So, I just want to tell this story. A couple of days ago, I stayed at a friend's house and later that night she drove me home since I don't have my license yet. It was a fifteen minute drive anyway and we were talking about all the years we've known each other and all the stuff we did together. Halfway through we approached an intersection and drove straight ahead at around 65 kmh (40 mph) since we had the green light. Suddenly we notice a car from the opposite direction making a move to turn left and cutting the corner they are supposed to take. We hit the brake but somewhere I realized we would never stop in time and felt that we still had a huge speed going. At that moment thousands of things went through my mind at the same time but the biggest question was: how will we come out of this? Then it was just a loud bang, a flight forward, an airbag to the face and in less than second you're standing still only hearing a ringing noise and feeling as if time froze. I was so glad that I was still concious, noticed that I didn't have visible injuries, looked to my left to see that my friend was fine and looked ahead to see the other car being fine too.
I got out of the car in a daze to look up the damage and noticed the car were presumably to be declared total loss, although the opposing car looked less damaged. When meeting the other passengers, I noticed they were drunk as hell and a bit of a hassle to arrange things with so we called the police to be sure that the opposing driver was not under influence too. We called our parents, took some pictures, pushed the car into safety and filled in the paperwork. Both drivers were proven to be sober and the other guys were helpful after all, and they drove off as soon as they were able to. Damage to our car was considerable though, four deployed airbags, cracked windshield, broken glove box, A/C circuit totally smashed, the hood and front bumper deformed, and maybe more invisible damage so it will likely get marked as total loss.
I had the scare of my life, but looking back we were all very lucky and I'm glad nobody got hurt except that I had some back pain that the doctor said would be fine. And to this day, the pain has mostly disappeared. We were driving a Volvo V40 though, which scores quite good on safety measures and is somewhat of a tank disguised as a normal car. I wonder what would have happened if we took the other car. Apparantly that morning two people collided at the same intersection and had to be taken to the hospital, and there have been regular accidents at the same intersection so I hope they do something to improve its safety.
Anyone else ever been involved in a moderate to serious car crash? Did you have any major injuries afterwards and was it hard to cope with the aftermath? The sheer prevelance of traffic accidents is a very sad side-effect of our increased mobility and I wish we could reduce them to absolute zero fatal incidents. Modern techniques in prevention such as electronic assist and autonomous cars and improved safety measures are helping but have a long way to go before they can completely solve the problem.
I got out of the car in a daze to look up the damage and noticed the car were presumably to be declared total loss, although the opposing car looked less damaged. When meeting the other passengers, I noticed they were drunk as hell and a bit of a hassle to arrange things with so we called the police to be sure that the opposing driver was not under influence too. We called our parents, took some pictures, pushed the car into safety and filled in the paperwork. Both drivers were proven to be sober and the other guys were helpful after all, and they drove off as soon as they were able to. Damage to our car was considerable though, four deployed airbags, cracked windshield, broken glove box, A/C circuit totally smashed, the hood and front bumper deformed, and maybe more invisible damage so it will likely get marked as total loss.
I had the scare of my life, but looking back we were all very lucky and I'm glad nobody got hurt except that I had some back pain that the doctor said would be fine. And to this day, the pain has mostly disappeared. We were driving a Volvo V40 though, which scores quite good on safety measures and is somewhat of a tank disguised as a normal car. I wonder what would have happened if we took the other car. Apparantly that morning two people collided at the same intersection and had to be taken to the hospital, and there have been regular accidents at the same intersection so I hope they do something to improve its safety.
Anyone else ever been involved in a moderate to serious car crash? Did you have any major injuries afterwards and was it hard to cope with the aftermath? The sheer prevelance of traffic accidents is a very sad side-effect of our increased mobility and I wish we could reduce them to absolute zero fatal incidents. Modern techniques in prevention such as electronic assist and autonomous cars and improved safety measures are helping but have a long way to go before they can completely solve the problem.
