I realized that indeed I was.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, walking back over towards my car. The passenger side door opened on their car, and a pleasant, middle-aged woman emerged.

“Are you all right?” she asked with genuine empathy.

“I’m fine…just a little dazed…I’m so sorry about this…”

“You don’t look so good, you should sit down.”

I walked in a few circles and sat down on a patch of grass. A light mist was falling from the overcast sky, making everything uncomfortably damp.

A man yelling. He was in a small white pickup truck pulled over to the opposite side of the road. Him and the driver of the car I hit were talking… their words a blur.

“Why don’t you come and sit in our car?” the woman asked, suddenly near me. I looked up at her. “You should get out of the rain.” I got up and she helped me over to their car and into her seat. “What’s your name?”

“Darius.”

“We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses…” she started. There was another woman in the backseat, she seemed older. She was talking to someone on a cell phone with a light British accent, and fretted about finding the “end call” button. She handed it back to the younger woman, passing it across the seat I was in.

“Are you guys okay? I’m terribly sorry about all this…” I trailed off.

Oh, no, we’re all right,” she assured me. Do you have anyone you would like to call?”

I remembered that I was driving to work. “Yes, could I call my work? They were expecting me.” She handed me her cell phone. The older woman in the back started to ask me if I knew how to use a cell phone, but I had already started dialing the number. She said something about young people knowing how to use technology. It was comforting.

He picked up the line. “News room, this is Ty.”

“Um…this is Darius…I got into a car accident on my way over there. Someone else is going to have to type that.” I think I said a few more sentences, trailing off. He didn’t seem very sympathetic. The tone in his voice made it sound like I was either an incompetent fool or that I was making up an excuse so that I wouldn’t have to go back. I said goodbye, and hung up the phone.

I handed it to the woman who first talked to me, and she called someone. Cars continued to drive by. It seemed almost insolent. Didn’t they know that this was how it was going to end?

It was silent, save for the passing cars. Where were the cops? After so many nights of hiding from them (not for doing anything illegal, mind you, but they automatically assume the anyone awake past 8 p.m. is a criminal), I found it odd that I was actually awaiting their appearance.

I realized that I should probably call my dad, and after the woman finished talking, I asked if I could use her phone again. My dad’s response was sort of strange… but he did show up at the accident. I couldn’t really tell what his facial expression was. It was anything from mild annoyance to actual concern.

An ambulance showed up, and the paramedic started talking to me. She asked me my name, my date of birth, where I work…it was interesting being interrogated by strangers. I told them that my arm and neck hurt, and they put one of those collar things around my neck to immobilize me. I felt somewhat embarrassed by the whole affair, but I was glad that I wasn’t wearing something embarrassing and that I wasn’t fat. I would be ridiculously embarrassed to be like 300 lbs. and have to be saved by the jaws of life. Anyway, they duct-taped me to a gurney and moved me towards the ambulance. I could only see the sky, and the halo of faces of those that were carrying me. I concentrated on the sky. It was oddly peaceful.

I was loaded into the ambulance, and the paramedic did a few tests to make sure I wasn’t dying. They also loaded the driver of the car I hit. On the ride to the hospital, I talked with the paramedic about the other two accidents that had happened that day. To this day I don’t know what the other driver looks like, although he must’ve been there the whole time.

The rest is standard television show emergency room “drama.” They brought me in, transferred me to a bed, and the doctor checked me out. After the classic “does this hurt” routine, he said that I was fine and that I could go. I signed some papers and walked out into the lobby. I noticed the elderly British lady that must’ve been sitting in the backseat. She was sitting right by the woman who let me sit in their car.

I was still quite dazed. I didn’t know where my dad was, I was expecting him to be waiting out in the emergency room, but he wasn’t there. I mumbled something about going to look for him, and walked out into the parking lot. It was still drizzling out, and there were no breaks in the clouds. He wasn’t there, so I went back inside to sit by the older lady. The woman whom I had first talked to gave up her seat for me. She had some sticky notes and proceeded to give me her information and take down mine. I still can’t find the sticky note, but it turned out that we were almost neighbors. They live maybe a two-minute drive from my house, on the same street. Soon, a nurse opened the door to the emergency room and let the woman in to see her husband. The elderly lady offered to give me a ride home, but soon I noticed my dad’s car pulling into the parking lot.

He came in and we said our goodbyes to the other people involved in the accident. I climbed into his truck and he drove me home. The ride was mostly silent. As we pulled up to the house, I noticed my dad had had the car towed there. The smashed-up side was facing the road. It seemed a monument to the brutality of the 21st century.

I came inside, and sat down at my computer. This is all that I had wanted to do–play with my new system. I felt like I had paid a terrible price to do it.

After being so obsessed with the J.G. Ballard novel Crash I thought I would have some unique insight on the whole experience. I thought it would strain the very fabric of my philosophy. But it didn’t. The 21st century is a wasteland of destruction.

And there is nothing we can do to escape it.

“I stepped out onto the veranda. Cars filled the suburban streets below, choking the parking lots of the supermarkets, ramped onto the pavements. Two minor accidents had taken place on Western Avenue, causing a massive tail-back along the flyover which crossed the entrance tunnel to the airport. Sitting nervously on the veranda as Catherine watched me from the sitting room, one hand on the telephone behind her back, I looked out for the first time at this immense corona of polished cellulose that extended from the southern horizon to the northern motorways. I felt an undefined sense of extreme danger, almost as if an accident was about to take place involving all these cars. The passengers in the airliners lifting away from the airport were fleeing the disaster area, escaping from this coming autogeddon.”

–J.G. Ballard, Crash