18th
“Is There A Problem, Officer?” Part One
Yesterday was the first exam in my 5-week summer class, which is a general education course in conceptual, mathless physics I’ll talk more about in another post. I left the house earlier than usual and was glad for the extra time, because it was raining pretty hard.
As soon as I was on the highway, I noticed my car was frighteningly difficult to control. I left the music off and hovered around 55 MPH. I didn’t see any other cars sliding around, so two miles into my trip, I pulled over.
I stepped out of my car to check my tires. I meant to check them all, but the first one I saw looked fine, from which I immediately deduced that the rain was giving everyone the same control issues and that I was risking a lot by standing on the side of the road. I jumped back into my car without checking the other tires, which tells you a lot about why I’m not a scientist.
I reflected for a minute. I’ve never been the kind of student who would risk much to make it to an exam, but my professor has a “zero tolerance” absence policy. There are no make-up exams. Plus, think of the excuse: Sorry, I was going to come take the test —early, even!— but it was raining. A hard sell, even for this charmer.
I thought about it another minute, then tweeted.
I started up again, leaving my hazard lights on while I brought my speed back up to 55, the steering wheel still convulsing in my hands. Less than a mile later, I spun clockwise 180 degrees in the right lane and slammed into the guardrail, facing traffic. That part of the highway is level with the ground, so the risk of cliff death was low. But still, I’ve never appreciated guardrails so much. As I would later tell the tow truck driver, “[the crash] was some Michael Bay shit.”
Anyone who’s had a scary experience like a car crash or mugging or whatever will tell you the same thing: everything slows down. It’s like there’s a little camcorder in your brain, and its frames-per-second rate multiplies, and you memorize the scene shot-by-shot while your adrenaline goes off the charts. (Paradoxically, it’s “all a blur” later on.) While I watched taillights turn into headlights, the remaining treads of my mostly bald tires making a long screech that sounded far away, I kept the wheel steady. I pumped the brakes gently. I did everything they told us to do in driving school while I waited for the crash, or crashes. But about half way through my wicked turn, it was pretty obvious that no mastery of threshold braking was going to get me out of this one.
Stay tuned to see how right I was and to learn why, if you’re alone and unhurt, you shouldn’t call the police in a situation like this.
