gwax's rumblings

Last night, at 2:03am, I hap­pened to find myself smack dab in the mid­dle of a five car pile-up on the Bay Bridge. I was on my way to drop off a friend on Treasure Island after a Plaid con­cert when things hap­pened to go very awry.

In the left­most lane of the Bay Bridge, a car (car one), had run out of gas and come to a stop. The Bay Bridge being a high­way, another car (car two) was bar­rel­ing down on car one but man­aged to hit the breaks in an attempt to slow down to avoid a col­li­sion. I (car three) saw car two’s break lights and made a point of hit­ting my brakes as well, think­ing, “Did I push my clutch in soon enough? I hope that I didn’t just fuck up my trans­mis­sion. I really hope that I can stop in time to not run into this car in front of me.” Soon there­after were two impacts, one coin­cid­ing with the thought, “Oh fuck, I’ve been hit, I hope I don’t end up dead!” and the other coin­cid­ing with the thought, “Oh shit, not an airbag in the face, please! Why didn’t my airbag just deploy? Is it because this impact was slow enough to not trig­ger it?” I was very clear on the exis­tence of both of those thoughts and the fact that the airbag thought came sec­ond but I was, at the time, very unclear on whether I had hit the car in front of me first or if the pickup truck behind me (car four) hit me first. On later rec­ol­lec­tion, it’s clear that the airbag thought, which came sec­ond, was con­nected to the impact with car two, mean­ing that car four hit me before I hit car two. There was addi­tional bounc­ing, jostling and con­fu­sion as car four pushed my car and car two into car one. Subsequently, the Lexus SUV (car five), whose dri­ver failed to take advan­tage of the good brakes a Lexus ought to have, plowed into the back of car four. The whole set of col­lid­ing took a very short period of time, well under 5 sec­onds and then it was done, pretty much before I even real­ized that it had started.

After every­thing had stopped, I sat in the car for a few moments, seri­ously hopped up on endor­phins and adren­a­line; I even man­aged to feel the slight­est upsurge of shock in the bow­els of my mind. Thankfully the hint at shock seemed to be my brain ask­ing itself if now would be a good time to go into shock and then, upon dis­cov­er­ing that there was no injury, decid­ing that shock would not be use­ful. My wits return­ing and real­iz­ing that the eter­nity of the acci­dent was a mere few sec­onds, I decided it was best to stay in the car a few more moments to make sure there were no more col­li­sions. After I was sat­is­fied about the con­clu­sion of col­li­sions, I fig­ured that out­side a much safer place to be than inside, not from the faux-risk of movie-like explo­sions but from the very real risk of fire. As such, I got out of the car and con­vinced my pas­sen­ger out as well. There was sub­se­quently a lot of stand­ing around and talk­ing to the CHP. Eventually, my car was towed off and I was able to retrieve some per­sonal effects and enlist a ride from some friends to a couch where, shortly after 5am, I was able to get some sleep.

End result, I am unin­jured but my 2000 Subaru Legacy GT, which I had grown quite fond of, is likely totaled. Needless to say, I am not par­tic­u­larly pleased but, thank­fully, I hap­pen to be very good at get­ting over, ignor­ing or sup­press­ing (I’m not sure which) seri­ous emo­tional trau­mas. Also, thank­fully, I com­mute to work by pub­lic trans­porta­tion and can sur­vive at least a short while with­out a car.