Friday, March 28, 2014

First rule of driving? Don't hit anything.

Eleven years I’ve had this car, and driven it safely that whole time. Today… crunch. 

There’s a super busy road that runs through downtown, right past the campus of one of the local universities. On the edge of said campus is a Starbucks that does not have a parking lot nearly large enough for the traffic it needs to handle. It is well-known throughout town as always creating a traffic hazard. It does not help that the store is right at a traffic light. Today, I was stupidly going down this busy road, in the right-hand lane, and was stopped at that traffic light. I was the third car in the line. The light turned green. What does that mean? Generally, it means apply pressure to the gas pedal and move forward. That is what the other two lanes next to me did. That is what my lane started to do. Then the driver at the front of the line decided he wanted to pick up a coffee. Except the lot was full, so he had to stop in the street. The driver ahead of me saw this, and applied his brakes. I did not see that we had gone from, “It’s green now, let’s drive” to “Let’s block up the road” until a nanosecond before plowing right into the car ahead of me. Thankfully his feet were still on the brakes so he did not also bash into the person (the thirsty jerk) ahead of him. 

Fortunately for him, it was just a tiny dent near his tail light. Unfortunately for me, my front end bent into and poked a hole in the radiator, plus damaged the A/C system. I will have a good week’s worth of auto body work. Yippee. At least insurance will cover all but the deductible. It looks like just a little bang up, doesn’t it? Looks can be deceiving.