March, 2018
Accident Prone
by Larry
About 55 years ago, I bought my own car, a classic VW Beetle, for around $600, paying cash for it, and then, on my first drive with my new auto (really somewhat used, but a fresh set of wheels and the best and only car I'd possessed to that point), just two minutes into this novel experience as an actual car owner and less than a mile from my apartment, had my first automobile collision. I was not used to the vehicle's brakes, but, more to the point, was not following the car ahead at a safe driving distance. It braked suddenly as the light was turning red, and I ran right into it. I was incensed its driver had so inconsiderately stopped for the red light.
Showing my maturity, I blamed him for the mishap, especially since his machine was undamaged, while my "Bug" had lost a piece of the front bumper. I demanded he either pay for the damages or we call the police and get a report of the incident. I was confident it would show he had been in the wrong and that his insurance ought to make restitution. In those days before smart phones, even finding a way to quickly call the authorities was problematic. Traffic was backing up behind us. The older driver of the horseless carriage ahead had long ago lost patience with this idiot kid. I hadn't a leg to stand on, but he had no time for fools. He angrily reached in his pocket, found a quarter, handed it to me, got back in his car, and sped off. My face having thus been saved (for, after all, the guy who damaged my car had paid up!), I picked up the broken bumper piece, got in my car, and drove off as well. Later I used his quarter to buy a bolt to replace the one broken in the wreck, and I easily reattached the piece that had fallen off in our accident. All's well that ends well, I figured.
Life is not without its ironies. A few years later, I was working at a training post for the Department of the Army as a safety specialist intern. Part of my job was to teach new 18- and 19-year-old recruits the National Safety Council's Defensive Driving Course. Naturally, I never told any of the students about my own earliest accident.
As my wife, Valerie, can tell you, I am not the best driver in the world, but luck has been with me, and I have had no further accidents in which I was at fault (for an incident when I had the right of way and a truck driver ran into my then Nissan Sentra, hit and run, does not count) till shortly after I had bought my nicest car to date, a then recent year, low mileage Toyota Corolla LE, the transportation I use today.
On my last solo driving vacation, mere weeks after getting the Toyota, I misjudged my passenger side clearance when pulling out of a parking space and scraped the finish on an adjacent building. Once again the obstruction was completely undamaged. However, my "perfect" transportation now had ugly gouges as if a bear claw had swiped across the right doors. Happily, my birthday was coming up, and Val is something of an artist. She got exactly the styles of paint or undercoat needed for the damaged exterior and gradually filled in the "claw marks" till they are hard to see unless one is looking closely.
Still, given how accidents keep happening to the newer cars in which I have the most emotional investment, maybe I'd better put off getting another for quite awhile!