When Seattlites speak fondly of Seattle summers, they’re thinking of days like Friday, July 27, 2007. The departing season should rightly be remembered as one of the worst in Puget Sound weather history, but that Friday was gorgeous. The temperature was comfortable, provided by a sky bright with sun but tempered by the “little fluffy” cumuliform clouds so commonly associated with pleasant weather.
Everyone at Delicious Monster has a standing appointment with a personal trainer on Friday and Tuesday afternoons. Traditionally, Wil’s assistant will pick up a bag of sandwiches for lunch. I’m not able to drive right after working out, so my wife drives herself to work on Tuesdays and Fridays, and I tend to sleep in. That Friday was lazy and beautiful. I went to Wil’s house to eat my sandwich and pick up a package my mom had sent me, since it was a week before my birthday.
I always look both ways before crossing the street.
I crossed 65th street to my apartment to drop off the package, then I walked down to the corner and crossed 65th again. It was 2:30, an hour before I would leave for my workout appointment. I was going to the convenience store kitty-corner from my apartment building to get a bottle of Gatorade. Studies show that being dehydrated makes pain more intense, and my workout is extremely painful, so I always try to get as hydrated as possible.
The intersection of 65th street and 35th avenue is quite busy. Both streets are arterial, with double-width lanes that support two lines of traffic during rush hour. I stood on the corner and waited for the light to turn, intending to cross 35th avenue, east-bound. I noticed a blue Buick on 65th street, west-bound, but signaling to turn left onto 35th avenue, south-bound. I got the walk signal, and stepped off the curb.
I walk pretty quickly, so I was a quarter of the way across the street in mere seconds. The roar of the engine to my left was so loud I turned my head. The Buick was coming right for me, and the driver was obviously flooring it. A thought flashed red in my mind in that super-fast hasn’t-quite-been-translated-into-language way the brain does sometimes: that person intends to hit me.
You have to understand this was a Buick of the old school: big and square without a curve anywhere. I tend to associate that car with the trailer park set, who I imagine are slow of thought and quick of temper, with a kind of severe logic that’s always so hard to fathom in the hindsight of court reports and newspaper stories. I imagined the driver, drunk on cans of light beer, was infuriated by my audacity for daring to cross the street in front of him and had decided to teach me a lesson.
I tried to bolt, but by then it was too late. I don’t even know if the signal was far enough out of my brain to even break my gait. The driver’s side corner of the car hit the outside of my left thigh. The car was still turning, so the fender was moving into me, causing a sort of scooping motion that quickly had me off my feet and traveling up the hood.
To me, this whole thing happened in slow motion. A single black-on-white thought went through my mind. Had I been killed, this would have been my last thought on this earth:
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I was incredulous. Any panic rising before impact was long gone. I was not thinking of the future, or even of the present. All I was thinking was that I could not believe this happening. Who’s the guy who’s just crossing the street to get some Gatorade? Come on!
The Buick had a nice big hood, but it ran out quickly. I hit the windshield with my shoulders, which apparently scared the driver into slamming on the brakes. Bear in mind, at no point before then did the driver slow down. No, the pedal was to the metal until my shoulder contacted the windshield, whereupon all speed went out of the car and I was suddenly being thrown forward.
I flew away from the windshield, and was launched onto the north-bound side of the street, into what would have been oncoming traffic. I slammed into the concrete street on my right side, then bounced, finally landing on my back, looking straight up. I don’t know if I yelled with my mouth or only with my mind, but either way it was loud.
“Motherfucker!”
At this point I still thought the car had hit me on purpose, so I immediately turned around to try to catch the license plate number. To my genuine surprise, the car pulled over and I heard an old woman’s voice saying, over and over again:
“Sancte Petre, Sancte Petre, Sancte Petre.”
I thought, “Oh, it was an old woman. Make that an old Catholic woman, who is now praying to Saint Peter. I’d better get out of this fucking street.”
