I was crossing a crosswalk early this morning on my way to the bus stop for work, while the walk sign was on, and the driver turned left onto a main road from a stop light and smashed into my left side. I was later told that I “flew up into the air”.
It was all very much a blur and I was pretty dizzy and out of it at first, but no head trauma. Some kind lady who said she was a nurse ran to help me up and to the side of the road, and the cops and ambulance came pretty fast (I think, at least).
I was taken to the hospital and was told that I fractured my humerus head (left shoulder). They told me I may not need surgery, but we’ll see what the orthopedic surgeon says during my follow-up appointment in a few days. Other than that, I just have a bunch of scrapes and bruises.
Overall, while I’m in quite a bit of pain, I’m grateful because it could’ve been way worse. My SO and parents are pushing to sue for pain/suffering, which I was hesitant to do until I read (online) that I wouldn’t be suing the person who hit me, but their insurance company), so I guess that’ll probably happen. They already found me a lawyer.
I truly have no ill-will toward that person because shit happens, it was dark, and they got out of the car immediately to call 911, so it’s not like they didn’t do what was right when it came down to it. I’m sure they’re traumatized, and that their insurance payment will go way up… which I feel a little bad about given the state of the US rn. But I guess I don’t have any control over that.
Honestly, while the whole thing was obviously pretty traumatic for me, too—and I keep replaying that moment in my head—I think I’d rather get hit by a car than hit someone with my car.
I’ve had few occasions where the timing was just right and a car/pedestrian was perfectly hidden behind the a-pillar and then just appeared out of nowhere. There’s even a famous junction in the UK that’s known for being dangerous for this exact reason.
I have this on my very own street - there’s what I always think of as a T intersection at the end but in reality there is a small private road just a bit offset. There’s little enough traffic that I just never really noticed for years …. Until one day when I found myself turning into the intersection and another car magically appeared. Effing A pillar. No accident and we both handled it well, but it’s a shock when you realize you’ve had that kind of blindness on a road you drive every day
As a driver you should lean left and right to check around the A pillar.
You can, but with how close the a-pillar is to your face relative to where other things are you can quite often have to move LARGE amounts to actually see shit
Luckily my current car has really good A-pillar visibility with where I normally put my head, but when I had to drive rentals for about a year when this car was in the shop I FEEQUENTLY had issues with shit being near impossible to see behind the massive bar they though was smart to put there.
Never had an issue because I was aware and careful, but if even someone who’s actively aware of it can have an issue then there’s a problem at the design level
And even if you do these things are still bound to happen every now and then. Not a single human alive is capable of paying 100% attention to their surroundings 100% of the time.
And yet we trust almost all of them to operate a 2-ton machine on a daily basis here in the US.
Yeah. And also hate the people trying to solve this by introducing self driving vehicles. Go figure.
Thanks for posting that: I hadn’t seen that video before. I’m glad they changed that junction to make it safer.