The Accidental Driver

I got in a car accident over the weekend. It was minor, and no one was injured. I was driving home from a friend's daughter's Wizard of Oz-themed birthday party, cruising on the Turnpike with Zo napping in back, when suddenly I was swapping paint NASCAR-style with a little old lady in a minivan! Apparently one or the other of us (I have no idea which) had drifted over the lane marker as the highway curved a bit, resulting in what was probably was a brief brush but which sounded, inside the car, like a huge crumpling, crashing maelstrom.

I pulled over and inspected the damage, which was both not as bad as I had imagined, and worse than I had feared. The right front fender is pretty crumpled, the passenger door won't open (though there doesn't appear to be any damage to the door itself), the rear view mirror is mangled, and the hubcap is all smashed up. Unfortunately, it looks like there might be a tiny dent in the hood, which is of course going to double the cost of the repair.

Worst of all is that this is a rental car, so I have to go through the rigamarole of filing a claim, having my company's insurance deal with them, etc. etc. I guess the nice part of the rental issue is that I can just drive over tomorrow and pick up a new car, but having to deal with both a rental car company and an insurance company to get this all settled gives me The Fear.

Everyone's fine, and once I got over the cold fear brought on by the fact that I had put my three-year-old in such danger (she was pretty much blissfully unaware), and once I worked through the anger at myself for, for the first time in 21 years of driving, having an accident that required the intervention of insurance companies, I realized how lucky we all were and how much worse it could have been. A split-second of inattentiveness when driving is really all it takes to make things go horribly wrong; for the first time I understand why Daryl not only doesn't like me talking on the phone while driving (which I rarely do), but gets upset when I fiddle with the radio or the iPod. I suppose I'll heed her warnings on these issues a bit more from now on.