Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Sorry to keep people in suspense -- I didn't get a chance to poke at a computer until now, and I just saw the number of responses to the posts I mailed from my phone earlier. So this is a quick update on my way to bed.

I think I'm okay, though I'm aware that muscles-out-of-kilter damage can show up a day later. I haven't seen the car in decent light yet, but from anniemal's description after going out to the driveway with a flashlight, it sounds like maybe the impact wasn't as hard as it felt like from the driver's seat. Various parts of my back hurt, but various parts of me hurt already before I even got into the car, so it's kind of hard to assess.

Having this trigger a fibro flare would be pretty icky timing.

The car mostly behaved on the drive back to anniemal's house, though every slightly wrong noise, every wiggle, every funny smell, and every imperfection in responsiveness had me worrying, "Was that the road or the car? Did I mess up the tires? Is the alignment okay? Is something leaking or knocked loose?" Feh. I'll take a closer look in daylight, and of course I'll still fret because I'm sure there are things I don't know how to check. But if the body damage is that slight, maybe there won't be mechanical damage.

Between College Park and Arlington, I didn't notice any stretches of road that were simultaneously straight enough and long enough to check whether the alignment was straight. When I head back to Baltimore...

What happened is that in the midst of pretty heavy traffic (i.e. no room for quick lane changes), I was keeping up with the cars in front of me and passing the cars on my right, when a bozo in something small, blue, and sporty started tailgating me. Not the ordinary tailgating that bothers me enough as it is; the bumper-hugging deathwish tailgating. I flashed my brake lights and he moved closer. So I slowed down -- the only way I can be certain of preventing a 70 MPH collision when someone is that close is to not be going 70 MPH any more. My slowing down, of course, caused there to be room for him to cut somebody else off and change lanes. But not satisfied with having gotten out from behind me, he wanted to "teach me a lesson": he changed lanes again in front of me, cutting me off ... but not satisfied with merely "in my face" cutting in front of me at an unsafe distance, he changed lanes across the front of my car, striking my right front fender with his left rear quarter panel despite my braking hard enough to make a cloud of tire-smoke in an attempt to avoid him.

In other words, I don't think this was a careless misjudgement of distance; I honestly think it was an intentional collision. vehicular assault. If I hadn't slammed on my brakes, he would have hit me further back. That's not a small "oops".

What with braking hard enough to make smoke and trying to steer out of the resulting skid, I wound up a lane to the right and somewhat diagonal. In my rear view mirror, I saw cars going sideways behind me. If any of them had been tailgating the way the bozo in the blue sports car had been, it would've been a five car pileup and closed the Beltway for a spell. His pique nearly took out five cars. Then, of course, I had to find my way to the nearest shoulder as cars further back started dodging around the stopped cars to both the left and the right. No fun.

I parked on the (narrow) left shoulder and dialed 911. They told me to move to the right shoulder, which took a while waiting for a large enough opening to do so (I quite expected to need a police car to block for me -- and at that point I had no idea what the mechanical state of my car was). They gave me an incident number to refer to but said there'd be no written report since I had not caught the tag number of the other car. Not that I didn't think of it! I just had a cloud of smoke and a whole mess of other cars to contend with while trying to control my own car; there wasn't time to get a good look at the license plate, and he was moving away from me pretty damned quickly by the time I had a chance to even try.

So. Hit-and-run. I didn't get the tag. The police can't do squat (if they had the infinite financial resources of television cops and could count on a miracle clue to narrow down the thousands of medium-blue sports cars in the DC area to one suspect just before the third commercial break, then maybe they could be useful .... but I guess this is a sign that I don't live in a television show). And without the tag, there's no way to find out whose insurance to sue. (Actually, if I had the license number, I'd try for criminal assault charges.) My own insurance doesn't cover damage to my own vehicle (not cost-effective for a 14-year-old car, so I get screwed either way on that). All I can do is hope that the damage is merely cosmetic, and try to get over the fact that my time enjoying a car that isn't banged up or dented or scratched or made half out of body putty didn't last very long.

I'm still having trouble believing he ran. Further evidence that it was intentional, I suppose, but it's an alien thought to me. I wish I'd had a chance to give chase and try to get the plate, but he'd gotten a Hell of a head start by the time I managed to get moving again, and traffic was, as I said, heavy. Aiming for the nearest shoulder seemed the most reasonable bet. (But Rambo-ish fantasies of daring maneuvers to catch up to him and force him off the road for a citizen's arrest continue to flit through my mind. Gotta react somehow to the feeling of helplessness that comes from knowing the malicious asshole made a clean getaway.)

Anyhow, there's the status update, and the story. And I should postpone the other things I've got in mind to write, so I can lie down with a heating pad and let anniemal use her own computer to finish what she interrupted to let me write this to reassure y'all.

In daylight, I'll get a more realistic idea of the damage. Maybe I'll be lucky and it'll be a whole lot less than it felt like at the moment of impact. Being struck while travelling a mile a minute is a bit distressing.

"But many of [the Bush administration's] supporters talk about how they represent Christianity. I don't think they represent Christianity any more than some of these murderers, and mass murderers, represent Islam. So let's not blame the religion. Let's blame those that use religion to do some ruthless, deadly, wicked acts." -- Al Sharpton, 2004-01-29