I stood up and picked up my keys, which I had been holding, and my iPhone, which had been in my pocket. I was missing a slipper, which I could see lying in the middle of the street half a block south. Forget it, it’s gone. I limped over to the sidewalk from whence I had come, saying my own prayer.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
There was a crowd of witnesses. One person asked if I was OK and I might have said or simply thought “no.” I continued praying as I lay down on the sidewalk. I dialed 911 on my newly dented iPhone. The operator answered and, honestly, I didn’t know what to say. I just sort of stammered for a while, until she asked me where I was. I could answer that question, as I could see the street signs. Somehow that got my brain going again and I was able to explain I had been struck my a vehicle while crossing the street and needed an ambulance.
I called my wife, but she didn’t answer the phone. I called Lucas and told him what happened, and that I was going to be in the hospital so I wouldn’t be able to work out. I asked him to relay the information to the gym and to Mary. That accomplished, I felt a great weight lift from my chest and I put my phone down, closed my eyes, and quietly bled for a while until a fire truck pulled up.
I had dealt with the situation in a very textbook way. I got out of harm’s way, called who I needed to call, then concentrated on being flat and still. When the firefighters got there I took inventory of my injuries. I had mild lacerations on my left hand and my right foot, which were bleeding profusely. On my right inner-thigh, right above the knee, I had a large scrape, known colloquially as “road rash.”
I didn’t hit my head, nor did I lose consciousness. They sat me up, took my blood pressure, looked at my eyes, and asked me a bunch of questions like what day it was. I’d been working so much I wasn’t really up on current events like the date, so I had to explain that I didn’t know, but that I wouldn’t have known anyway. It was pretty funny.
The firefighters determined that I was fine and were quite frank with the fact they were impressed. They asked me if I played football and I told them I work out. They told me that the reason I was walking away from what was essentially a fatal accident, aside from a good dose of luck, was my physique. In no uncertain terms they told me strength training had saved my life. Then something really strange happened: the firefighters convinced me not to go to the hospital.
I had assumed I could be strapped to a backboard and taken to the hospital as a matter of course. Instead, they told me (not asked me, mind you) that they could take me to the hospital if I really wanted, but if I went, I would be sitting in the emergency room all night for nothing, since there was nothing wrong with me. I somehow found this quite convincing and believed that, yes, I seem fine, so why would I waste time at a hospital? Ludicrous!
Then I started channeling the late, great Rodney Dangerfield.
A Seattle police officer had been there as well, but he didn’t really talk to me. Rather, he talked to the woman and a couple of the witnesses. It wasn’t until the firefighters left that he came over and took my statement. The old woman came up to me and apologized, telling me that she didn’t even see me and that she’d never done anything like this before. I don’t remember what I said, but I know what I thought:
“Obviously!”
By that point I noticed a really weird dynamic. I’m standing there, bleeding from my hands and feet, a walking, talking miracle. I am unquestionably innocent in all this. I am clearly the victim here. And yet, I knew that people were only barely on my side. I knew that if I was anything short of extremely polite to this woman, this would-be murderer, the tide of public opinion would turn quickly and severely against me.
I said I was glad she hit me, because of all the people who cross that street, the senior citizens and children who comprise most of the foot traffic in my neighborhood, only I could have taken that hit. But it’s time for me to go home. I need to clean the blood off and tend to my wounds. I need to lie down.
As a parting thought, the officer told me that, while I was clearly and completely in the right, I should be more careful crossing the street. I felt a sudden hot anger rise in me. I should be more careful? I should be more careful than waiting for the walk signal and using the crosswalk? I shook my head, crossed the street, and tended to my wounds.
After cleaning the lacerations with hydrogen peroxide and stanching the blood with gauze and pressure, I cut off some loose skin flaps and applied New Skin, a liquid bandage compound that’s basically clear nail polish with antiseptic properties. The sting was so intense I screamed out loud.
That night I went to a going-away and house-warming party for some of Mary’s coworkers, an obligation I had agreed to earlier. I hadn’t taken any kind of pain killers, but I was still completely out of my mind. I barely remember anything except people telling me I looked like shit, Mary explaining what had happened, and them asking me how I felt.
I feel like I got hit by a Buick.
