Insurance card? Check — and always accessible via my provider’s mobile app (provided the accident didn’t damage my phone).
Camera? Check — on my phone.
Clean underwear? …maybe I should tuck a pair of tighty-whiteys into the glove box.
I see that much of this preparedness hinges on my phone surviving the accident and me knowing where it is. Maybe I should buy a sturdier case.
Also, story time, because it’s Thursday and I’m putting off working a help ticket.
Right after I got engaged in 2009, I was driving on I-185 through Columbus, GA, just past the Manchester Expressway exit. We were in my beloved’s 2005 Accord. My best bro was riding shotgun because he’d come along to help move something or another, and my beloved and her 1 y.o. were in the back seat. It was raining, and there had been an accident. I crested the hill that is the Manchester Expwy overpass and came upon the stopped traffic. I had plenty of time to slow without engaging ABS, and came to a stop in the far-right lane. We sat there for a few minutes, chatting. As we weren’t moving, I was being lazy about checking mirrors and general awareness of my surroundings. I happen to glance up into the rear view mirror to see a black 90’s Corolla moving too fast in our lane with its wheels fully steered left, but brakes locked up, so it’s skidding. At the last second, the driver of the Corolla must have let off the brakes so the car could turn, and the Accord received a glancing blow that we almost didn’t feel (thanks crumple zones!). I’d estimate the speed of impact to be 30-35mph.
The Corolla regained control ahead, and was able to make it to the right shoulder. The driver was a young woman, visibly pregnant, and her mother. Her airbags hadn’t even deployed, but she was so scared that her baby was going to be affected. Her mother had beaten us to the 911 call and requested no ambulance (we certainly didn’t need one — my beloved soon-to-be daughter didn’t even wake from her car nap until we dragged her out for safety’s sake).
My wife, saint that she is, was comforting the girl who had hit us (her mother was busy fussing with insurance stuff with me), and part of this comfort was the tell the girl she was pregnant, too. Now, this was true, but she wasn’t showing yet, and I hadn’t told my best bro, who definitely overheard. That was an interesting, but ultimately positive conversation later that day. When it became clear that traffic wasn’t going to move anytime soon and that the police were going to take a while to get there (don’t tell them “no injuries” if you want them there quickly), I called my FIL-to-be to ask if he could come collect the baby so she could have dinner and not be on the side of the highway in the rain anymore.
He beat the police to the scene. I have no idea how many laws he broke on the way there, but he was at least 5 miles from the scene when I called, and was there in less than five minutes after I hung up, and there were nothing 35-45mph surface streets between destinations. He was piloting his E90 335i (manual, of course), and he’s an old hoon, so he probably relished the excuse to drive like a bat out of hell while at the same time being exceptionally concerned about his grandbaby.
Bonus: I actually have a picture of the afflicted Accord (don’t say I never gave ya nothin’). I drove it from the scene of the accident with that wheel cocked inward. It didn’t drive differently at all. State Farm repaired it to the tune of $7k, and it was like-new afterward.