Last week was a cold & snowy one in my part of Colorado. I had Friday off of work, and it was one of Stella’s classmates 5th birthday party, so away we went to the town 30 miles away for the party. I totally didn’t feel like going because of the weather, but she had her heart set on it and we had errands to run, so eventually I motivated myself enough to get out the door with the kids in tow. Instead of driving my usual 60-65mph, it was more of a 40-45mph kind of drive… annoying, but worth it to keep all of us safe on the shitty roads.
As I pulled into town, we got to the first stoplight where I was going to take a left to go to Target to pick up a small gift for the birthday boy. I waited in the intersection to turn left, let all of the straight cars go through, and during the yellow light, I started to turn left just before it was going to turn red.
Unfortunately, there were 2 trucks a ways back from the stoplight who decided to try to make the light at the same time. The guy who hit us later told me he hadn’t even seen us until it was way too late.
A split second later (or what felt like eons later as it happened in slow motion), his Explorer barreled into my Acadia going probably 45-50mph as he tried to beat the red light.
HOLY. FUCK.
I braced myself with the steering wheel, let out a 4 letter expletive (which Stella has not let me forget), and around in circles we spun.
THANK GOD the kids were fine. My new car is fucked ($12,500 of damage and counting – we are waiting to find out if it’s going to be totaled out or will be a fix that takes weeks to do *sigh*), and my back isn’t great, but my kids are 100% fine.
This could have been so much worse.
