The Cars On The Side Of The Road

We got a second chance and we lived

At night, we drive by cars with all their airbags blown all over the front seats. There are no passengers in sight. Sometimes there is a tow truck. Most of the time, there are cops blocking off the lane or the side of the road the car is on.

Of course, I stare to see what’s going on. Anything that holds up traffic for more than 30 minutes of our usual commute warrants that kind of attention. I wonder whether the people involved in the accident are still alive, whether they are okay.

When I see the ambulance, my mind turns to the worst possible scenarios.

The other day, I saw a car completely flipped over on the median. I’ve seen cars that were so crushed I wonder how anyone could have survived the accident. When I saw what exactly held up traffic for as long as an hour, completely inconveniencing my day, I realized the huge inconvenience in my day is very mild compared to the possibility that the people involved in the accident may not have made it.

What happened to completely total their car? Were they drunk? Did they fall asleep? Were they just on their phone? Is the car fixable? How much is it going to cost? How much are their insurance rates going to drive up?

Most importantly, are they alive?

Even when the accident is on the other side of the expressway, traffic sometimes comes to a complete stop even though it’s technically none of our business. Perhaps it’s because there are cops on the other side that causes people to slow down. Perhaps it’s just because people like to stare and see what’s going on.

Sometimes the car is on the shoulder. But I always find the car on the side of the road is much more than just a disruption to our days. It’s sometimes thoughts of simultaneous relief and sadness.

For one, at least it’s not you. All those close calls and near accidents where your whole life could have been upended just like the people who got into the accident. You see the ambulance and blocked traffic, and move on with your day. You’re not going to stop and still need to get where you’re going.

But you know at some point, it could be you. And only through luck or the grace of God can we survive.

At some point, I was in the car on the side of the road, and my mother and I were in a car crash so severe people thought we were

When I was 12 years old, in 2009, my father had a heart attack. My brother called me to ask my dad to give him a ride from our local commuter college. Since he was only 10 minutes away and my parents didn’t want to pay for his car insurance, he had to be picked up every night from class, or he had to walk back. Depending on what time of day, it could be dangerous since there was no shoulder on the road.

I called 911, and I didn’t see him for a good amount of time. He was in the hospital for a little bit, so my mom was the only one taking care of things around the house and financially for several weeks. The surgery was a success, but my dad didn’t like hospital food, so she would even cook and bring food to him in the hospital.

I didn’t realize how stressful it was for her until something almost tragic happened.

I was seeing some friends at the place I used to live. We had, only two months before, moved about an hour away from my old apartment complex. I missed it a lot because I missed my friends a lot, and since I was around 12 years old, I threw a huge fit over the move and saw some of my old friends every weekend.

At the time, my mom worked about an hour west of our new home. She worked as a waitress at a restaurant, so she worked afternoons and nights. She would pick me up around 10 p.m., but she was exhausted. This happened a few times, and I assume she also felt bad and felt like she wanted her son to have some fun with the stressors around the house at the time, among other things.

One night, she picked me up, and it seemed like a normal night. I didn’t notice anything particularly wrong, so I fell asleep since it was late at night. When I woke up, I saw some broken glass near me, and a tree branch that slightly protruded through the passenger window. I was just disoriented and confused, so I unhooked the seat belt and checked to see if I was alright. I was completely unscathed, and then I realized my mom was asleep, too.

“Mom,” I said in Chinese.

She woke up, also disoriented, and she also did a double take to make sure she and I were alright. It took us some time to actually realize what was going on.

We finally realized we were in a car accident, but we were okay. I learned in my 7th-grade health class only a week before that you were more likely to survive a car crash if you were asleep because your body doesn’t tense up. I shared this fun fact with my mom since I loved to show off how smart I was, but first thing was first: we had to get out of the car. I had to exit on the other side since my side was completely blocked off.

People always found it strange that until I was 16 or older, I never sat in the front passenger seat. I actually preferred sitting in the back passenger seat. Maybe that’s because my brother sat in the front, or because I just preferred it out of habit and never snapped out of the habit. It was something my friends would joke about when I was older, but it may have saved my life on that given day.

It was still the era of flip phones and the first generation of the iPhone, but we didn’t know where our phones were. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes before a cop showed up and expressed surprise that we were okay but completely unscathed. He said the car had flipped over, and that when he got to the scene of the accident, he expected it to be fatal.

