On the afternoon of EREV YOM KIPPUR 5759, I was driving from Manchester up to Mendocino for a pre-fast supper at the home of my friends Mina and Jeff. It was a familiar trek up Highway 1, toward the shul in Caspar. There was a slight drizzle, just enough to have the wipers on at the lowest intermittent setting. The sky was gray, but the coast was beautiful. Is it ever anything else?
I was thinking about YOM KIPPUR, about atonement, about the annual process of TESHUVAH (turning) which began 38 days earlier with the start of the month of ELLUL; and had hit high gear ten days prior with the beginning of the Days of Awe at ROSH HASHANA. I was wondering about the real meaning of this wonderful and "aweful" holiday and remembering the stories I had read of the holy terror great Rabbis are said to have experienced on this day. I was wondering if the mesclun salad with pecans and gorgonzola I had made was too rich and whether I should have used red wine vinegar rather than balsamic for the vinaigrette.
I passed through Irish Beach and was heading toward a sharp S shaped curve in road at the "Vicious Bulls" sign, just before Bridgeport. I was suddenly startled when I realized that even though my foot was on the brake, I was not slowing down fast enough for the turn ahead. I braked harder and harder, finally putting the car into a skid. As I headed down into the curve, I remember feeling disbelief. It seemed impossible that this was happening. I realized I was in trouble. I remember thinking that I might be late for dinner. I was horrified to see a white car coming toward me as I skidded into its lane. I hit the other car at the driver side door and the two cars swiped past each other, I remember hearing a thud and the screaming of metal on metal. I came to a stop maybe 20 feet past the point of impact.
I set the car in park and turned on the warning blinkers. I got out of my car and ran back to the other car, which had been shoved up on to the embankment. I remember looking at the other driver and screaming "I am so sorry". I asked him if he was hurt and he just said "get me the hell out of here". He was unable to open the door. The impact of the crash had jammed his door shut.
A young man, R., from Point Arena, stopped within seconds of the crash. He asked me to try to get my car off the road. (I should have thought of that myself, but I was not thinking very clearly at that point.) I was able to back my car up and onto the shoulder. We were able to get the passenger out of the car. She seemed to be unhurt. The driver managed to crawl across to the passenger side. We helped him out and he sat on the hood of the car. He was in a lot of pain. Another car stopped and asked if everyone was all right, I asked them to call the CHP.
As we waited for more help to arrive the passenger and I chatted, while R. talked to the driver. The people in the other car were Mr. and Mrs. L. from Gualala, a couple somewhat older than I was. I gave her my card and insurance information. I don't think that I have ever been so relieved to see anyone, as I was when the Elk Volunteer Fire Department arrived a few minutes after the accident. They immediately took charge, setting out flares and warning other drivers. The Elk ambulance arrived at about the same time and started checking out Mr. L.
From this point on, I felt like a bystander in the hands of people much more capable than myself. The EMT's put Mr. L. on oxygen. He said that on the one to ten pain scale he was at about an eight, but I think that he was probably closer to ten.
Officer T. of the CHP showed up and started completing an accident report. The MediVac helicopter from Santa Rosa was dispatched, but couldn't make it past Booneville because of the cloud cover. So they sent for an ambulance from Fort Bragg.
When the ambulance from Fort Bragg arrived. Mr. and Mrs. L. were strapped to immobilization boards and loaded on to the ambulance. The tow truck from the Elk Garage was getting ready to tow my car away and the CHP officer was finishing measuring the skid marks. It was then, seeing them loaded into the ambulance like cargo, that the reality of the situation started to soak in just a little bit. I had to decide whether I would head back to Manchester or head North and try and get to services at the shul.
I grabbed the salad and my TALLIT and caught a ride with the tow truck driver up to Elk. I managed to get a hold of Mickey and he came down to the Elk Garage and took me back to his and Margaret's house. The seriousness of what had happened was dawning on me. While I was basically physically unscathed, I had sent two people to the hospital. I try never to hurt anyone, and I had hurt these two people very badly.
I don't really remember much about the services that night. Coincidentally. sunset also marked the start of my Mother's yahrzeit. She had died 5 years before on September 30th. I vaguely remember KOL NIDRE and talking to a few people about the accident.
Mickey and Margaret graciously asked me spend the night at their home. It was after I had said my prayers and was alone that I had a chance to start reflecting on what had happened. I realized that I didn't know how badly Mr. and Mrs. L. were hurt. And while I was warm and safe in Mickey and Margaret's guestroom, they were undoubtedly far less comfortable at the Coast Hospital in Fort Bragg.
