Just glad to be alive.

Wednesday, December 31 2008   I was in a car accident 10 days ago. I have been driving during Minnesota winters for 15 years and KNOW how to drive in bad weather & what to do when I lose control of a vehicle. But on the way home from driving my parents to the airport last week I lost control of my mother's car and skidded into the guardrails on an entrance ramp... hitting both sides of the road three different times. I truly don't think I have ever been more afraid for my own life. My very last conscious thought before "emergency autopilot" took over, was to say "God, I need your help - and I need it NOW!" And HE was there for me. By God's grace, there were no other cars on the ramp at the time and I was the ONLY car involved in this accident. Also, I had decided just that morning to leave the kids behind so my children were safe at home. Likewise, because I had been skidding around at the airport &a realized that the anti-lock brakes were not working properly, I was only traveling 25mph when I lost control of the car. Mom just sent over photos from her car... she felt the need to go & see for herself what had happened, and went during the day so she could bring back photos for Dad. The battery is cracked. The engine is damaged. The interior framing & front axle are bent. The electrical is shot. The transmission bled to death on the highway, and the front passenger door & trunk are permanently damaged. Not that I ever went ANYWHERE without wearing my seatbelt, but this is why I will shout about the safety of seatbelts & airbags for the rest of my life. This is the drivers-side front bumper... where I bumped into the 1st guardrail. Head-on... where I hit the guardrail for the second time, on the other side of the highway. You can see the door that won't open & a good deal of the front-end damage. And the drivers-side rear bumper, where I skidded around & hit the guardrail for a third time. Yet with all of that damage, this is the ONLY damage - aside from some lingering neck-stiffness that I received during all of this. These photos were taken 2 days after the accident, so there's a bit of yellowing but you get the idea.   My left calf & right knee   and my neck & right forearm... these two are STILL slightly bruised & sore. But that's it!   I am positive that had the airbags not gone off, my neck would have been far worse & that I would have also have had multiple chest bruises... if not cracked ribs. Do I think that it's pure coincidence that I was alone on that highway, that the ABS... which had been working just fine one week earlier had mysteriously gone out causing me to be going EXTREMELY slowly, that my children were NOT in the car after all, AND that I only sustained a handful of bruises is anything at all short of a miracle? Not on your life.