I had trouble believing it. I remember that I was still tired and exhausted at the time, and I just wanted to go to sleep. He would drive us home and we would sleep it off. Over the next eleven years, I would drive past the scene of the accident dozens of times and have trouble believing the cop about the car flipping over and the accident seeming fatal. For one, the speed limit on that road is 30 miles per hour, and it was the lawn of some government administration building. When we woke up, the car was also completely upright.

We went to the church across the street that weekend. We didn’t normally go, but that weekend, my mother was, of course, counting her blessings. I didn’t really want to go, but we did just get in a nearly fatal car accident where we got extremely lucky, so maybe there was a God after all, right?

My mom was telling everyone about the accident, telling everyone that God saved us, and with a bunch of church people praying over us. I didn’t make any outward show of emotion to be polite. But internally, it felt like I was rolling my eyes because I thought it was bullshit.

Now, I do believe God did save us if what the cop said was true, but even though my mom said she believed it, she fell into the tendency I’ve always hated to sweep the incident under the rug. My father was still in the hospital and hadn’t heard about it. I visited him once, and I wasn’t going to bring it up if she wasn’t going to bring it up. He only found out we were in a car accident where she fell asleep at the wheel when he was discharged from the hospital and wondered where the hell the car was.

When he found out about the accident, he was pissed. The first thing I heard him say wasn’t an expression of gratitude that everyone was okay and safe, but bewilderment that (1) he wasn’t told until weeks after the accident and (2) the car was totaled and our car insurance would skyrocket. I saw him maybe a month ago when he talked about this accident and did express gratitude that we barely escaped a near-death accident, even if he didn’t say it at the time.

But because we did survive but suffered no adverse health complications or injuries, we had the luxury of worrying more about the car being totaled and insurance rates.

My brother doesn’t drive. He hasn’t driven a car for the past ten years. It sounds absolutely crazy to say that, but he often cites the statistic that driving is the most dangerous thing you do every day. We are far more likely to be seriously injured in a car accident than we are to be killed or injured in a crime.

While I don’t think he’s wrong, I have been critical about how his fear and anxiety around driving stop him from simply living his life. My brother struggles with mental illness, and some days, he doesn’t think he has the capacity to drive. He has a license, so sometimes, I am critical of my brother because, on eight-hour drives between his school and home, my mom will drive the whole way. She’ll drink three whole cups of coffee, start blasting music really loud with windows rolled down to stop her from sleeping, and more.

Despite my brother’s mental illness, I would be critical because how can you not want to pitch in if someone else drove eight to 12 hours and was clearly struggling? How could you not want to alleviate their distress and suffering?

But there are some points since this accident where she has just pulled over and slept. She will push herself to a certain point, but since that time, she learned her lesson and I learned my lesson. If I find myself getting extremely tired and am the only one driving (and nothing induces drowsiness like driving, for me), I will pull over to a gas station or highway rest stop and just sleep. At one point, on a drive from Atlanta to Baltimore, I stopped at a rest stop at 7 p.m. and would not wake up until the next morning.

There was one time when falling asleep at the wheel was really close. I had been exhausted for about an hour, playing music that I felt would keep me awake on a long drive with my wife. A few times, I blinked and just couldn’t remember the last few seconds. I wasn’t swerving, somehow, but I knew I had to stop as soon as possible, so I pulled over to the nearest gas station.

God did save me once. And I never want to cut it close or chance it again, because I might not get another shot.

The cars on the side of the road bring me to an alternate world where I and/or my mom may have been the one who didn’t make it, who needed to be carried from the car in a stretcher, who may not have made it to the hospital.

Everyone slows down. Everyone stares.

As human beings, it’s human nature to be intrigued by unusual disruptions of the day.

But I think part of it is that we have all had those close calls and days where it almost was us or could have been us.

Those of us who drive and commute for hours a day are often mired in monotony and routine. I know now that with one bad break and stroke of terrible luck, it could all be over.

I think frequently about the day my mom and I both fell asleep as the car flipped over and I woke up with glass next to me. When I think back to it, I don’t feel anything. We got a second chance and we lived. A lot of people don’t. That might not be fair, but where else can we go but forward?