The "Traffic Incident"

At some point, I really do plan to make a post explaining this blog and it’s name as a sort of introduction. In fact, that was my plan for today’s post, but occasionally circumstances so extraordinary and unforeseeable occur that they demand to be recorded immediately.

First of all, let me say that with these two posts I don’t mean to make my life sound like it’s exciting—it’s not. For the most part my days are spent perusing the internet for gainful employment or watching my roommates play video games, so don’t get the wrong idea.

In any case, my roommates (whom, for the purposes of this blog, will be known as [Kaidan Alenko] and [Brick]) and I were on the way home from a Target run last night (I told you my life wasn’t exciting), when all of the sudden we were thrust into a “traffic incident” that became something like a combination of all three Bourne movies, Police Academy, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation rolled into one muggy Memphis evening.

Now, I could try to employ all my verbal powers to explain this accident to you, but I think the only way to truly get a sense of what happened is to give you pictures. Before we start it’s important to remember these things: [Brick] was driving; [Kaidan Alenko] was in the passenger seat, and I was sitting on the back driver side. And, the action unfolded like this:

1. We (circle) are driving in the far left lane of a one-way road and there is a vehicle (rectangle) a little in front of us in the middle lane:

2. The second vehicle proceeds to make a left turn at the next intersection from the middle lane.

3. Clearly this is going to be a problem, but the problem is further compounded by one other factor—there is a family (face) crossing the intersection our friend the rectangle is trying to turn across. So the whole situation looks like this:

4. [Brick] with no other alternative reverts to video game-style evasive driving tactics:

5. While the tactic works incredibly well, when [Brick] turns the wheel back to straighten out he overcorrects, and we spin 180 degrees and stop on the curb narrowly missing the back end of another car (triangle).

There are a lot of things people say happen to you in situations like this, but I don’t know if they really do. For instance, my life did not flash before my eyes. In fact, I don’t really remember saying or thinking anything other than, “This is lasting a really long time.” Which brings me to my next point, people always say, “It happened so fast,” but this didn’t. It was like the whole world was struck by a tranquilizer dart. Everything slowed down, and I remember very small, insignificant details: the look on the Father’s face as we missed his family by a few feet, a mixture of pure panic with a wave of relief running up behind it (whether this was from his bladder emptying or because we didn’t hit him, I can’t be sure), the feeling of the car beginning to spin and being certain of all the things we were about to hit—the retaining wall past the curb, the building across the street, and finally the car behind us as we screeched to a halt.

The only thing about time slowing down is as soon as it’s over the whole world speeds up again just to balance everything out. [Kaidan Alenko] and I flew out of the car. And as I’ve been known to hit several immobile objects in my day, I felt the first thing to check was the car behind us. This perhaps was not the most logical thing to do, as [Kaidan Alenko] was running down the street waving his arms like a lunatic to get the culprits to stop, but after yelling in disbelief that the cars were in fact ok, I too took off after the escaping bandits.

One thing you should know as a human being is that cars are much faster than people. You know those movies where someone is in a car and chasing a person on foot? Yeah, in real life, that person would be dead. And so too, our pursuit ended fruitlessly. We came back to the scene and met the family we nearly sideswiped into oblivion. They were incredibly nice about the whole almost killing them thing (They were from the UK, got to love those English) and even stuck around to be our witnesses when the police showed up.

Ah, the police. Now if you’ve never been to Memphis, you may not really understand the police here. First of all, there are a lot of them. Police are in Memphis like Starbucks are in most other big cities. If you are standing next to one on a street corner, you can most likely see another one from where you’re standing. And secondly, though there are a lot of great ones out there, approximately one in three are actually capable of helping you in the way that you would like.

So, Cop #1, actually a county sheriff, arrives and after we explain the accident to him, he tells us, “Oh well, there’s not really anything to report. It’s not a wreck, and it’s not a hit and run either since nobody got hit. This is just a traffic incident.” Yes, this is infallible logic. No one got hit, so therefore no hit and run occurred. Forget the fact that another car caused what could have been a fairly serious “traffic incident,” and after they saw us trying to stop them, clearly implying that some damage had indeed been done, they just sped off.

Cop #1 doesn’t know what to do, and being a county sheriff doesn’t have jurisdiction to do anything, so he calls someone from the city of Memphis—Cop #2. We rehearse the whole story with Cop #2, and the Brits vouch for us again (God save the Queen). However, Cop #2 is a little more suspicious. She says with attitude, and I quote, “Well if you hit the brake how’d y’all endup all the way over here?” Apparently physics is not a required course at the Memphis Police Academy. But let’s break Newton’s third law of motion down: A vehicle in motion at 35 MPH and changing direction rapidly, though the brakes are on, will continue to stay in motion until another object interacts with it. In our case, the curb. Thank you Coach Gates 7^th grade science class.

Now I was a little frustrated already from Cop #1 and Cop #2 had only exacerbated the situation, so when she starts questioning basic physics a synapse that must have been knocked loose during the crash snaps and I say, just barely out of her ear shot, “Oh you’re right ma’am, we just set all of this up for fun.” [Kaidan Alenko] quickly shuts me up before we get arrested, and thankfully Cop #2 doesn’t know what to do either and calls in Cop #3.

Remember what I said about the 1 cop in 3 rule? Well, that’s exactly how it worked out for us. Cop #3 is wonderful. He gets the whole thing reported in under 30 minutes and tells us how to contact the right authorities to get a hold of the camera footage (Oh yes, there were cameras). At this point, our friends the Brits have left, and the cop is actually so nice that instead of calling a tow truck, which he is supposed to do, he lets us put a spare on the car and drive away. Yeah, that’s right I said drive away. After all of that, the only thing we got out of the whole thing was a deflated tire. The cop did give us one other piece of advice before we left, and this is why cops in Memphis—even the best ones—will always remain a mystery to me. He said, referring to the other car, “Next time man, you should just hit ‘em.” Nevermind that we all would have been seriously injured. So remember that out there if you’re ever in a bad situation that it’s possible to avoid, “Next time, just hit ‘em.”

Where we landed. Note the skid marks on the curb.

Inches.