[r0ckstarr]

I was riding in the passenger seat of a car. We were approaching a 3 way intersection and we had the green light. I remember looking up at the light as we were approaching it. Then, at the same time, me and my friend saw a truck coming at us from the side at a high rate of speed. She immediately applied the brakes as hard as she could. There was nothing else we could do because it all happened so fast.

My natural reaction was to turn away from what was about to hit me. I twisted towards my friend and the impact happened. I was slammed back into the door which caved in, along with the floor around my feet. We were hit so hard from the side that it pushed us into the oncoming lane and head on with another car, sending that car spinning backwards. The last thing I remember seeing was my window shattering, and the airbag hitting me as my vision went black. I was knocked unconscious. My friend thought I was dead, and said that she tried to get me to wake up for 3 to 4 minutes before I responded. I woke up to see my friend fall to the ground. Her adrenaline was going so much that she didn't even know she was injured until she tried to get out.

My door was smashed closed, and I had to have assistance from the ambulance climbing out through the drivers door. I had so much glass in my arm, that I was dripping blood. I am now going to therapy for back problems that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life, and I have permanent hearing damage in my right ear. My friend is dealing with broken bones. The police said that if the impact was 9 inches further back, I would have been dead. The other trucks bumper barely caught our front wheel and pushed us, rather than trying to drive through us any further than it did. Witnesses say that they saw the other person on their phone, and that they never even applied the brakes before hitting us.

I am lucky to be alive and feel like I have been given a 2nd chance at life.

[Midorime]

That's a very intense story.

Thank you for this important reminder and glad to still have you with us.

[r0ckstarr]

That's a very intense story.

Thank you for this important reminder and glad to still have you with us.

Thank you.

[grhazelton]

Many years ago, I think in Autumn of 1968, I was driving at perhaps 25 mph in a residential neighborhood in Richmond, Va. It was a lovely day, and naturally I had the top down on my 1965 Corvair Monza, 4 speed, white with red interior. Suddenly a Cadillac coming from a side street T-boned me on the passenger side. Since I was wearing my seat belt I was able to stop my car before I hit a parked car. The woman driver was screaming, her small child who apparently had been standing up was crying. A woman across the street saw the accident and called the police. The woman was on her way to a doctor's appointment for the child; had she stopped instead of trying to beat me through the intersection she would have been on time. I had a big bruise on my right hip from the seatbelt keeping me seated and in control.

I knew my car was totaled when the top wouldn't meet the pegs on the windshield. After some haggling with her insurance carrier I replaced the Corvair with a Datsun 510.

Thanksgiviing of 2016 Flora and I were driving to have lunch with Becky and Mark, our daughter and son in law. We were following them on a main road in Naperville, Ilinois at perhaps 30 or 35mph. Weather clear, high overcast. Going through a traffic-controlled intersection, we had the light, a car turned into us on the driver's side. I brought our 2010 Mazda to a safe halt, called the police. The airbag deployed, no injuries. Our Mazda was totaled, the driver of the other car was driving a "friend's" car, he had "forgotten" his permit, and it turned out that the owner of the other car was uninsured. Had the other driver been going faster, had Flora and not been wearing seat belts/shoulder harnesses, and the air bags not deployed the outcome could have been far different.
.
Many years ago my Father, PhD in Chemical Engineering, read an article detailing the forces acting on a human body during a car accident. He then had seat belts installed for the five of us in our 1958 Plymouth, which had none. That car's replacement, a 1960 Plymouth, had driver and front seat passenger belts from the factory, he had three more belts installed for all seating positions.

Seat belts save lives, as r0starr tells us. Wear them!

[Walkingwolf]

Wow- that reminded me just how fragile life is. Thank God the outcome wasn’t worse.
Thank you for sharing.