Crash

Yesterday was Saturday, which is one of only two (at most) days of the week when I am able to hand the kid off to her dad and sleep in my own cozy bed for as long as I like.

Just before 8 am, O was watching tv while Louis was fixing breakfast and I was happily dozing. We heard a super loud crash and I went to look out our bedroom window. I saw our next door neighbor's car sitting in the middle of the street in front of our house. From my angle, it looked like her air bags had gone off but I couldn't see her. 

I yelled for Louis to call 911 because I wasn't quite awake and had no idea where my phone was. He got flustered and wondered what was going on so I just found my phone and called while he went outside. With O at my side, I tried to stay as calm as possible talking to the operator to tell her that there were actually three cars involved and nobody was getting out, which looked like somebody was hurt.

They sent police, fire, and an ambulance pretty quickly and O and I watched from our window to see what had happened.

As it turns out, the son of the woman who owns the Mexican restaurant at the end of our street was driving home from work and fell asleep as he was trying to make a u-turn on our street. He ran into the brand new car of our neighbor two doors down, which then rammed into our next door neighbor's car, which pushed that car into the middle of the street in front of our house. He claimed he was going 25 mph but there's no way. All there cars involved were totaled.

The first car that was hit was only days old. Our meighbor's wife died of cancer earlier this year, and he invited his granddaughter and her five year old son to come live with him while she goes to nursing school. He bought the new car for her. The second car that was hit belonged to our next door neighbor, who used it to visit her elderly sister everyday. It was an older Camry and because the back end was so damaged, she'll probably get nothing for it.

Especially because the driver's insurance was expired. Unbelievable.

O was a little scared at first but once we realized that nobody was in the two cars that were hit, I calmed down and so did she. We talked about what happened and how the police and firefighters came to help.

I saw the driver get out of his car and walk to the ambulance and then walk out a little while later. It's truly amazing he wasn't seriously hurt. 

It's scary that it could have so easily happened to us. Also a reminder of how nosy/helpful all the neighbors on our street are. Everyone came out to offer help. Some took pictures while others tried to console the neighbors whose cars were damaged. One brave neighbor went up to the driver right away to see if he was hurt.

I think it was good that we had just done out annual National Night Out event because all the neighbors are very connected on our end of the street. It's a good place to live, except for the crazy drivers.