On August 1, 2002, it was an uncomfortably hot and humid day in Columbia, South Carolina – which isn’t uncommon that time of year. I was living there that summer after my sophomore year of college, enrolled in full-time summer classes as I prepared to spend my junior year abroad in Nice, France. Due to the heat that day, I decided to drive to class instead of walk. My spirits were light and I was in a good headspace. A few more weeks of finishing up my summer classes and I was off to the Riviera. I was excited about the year to come.
My drive home after class took me down Greene Street – heading towards my apartment in the Five Points neighborhood. Just down the hill from campus, there’s a railroad track crossing Greene. Trains stopped there often, sometimes at a standstill, other times creeping along at a snail’s pace as the train navigated through the city. Sometimes, if I was on foot, the trains would be moving so slowly that I would climb through between the railcars to get across.
So I wasn’t surprised that day when there was a train stopped on the track in front of me as I came down Greene. Just another normal day. I knew of a quick bypass and made a right on Laurens Street. Laurens is a narrow side street that snakes downhill along the tracks to the next block where I could cross underneath the tracks on Blossom Street. I rolled down Laurens and was about to make a left on Blossom when it happened.
At the intersection of Laurens and Blossom, the railroad bridge straddles a curve in the road where the road goes underneath the tracks. From Laurens, looking left there’s a large concrete wall jutting out, obstructing the view.
I must’ve had the worst timing luck in the world… or was it meant to be? I didn’t see the car in the nearest lane when I looked left. It was tucked snuggly into the blind spot of the curve under the railroad track, right at that exact moment. The driver was also speeding at the time – doing 50+ in a 25 mph zone – which didn’t help.
As soon as I started across the intersection, I felt it. Maybe I saw something in my peripheral vision. Maybe my inner sense could ‘feel’ the car coming. Maybe our instincts know when we’re about to die, before it happens. Whatever it was, I quickly looked left and could see the car heading straight at me. I knew instantly that he was going to hit me. Hard. It felt like everything switched into slow motion. I could see the hood of the car coming towards me, frame by frame. A split second felt like ten heartbeats. I can still picture it in my mind, vividly, all these years later. A slow-mo moment of warped time that changed the direction of my life.
The other driver barely had time to hit his brakes before he slammed into my driver door going 50 mph. The crash was violent and lifted my car into the air. Everything in my vision turned black-and-white. My car slid down the street, crossed the intersection, jumped the far curb, and eventually rolled to a stop under a tree.
I wasn’t knocked unconscious but I was shaken up badly. My ears were ringing and my vision was blurry. As I came to, I looked around the car and down at my body. The driver door had caved in and was pushing into my midsection. The front of the car seemed intact. I didn’t see any smoke or smell any gas. I looked down. No blood. Some windows had broken but the glass didn’t shatter since the window tint was still holding it together. I felt around my upper body and everything seemed OK, I just felt numb and paranoid.
Then I tried to push my feet down on the floor, hoping to wedge myself out from under the caved-in driver door. Big mistake. I felt a sharp jolt of pain through my entire body immediately. I felt it in my teeth. It was one of the strangest physical feelings I’ve ever experienced. This was a totally new perception of ‘pain’. My body started going into shock – a cold, primal feeling. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I didn’t feel emotional. I reached into my backpack on the passenger seat and grabbed a pencil to clinch in between my teeth. I have no idea why I did this, just acting on instinct. I don’t remember biting down on the pencil.
The other driver came up to my window and asked me if I was OK. I told him, “Call an ambulance, now.”
Any thoughts that had been on my mind only moments before were long gone, and a new paradigm started in my life. At that moment, all I could think about was survival.
As I look back decades later, I think about how these small seemingly meaningless micro-decisions can change the trajectory of your life. What if I had walked instead of driven that day? What if the train hadn’t been stopped at the crossing on Greene? Had just one of those two things happened differently, my life would have taken a completely different course. But I did drive instead of walk that day. The train was on the tracks. And my life has never been the same since.
(AutoBio Aug-2002) The Car Crash That Saved My Life Series: