On Monday evening, 13 January 2003, I was in a serious car accident. A drag-racing teenager hit me while I was making a right-hand turn into a side street. We were in a 50 K zone, but the police say it is likely that he was going at over 120 KPH. My car was an instant write-off, he was arrested (and later charged with reckless driving resulting in injury), and off I went for a night of fun in the emergency ward as they picked the glass from my head. It wasn't so bad. There was a 3cm laceration, and a 1cm-times-1cm patch of skin, which had been pushed apart like a meteor crater, intrigued the medical staff muchly.

So here's the longer version for those of you who are interested in the details:

A little awkward really. The car was on loan from my girlfriend's friend's friend's boyfriend. It had come all the way down the line to me because I was the only one with a valid licence. I was thrilled to think that it was mine for a month, and having already acquired a job and a flat (in the week that I had been in Auckland), I was thinking myself quite lucky.

Anyway, I had been driving around for a couple of days, and on the night in question I was returning home from an evening spent at my girlfriend's house. I am now extremely thankful that I hadn't invited my lover to stay with me that night, as anyone in the passenger seat would have most likely been a goner, and anyone in the left, back seat, certainly.

So, I had found my way onto Dominion Road and I was heading from town and to my new flat when it happened. As witnesses would later testify, I indicated to the right and 'sensibly' pulled across onto the white turning lines in the centre of the road, and then casually proceeded to make a right turn onto Tennyson Street (just a hundred metres from home).

Those who saw the crash from a slightly different perspective up the road also testified that the boy had been having a drag race and that he had been exceeding the speed limit considerably. I get the impression that this was witnessed for several blocks.

From my perspective, I was finally feeling comfortable after navigating myself across town; and perhaps this will seem to be the problem. When I say comfortable, I mean only that I was not under great stress and that I was in an area with which I was familiar. I was taking my time - even letting cars sneaking past in the left lane into the traffic - and as I looked ahead I saw nothing that required me to give way. As I commenced my turn my eyes scanned the footpaths for crossing pedestrians, and once in the middle of my turn, I gave no further attention to the possibility of on-coming traffic. It may seem in the telling that this was sloppy of me, but I do believe (whether I succeed at giving this impression or otherwise) that I was watching the road fairly well. It was just a shame that the car that was twice or more the distance of any car I would normally give way to, was also going at twice or more the speed.

I'm not sure whether it was the sound of skidding tires, a horn, or a sense of impending doom that had me turn my head, but I turned just in time to see the lights of a car impossibly close to me, and I knew I was in big trouble. I can't say I heard anything, nor was I really concerned for my personal wellbeing, but the emotion of disbelief was certainly overwhelming at the time. In fact, I was calculating. I was not to know that this guy was speeding, and so it seemed to me at this point that I was now guilty of having made a terrible driver's error. Along with disbelief, I felt guilty. I felt I was now causing a highly serious crash, and so I was concerned for the other driver, as I was for any pedestrians who walked the pavement.

And then it was chaos. Disorientation. Confusion. Smells. Sounds (though I remember no sound on impact). As things stopped moving and I fought to find my bearings, I became aware of the blood that was trickling from my head and the shattered windscreen that had imploded into my face. I then tried and failed to exit via the driver's door, and so I was forced to clamber over the compressed mid-section of the car and out the passenger door, which had opened. On the street, I felt like doing little more than breathing deeply, that I might remain conscious, but already I was intrigued at the state of the car.

Suspicious that the other driver must have been speeding, I begged my witnesses (who stated as much) to provide me their phone numbers, that I might later argue that I was not responsible for the wreckage. By now, someone had called almost every service except for the SAS. A fire engine was first on the scene, and then it was the cops (from memory), followed almost immediately by the paramedics. Together, they ushered me into an ambulance, where a paramedic proceeded to marvel over my relative state of health, and a cop proceeded to bombard me with a million questions. I made my case that, judging from the wreckage alone, I felt the teen-racer must have at least been in excess of 80 Ks, and I held firm that I had seen nothing ahead of me that required giving way to.

At Auckland Accident & Emergency, I was wheeled up, as per procedure, and into the hospital. Forget about me, the accident victim, for the first several minutes everyone crowded around one of the paramedics' digital camera's to see the wreckage for themselves, to wonder at my luck, and to make comments such as, "He should go out and by a Lotto ticket", and, "Here's one who has a guardian angel". Already, in the ambulance, the paramedic had told me that typically he pulled decapitated victims from such sites, and I agreed with him that I was already counting my blessings.

I waited for a wee while - passing the time at one point with a policeman who 'unofficially' agreed with me that the other driver must have exceeded 80K and was probably over 100 - but the nurse eventually spent a good forty minutes stitching up my head. Luckily, there was no concussion, and no shards had gone further than the skin. But there was some interest generated at the nature of the hole that more-or-less resembled a volcano crater. It required an anaesthetic as the nurse smoothed the skin back into its proper place (if that is what she was doing) and stitched it good and tight.

And so I can leave the story at this point, except to follow up with a few updates:

The police called to tell me before I had even left the hospital that they had arrested the guy for speeding and that I was in the clear. I would neither be charged nor penalised in any way. Another phone call a day or two later revealed that he was certainly over 100 (and it could be considerably more, as may be revealed in the final report), and that even his skid had exceeded twenty metres. It seemed that he was out driving his father's car and that to him it was just another video game.

As for myself, my wound couldn't be less of a problem. I wore a bandage at work for a few days, but there was no pain or discomfort, even when I slept. I'm telling people now that I would have felt rather cheated if I hadn't acquired at least one war wound to speak of my tremendous accident. My new flat-mates and I shared some laughs when we found shards of glass still in my hair. Together, we combed them out. A few days later, my girlfriend, a friend of hers, and I visited my car at the panel beaters.

To provide a simple description: The windscreen was imploded into the front seat, and the passenger doors were collapsed to the depth of a metre in most parts. As I have said, had my lover been in the front passenger seat, she would have been in critical care, surely, and the back seat was now buried under the door that had folded down onto it. Anyone in that seat would have been squashed to the width of a millimetre. All the tires were burst.

All my belongings were still in the car, as I had been moving to my new flat, but oddly, only two very cheap things of mine had broken in the accident. The car's poor owner lost about half of his things. Even his cassette tapes, wedged as they were between the two front seats, were smashed to smithereens on impact.

Also, it seems that I have completely lost my voice, and so I sound like a breathy version of Marge Simpson. I think it was caused in part from the shock of the accident, possibly from the tetanus injection at the hospital, and by the last of an old cold that I had lingering over from Beijing (where the children had coughed all over me without covering their mouths).

So that's my story. It's shocking, of course, but I'm okay and that's the main thing. The driver of the other car had better hope his insurance covers him, otherwise the owner of my car will have to take him to Small Claims' Court. The police have told me that I have nothing to worry about, but I still feel pretty stink. My girlfriend's friend's friend's boyfriend had been generous enough to loan me a car for a month, and I had to go and be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I just hope that all formalities are dealt with easily and that we can look back on this and laugh as soon as possible.

Otherwise, everything in my life's fine. As I have said, I have found a good flat, and this new job seems to be the best yet (they even pay me for two hours' preparation time a day, and the pay's not unreasonable). I guess it might be that I'm out of Synch with the Life Force to get in such a car crash, but I can't help thinking that perhaps I'm in Synch to have survived without barely a scratch, and then there may be some Grand reason for this experience, as will likely be evident on hindsight.

People, I love you,

Jonny

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