The next day Wil pinged me to ask how I was feeling and get the story. I was sore all over, with a few intensely painful spots, including the bottoms of my feet and my right knee and hip. There was also the small matter of my shitting blood. Wil browbeat me into going to the emergency room, but it was the triage nurse that broke the spell that had been woven 26 hours before by the firefighters.
You got hit by a Buick and you’re walking into the ER a day later? Stop nodding. Are you insane? Put this cervical collar on and lie down. What are you thinking? You get hit by a car, you come to the hospital! Good lord! I have to admit, I felt pretty stupid, and that hasn’t faded. What can I say? Live and learn?
Still, the firefighters were proved right in the long run. I spent all night in the hospital, getting x-rayed and CAT scanned, and at the end of the day, there was nothing wrong with me. Even my internal bleeding had healed on its own.
I spent about a week in bed, getting up once to drive downtown to get a copy of the police report. It was a tremendous pain the ass. I had to park several blocks away and limp up a hill to get the report. Once I had it in hand, the first thing I did was figure out how old the woman was. She was 88.
According to the report, she knocked me down, but I was uninjured and required no further treatment. She received a ticket for inattentiveness. I think the fact I was able to walk away made the officer assume very little had actually happened. Certainly he gave me a feeling of “no harm, no foul.”
On that point, I’m afraid I must protest.
I talked to my hairdresser about this later. The shopping center has had several senior citizens drive through a store front, so she has a little bit of experience with the phenomenon. It turns out that when people get old enough, they lose the leg control necessary to operate the accelerator pedal. As such, they can either rest their foot on the pedal, or they can push it all the way down.
It’s the former case most people think of when they think of old people on the road. Resting a foot on the pedal produces the familiar sight of an ancient driver going too slow down the freeway. However, it’s the pedal to the metal coming off the line that leads to cars crashing through stores. That’s why she came at me so fast: she was incapable of doing otherwise.
Were our roles reversed, she would be dead and I would be in jail. Choosing to operate a motor vehicle while physically unable to do so is a crime, and killing someone while committing this crime is vehicular homicide. If you hit and kill someone with your car, that’s an accident, but if you were driving impaired, it’s murder.
Now, murder is an interesting thing. It’s not the result that makes it murder: it’s the intent. If I stab someone and, by sheer luck, I fail to hit any major arteries and they live, the state don’t say “no harm, no foul.” Luck has nothing to do murder; attempted murder still puts you away for life.
The only thing standing between this woman and vehicular homicide is luck. It’s luck that she hit me and not a kid or another senior citizen. It’s luck that I didn’t hit my head or snap my neck during the course of three impacts. It’s luck there was no traffic on the other side of the street to run me over after I was thrown onto the street. In every way that I’m lucky to be alive, she is doubly lucky I’m alive.
Still, while I am extremely angry about all this, I’m not really angry at her. I’m angry at the system. I’m angry about the fact a teenager has to take tests and deal with short-cycle licenses and zero-tolerance suspensions, but a group of people infamous for being unable to drive do so without so much as a second-look until they finally manage to kill someone.
I’m angry that the department of licensing and the insurance companies have no problem letting ticking time-bombs roam the streets, even though nobody is ever surprised when I tell them she was a senior citizen. Most people have already guessed by then. It’s not like the government doesn’t know better: the FAA requires all pilots over the age of 60 to have a doctor’s signature, an EKG, and a second certificated pilot with them.
The technical term for old age is senescence. Why is there a technical term? Because it’s a medical condition, and like any medical condition, it can impair your ability to operate a motor vehicle. If I had epilepsy or vision problems I would have to have a doctor certify I was able to drive a car safely. Why is senescence any different?
Is it because the AARP, at 38 million members, is one of the most powerful special interest groups in the country? Could the $23 million they spent on lobbying in 2006 have anything to do with it? Or is it simply that actuaries have examined the evidence and decided that it would cost more to ensure the nation’s aging population can drive safely than to simply deal with the occasional pedestrian being run down on a beautiful Friday afternoon?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Buick'd!
