This is the car of the woman who hit us. She was on her phone, got out of the phone after rear ending us STILL on her phone, which, I admit, raised my eyebrows. So as to not be a hypocrite, I admit that I talk on my phone all the time. She rear ended us, HARD, out of no where. Her car was undriveable. We waited for the police, who had to push her car out of the middle of a busy road, while I sat there with the three kids in their car seats. I will say that I am grateful that I am a bit of a car seat nazi who still has all three kids in car seats and 5 point harnesses. Though the damage to our car was minimal due to its sheer size, the impact was hard, and I was grateful that other than Luke complaining that his head hurt, there was no harm to anyone.
The scene.
Our damage. SO minimal. Unfortunately due to the cameras/technology it was pretty expensive, but thankfully she had insurance. The accident occurred Monday afternoon, by wednesday morning we were at the repair shop where we were given a rental of another Yukon XL for free, and our car was returned to us by Friday afternoon. I was very grateful and impressed.
I feel so lucky that this was not worse. I will say that it affected me more than I thought that it would. I had picked Luke up at school to try to sneak in a shopping trip (with three kids! ha!) to try to find a fun outfit for my weekend out with Nate......and we were utterly derailed by the accident. After the police/report etc were all cleared up I went straight home, and as soon as I saw Nate I burst into tears. It was easy to keep it together in front of the kids, to feed them snacks, to talk about the nice policeman, to play off the accident as a fun adventure...........but as I drove us home I realized I was sweaty palmed, glancing into my rear view mirror, and playing out horrific mental scenes of kids trapped or injured or worse. You can't live your live afraid, of course. You can't step into your car every day envisioning fiery crashes or decapitations or scenarios in which your children are trapped in their seats and you cannot get to them............but this relatively small accident was a healthy reminder to me that these things happen. They happen on sunny, normal, Monday afternoons when one is daydreaming about a pair of blue stilettos (I got the blue stilettos!!!! I just had to wait till Saturday downtown :)). They happen when you are doing nothing wrong.
And........they happen, too often because of cell phones. I admit that I am AWFUL and flat out IRRESPONSIBLE about my cell phone use. You would be disgusted to know how I use my mobile device in the car.
So, I'm committed to change. I have to. Because the stats are very, very clear.
And you know what? This is more painful to me than I would like to admit. I like to think that I'm a multitasking master........but I'm messing around with my kids lives, and that just isn't right, and that just isn't fair. So.
No more phone in car, for me.
No more texting at lights. No more facebooking in car line while waiting to pick up Julia at school.
Damn it. I miss it already.
No comments:
Post a Comment