I can’t believe I forgot to blog about this. About a week ago I almost got into a car accident. I was driving down the road when someone decided to turn right in front of me into a side street.
Even at this point I’m not sure how I managed to avoid the wreck. If the van had been any closer to me when it started the turn, I would have either passed it or been hit in the side of my car. If the van had been farther away I could have simply hit the brakes. But it was like the perfect storm of bad luck.
Bad luck, however, was going to get screwed today. Somehow I managed to avoid the wreck by accelerating and veering right. Several factors saved me from a crash:
- The Chevrolet Aveo I was driving wasn’t a large vehicle, so it was able to make turns while traveling relatively fast.
- Also, the Aveo is very short lengthwise for an American car. I’m positive that if my car was any longer the van would have clipped my rear bumper.
The problem with veering out of the way is that I wasn’t able to turn onto the side street that the van had been trying to turn into. I ended up hitting the curb (luckily it was a sloped curb), which sent my car flying through the air (not much, maybe 0.5 m high, 3 m forward). I was quite shaken up, but the car was fine except for damage to the front bumper where the frame hit the grass and curb. A friend of mine told me that he’d never make fun of my car again after hearing about how it saved me from a collision. :)