My car looks like it's parked so peacefully in this field, doesn't it? Too bad the real story is it landed there just like this, with me inside, yes, after rolling a couple of times down the embankment at the side of the highway I was driving on this morning, after I got cut off by two rude and careless drivers while making a lane change. I got out of the car without a scratch, but the car apparently has a broken axle, in addition to the shattered driver's side window, broken-off mirror, and all four tires blown out. It's a goner.
So what happened is, I was signalling and clear to make the lane change to my right, but just as I began to do so, the slower driver ahead of me also cut over to the right. So, about to then rear-end that car, I tried to swing back to the left lane. But the driver behind me had sped up to fill the gap just as soon as I started changing, so there was no longer a space for my car, and that driver blared the horn and kept on going. So I had to swerve to the right, where I couldn't get either back into traffic or stopped before going off the edge of the two-lane highway.
Of course *I* got a ticket for "careless driving," while the two drivers who caused me to have the accident, and both of whom I avoided hitting, kept going without even probably noticing what happened to me. The cop said to me that he was "sorry" he had to give me the ticket, and that if he didn't, "they" would come after him to find out why he hadn't. So I wrote that down, and I will be fighting the ticket in court, needless to say. It isn't that bad a ticket, but I was NOT careless, and it's bad enough I had to find out that rolling a car is like a theme-park thrill ride, only without being sure you're going to land safely at the end of it, that the car is wrecked, and that I missed my day at the studio because of it.
At first I was really worried that my parents were going to be mad at me for wrecking the car, but it turns out the reason my mom sounded mad on the phone when I called to tell her, is she had been dealing with some other major hassle business all morning, and was frustrated with that. Both my parents said variations of "Don't worry about the car, we're just glad you're ok, which was nice to hear. I guess my dad was really shaken up about the rollover part of it. He actually came UPSTAIRS later in the evening to ask if I was ok. He generally doesn't bother to do more than yell up to me if he wants to ask me something, so that's a bigger deal than it sounds like.
So, I'm lucky I wasn't hurt at all, I'm glad that I had a cell phone with me (I didn't have one at all until about a month and a half ago), I'm very fortunate that my dad works for AAA and takes care of all the family car stuff, and that there are other cars for me to drive, and that I'm not in trouble if I can't pay the whole towing bill or whatever insurance/AAA doesn't charge. I told my parents I'd pay what part of it I could, try to take some responsibility even though it wasn't my fault, but it sure wasn't theirs, and try to help take care of it at least partially. I hope it doesn't cost that much, because I may end up with no money in reserve again, and I don't like that feeling one bit.
So that's my car accident story... my first accident, and only my second ticket ever, and the first one was for continuing through a "right lane must turn right" lane--on a newly-cut-through section of street that I hadn't realized was marked that way, and I was going to be turning right a few blocks after that, so I was already in the right lane. Thinking ahead and all, supposed to be a good thing when driving, but not in that case.
Regardless, I'm hoping that my very clean driving record helps get this stupid ticket from today removed, especially when the cop practically flat-out stated that he only gave me the ticket because of bureaucratic formalities. Of course the two state troopers were pacing around the field plotting out the route my car took, probably looking for all kinds of things to say to make it look like I was driving completely recklessly. My dad told me a story on the way back from the garage about one time he got caught in an intersection on a very quickly-changing yellow light, and when it went to court, the cop claimed he had accelerated from way back to run the light, an outright lie. So I don't know what to think these cops might claim in court. I asked them what they were seeing from the scene, but of course they wouldn't say.
At any rate, my mom was angry about the ticket too, and said she will be right there in court with me to fight it, so that's what we'll do. Court date isn't till January, but we also have to check it against the dates of the Birdwatch America trade show we're going to, and we might have to get the court date rescheduled. More fun with bureacracy, I'm sure, if that's necessary.
But, bottom line, again, it was a scary experience, but I'm completely uninjured.