Car crashes are an unfortunate learning experience

First post in the "personal" blog. Summer is here, so this lines up with my plans for this blog. I intended my first real post to be about, I don't know, summer, how things are going in my life, what I plan on doing... unfortunately, something terrible happened last week that put my summer plans to a halt, but thank God I lived.

I was on the way home from college for the summer, so everything from my dorm room, was in the crash with me. Today I finished cleaning up the post-wreckage mess. Everything was in smashed boxes with a lot of glass shards, dirt, and grass inside. Dusting off and checking all your worldly possessions for glass is not a fun experience, it's tedious and time consuming, however I prefer it to the latter. The latter being not being able to do that because I did not make it through the crash. It seems morbid to think about that stuff, but after a crash, you find yourself thinking about the "what ifs..." Not just the good, but the good, the bad, and the ugly...

What if I would have been able to pull over in time.. What if I would have checked the tires before I left.. or would it have mattered? What if I was going faster.. What if that tree wasn't there.. What if my car would have hit another car.. What if I hit the wall, or crossed the median, or hit the guard rail? What if I was not wearing my seat belt......

But, for all the "what ifs" that exist, there is only the "what really happened." Thankfully, the what really happened is that my car was shaking, I was trying to figure out what was going on, slowing down slightly, during this time I lost control of my vehicle, it swerved out of its lane and flipped once into the median/forest-y area where it skidded to a stop, thanks to mud and a tree. The cause was the tread separating from the tire and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Absolutely NOTHING.

...I keep telling myself this and I keep wanting to just re-analyze the situation, look for an error or weakness and figure out what I could have done differently. And, with the exception of better maintenance on my car, there is absolutely nothing that I could have done to stop that vehicle. I was slowing down, considering pulling over, trying to figure out what was going on, when it happened.

The "what ifs" don't matter, all that matters is that it happened and I lived, my seat belt, though it left me with a cut and a bruise, saved my life. I walked away, though I was taken away on a stretcher in an ambulance, just to be safe, from a roll over car crash with a mild head contusion and a few cuts and bruises. Very, incredibly lucky.

The exact same day two people were involved in a roll over crash and they were "ejected" from their vehicle. If I was not wearing my seat belt, that could have been me. I have never been so thankful and appreciative of my life.

After I read about what happened to these people, one of them died, I decided to write an article to the Courier-Journal about my situation, I hope it gets published, it needs to be published:

"Title: This information could save you life.

Last week I was in a terrible roll-over crash while driving home from Western Kentucky University for the summer. The crash left my car demolished, but I walked away with a mild head contusion and a few cuts and bruises. The next day I was startled when I read that two people were involved in a similar crash on the same day, the two were ejected from the vehicle and tragically one of them died. I remained in my vehicle during my crash because I was wearing my seat belt, they did not. Kentucky is currently implementing their ‘Click it or Ticket’ campaign and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to wear a seat belt. I urge everyone to always wear their seat belt and make sure that their passengers are wearing one. That strap of fabric could be the difference between life and death."

I've always been an advocate of seat belts, especially since my best friend had her tooth permanently damaged from not wearing in a seat belt in a small fender bender. I don't like to think of how this crash would have gone if I had not been wearing my seat belt. Let's just not think about that. I thank God that I am alive... I have never appreciated life so much.