A Near Miss

My bride of nearly forty years, my son and I took a little trip to visit Jenny in Idaho. Nan had been there a couple of times in the last year, but it's been probably fifteen months since my last visit.

We all had a nice time visiting but needed to be home by Tuesday afternoon for Ben to attend a job interview. Since it's a three hour drive, we left after breakfast so we could be home before noon.

On our drive up, the roads were wet and it rained or sprinkled almost all of the way. We were a little surprised that even over the pass, it wasn't snowing. The drive home was even better...dry roads, partly cloudy skies and mild temperatures.

As we passed Willard, Ben and I both noticed a sign warning drivers that "driving drowsy can be deadly".

Three miles later a car traveling the opposite direction suddenly went out of control and was in the median coming directly at us on a collision course. At the freeway speeds of 75 MPH, having a "head on collision" would kill us all. I hit the brake in a last ditch effort to at least try to avoid the inevitable.

In less than a second before the collision, the car struck the wire cable barrier on our side of the median, not stopping it, but turning it down the median where it continued for a couple of hundred feet, breaking off 16 of posts but stopping it from going into oncoming traffic.

When the car hit the barrier, it's bumper and tons of debris from the car and barrier posts flew into the air in the same place as the car would have been without a barrier, and there we were.

For the life of me, I can't figure how some of the debris didn't come through the windshield and kill someone. We ran over something fairly large...perhaps one of the barrier posts. The noise was terribly loud.

I pulled off the road entirely on the grass and dirt, not wanting to be exposed to any traffic. I got out, looked the car over and couldn't believe my eyes. Over and again I looked and couldn't find a dent or scratch. Finally I discovered a broken piece of plastic below the front bumper. That was it!

Ben and I walked back to the other car to check on its occupants. Other drivers had also stopped to help. The driver side of the car was still against the barrier. The passenger stated that he thought the driver was having a heart attack. In less than five minutes, many emergency vehicles were arriving on the scene, the health of the other driver absorbing most of their attention.

After making sure we didn't sustain any injuries, a State Trooper helped me fill out an accident report for our damage and told us we could leave the scene. He informed me that the responding paramedics thought the other driver had suffered a stroke...possibly causing the accident. Looking at where we were and at the cable barrier, he said "it did what it was supposed to do". It literally saved our lives.

After we returned home, I took the car over to the body shop and they quoted the damage as a little less than five hundred dollars.

I believe in miracles.