Almost Squashed by Idiot Driver

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May 16th 2005

Published: May 20th 2005

May 16th 2005
Bayswater, London, England.

Well, holy shit. I literally almost died this morning. My hands are still shaking. Some idiot, who was driving illegally without a license, almost hit me, almost squished me between his car and a parked vehicle. I mean, sandwiched on a dance floor between two guys is one thing, but between fast-moving metal is another entirely. No fun factor there, not for me.

I had just been to my first job interview since hitting London (finally stopped procrastinating), for a receptionist position in a high-end hotel in the Euston area. The accident occurred on the way back to the tube, in a quiet residential street. I heard the murmur of the car engine as it sat idling in its parking spot but paid it little heed, crossing the empty street a couple of parked cars before its front bumper. I crossed diagonally, as you do, and if it hadn't been for the short blast of his car horn I would be in hospital right now in a very serious condition.

The idiot driver who had been idling there abruptly decided to take off, but obviously much too fast and in the wrong gear, for he ended up doing a tight arc in reverse, his rear hitting the front of the car on the opposite side of the street to him. Luckily for me, he also fumbled and hit the horn at the same time - accidentally, not in an attempt to warn me, but it was enough. That horn blast had me instinctively bolting toward the pavement, even as I felt a second's flash of irritation. After all, the only car in the street with an engine running was now behind me and pointed in the opposite direction. There was no need to honk me so loudly.

It all happened in about two seconds flat and I did not have time to realise the danger until I heard the squeal of the revved motor passing close, felt the swish of air behind my thighs, sensed the sudden movement in my peripheral vision, and heard the almighty clash when it collided with the stationery car whose fender I had just dashed passed. The sound was like a clashing of metal thunder. I screamed in fright and turned, already knowing, having seen it not with my eyes but with my senses.

The idiot driver had hit the stationery car so hard and so fast that it had forced the car across the asphalt and up onto the pavement. As the victim's front tire hit the pavement it did so with enough force to tear away the rubber from the steel rim and leave grooves in the cement from where the steel centre had scraped along to a stop. The other side of the front of the car, which had been directly hit, was badly damaged and deeply indented, but not the total loss I’d immediately expected; made of tougher stuff than the plastic crap most cars these days are, I guess.

The road was littered with smashed plastic light coverings and bits of metal, and it was the idiot's back fender which was completely totaled. I stared, open-mouthed. If I had still been standing there between them there is no way in hell that I would have survived it - or not without losing my lower body, anyway. It was quite startlingly violent, the force of the impact. When I say that the idiot driver was going full throttle, I mean FULL THROTTLE. Pedal to the metal. I do not think it is possible to reverse any faster than that had happened, between one heartbeat to the next.

Another driver, who had been turning the corner into the street when this happened and saw everything, rushed straight over to me and asked if I was okay. He later joked, half-serious, that he had thought the guy was aiming for me, that it was an assassination attempt. I laughed stiltedly, for I had thought the exact same thing in that moment after the impact. He could not have aimed for me any better. If the idiot driver had been somebody I knew, I never would have spoken to him again, for I would have always had a suspicion in the back of my mind that, subconsciously perhaps, he had wanted me dead.

But the angels of travel (private joke for Katrina) must have been nudging me, for I had not a scratch. Which is perhaps surprising, given all the flying bits and pieces upon impact and considering how close I had been to it. The owners of the totaled car were devastated when they rushed out of their nearby home, but it could have been worse - for me, anyway.

I stayed, of course, and we all exchanged numbers and nobody seemed to know what to do, so I offered some info on Australian law, which is that the cops have to be called if there's a serious accident or it looks like more than $500 worth of damage. Unfortunately, I was the only one with a mobile, and ended up using my whole bloody £10 credit on trying to get a local cop station, only to be finally told in an unnecessarily lengthy explanation that the cops simply did not want to know about it. Yay.

In the meantime, the idiot driver was taking exception to my phoning the police. I honestly did not think of him as that -the "idiot driver" - until he opened his mouth. About the first thing he said was, "It's not my fault", and when the victim took exception to that, I murmured that he probably meant that it was an accident. After all, accidents happen, and there's no need to play the blame game. I myself wasn't pissed at that point, just shaky. In fact, I actually didn't get upset or hysterical until after walking away, and was complemented at the time on my composure - yay for the numbing effects of aftershock.

But the idiot driver continued to be completely unaccountable for any responsibility. He was, perhaps understandably, defensive. But he was also rude, and he made absolutely no attempt to apologise to anybody; not to me for almost killing me and not to them for wrecking their car. He insisted again that it was not his fault, glaring at us all the while, and I just knew that if he thought he could get away with it he would have found somebody else to blame it on.

As I mentioned, he took exception to my phoning the police. Never mind that everybody was just standing around - the local residents, too - not knowing what to do apart from argue and accuse. English was not his first language, and I tried to explain that I was not phoning them to arrest him, I was not blaming him, I just thought that they should be there. I was phoning them because it was a suggestion that the other owners had leapt at.

He was very rude to me and I ended up getting fed up with it. After all, this had nothing to do with me. I'd been treated rudely, he had ALMOST gotten my pint of blood and the lot of them had taken my £10 credit. Stuff it. I heatedly told him, having still received no expression of remorse over almost killing me, that he was a useless driver (practically hissed "useless") and stalked off down the street, to remember him from then on only as the Idiot Driver.

I was later phoned by the owners of the stationery car. Apparently the idiot driver had failed his learner's test and was driving illegally, to top off everything else. Big surprise there, he’s obviously incompetent behind a wheel. They want to file a dangerous driving report and need my statement. Fine, sign me up. Let's punish that… person.

But just how incredibly rude was he? To almost kill somebody, totally ruin the front of another's car, and not only refuse to acknowledge any responsibility in the situation but offer no apologies to the victims. Some people!

Almost Squashed by Idiot Driver

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