I am not the most conscientious bill payer in the world and I start wondering whether I had paid my auto insurance and started calculating whether I had the resources to cover the L's medical bills and replace their car. I had one of the worst nights of my life. I was so afraid and overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety, that I prayed in a way that I don't think I had ever prayed before. I felt naked and exposed. I pleaded with God to let them be all right and to give me the ability to make them whole again. I was absolutely abject and shameless in my begging.
It seems that I didn't sleep at all that night, although I know that I must have. I spent the night in complete terror. Frightened in a way that I don't think that I have been, since I was a small child and suffering from night terrors. I truly felt as if my life was over.
Things looked a less scary with the light of the new day. I called CSAA and confirmed that I was covered by insurance and this was a great relief. Fortunately, this was the one morning of the year that I didn't have to worry about showering or breakfast.
Mickey and Margaret took me to the shul. Through the AVINU MALKEINU's and Al CHET's, I asked for forgiveness with a sincerity and unreserved open heartedness that was new to me.
Many of my friends within the community took me aside and gave me words of encouragement and shared some of their own experiences with car wrecks. Ella massaged my shoulders and neck, and her healing hands managed to lessen some of the tension and guilt that had settled there.
I broke the fast at Ira's house and spent another night at Mickey and Margaret's. We had brunch at the Roadhouse and them Mickey gave me a ride back to my house in Manchester.
I had a message to call the CHP and gave them a statement about the accident. The officer told me that Mr. and Mrs. L. were at their home. Mrs. L was unhurt, but Mr. L. had two broken ribs and a punctured lung. I called them and told them how sorry I was. Mr. L. was very courteous, but I got the feeling that he would rather not hear from me again, and just wanted to get past this incident as quickly as he could. I sent him a card and asked him to get in touch with me if I could help them in any way.
As of this writing, my car is in Fort Bragg being patched up. I hear that the L's Accord was totaled. For the first week or 10 days after the accident, I kept replaying the accident over and over in my mind. Each time this happened I would be revisited by the guilt and the fear. My therapist tells me that this is actually PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and it affects about 85% of the people involved in car accidents.
The accident has had a profound effect on me. For the last few years I have thought a great deal about whether God plays an active role in human affairs or whether this is a just a world of straight forward cause and effect. Where we are like clicking balls on a billiard table bouncing into one another and off of the sides. The accident has caused me to consider this question, with an even greater intensity.
If the accident was somehow "God's will" and was intended to teach me something, then why was it necessary that someone else be hurt? I find it difficult to believe that the only way God could find to change my life, was through injuring someone else. Although, it is presumptuous of me, to suppose that I know what was best for Mr. and Mrs. L.
I have been reading a fair amount of Hassidic literature lately, and thinking about heavenly "judgements". Some of these stories tell of how heaven decides that something bad will happen to someone, and then a great tzaddik like the Baal Shem Tov will intervene with heaven to reverse or mitigate the judgement. The Hassids seem to believe that there is some kind of divine quid pro quo going on, where the "bad" things that happen in our life are punishments for our failings. Some Kabalists believe that our actions in this world have profound cosmic effects on other spheres of existence, that our actions can heal or rend the fabric of the universe.
Did the accident occur so that I would experience true terror on Yom Kippur? Did this mishap spare me or someone else from a more serious misfortune in the future? What were the odds of there being another car in the oncoming lane at 04:30 PM on a September Tuesday on that stretch of Highway 1, one in a hundred, one in a thousand? What if I had hit a logging truck? (I probably would have been toast.) What if the airbags had not deployed? What if not everyone had been wearing seatbelts and shoulder harnesses? What if I had crashed into a car with children in it and they had been hurt or killed. Could I have accelerated out of the skid and avoided the other car?
Are these kind of questions answerable? I really don't know. This kind of complicated thinking gives me a headache, and I don't know that it can lead anywhere.
I also considered the really horrible things that can happen to people and tell myself this was not so bad. It was not as bad as losing your son or daughter to cancer or some other disease, not as bad as being in a concentration camp, not as bad as starving to death or being tortured, not as bad as killing to stay alive in a war. When I think of how debilitated I was by this event and then think of how other have suffered, I am ashamed.
I do believe that the events in our life can contain lessons for us, even those events that are painful. In looking back at the accident, having replayed the events over and over again in my mind, I am still not sure why it happened. I have driven that stretch of road a thousand times. I don't think that I was driving any faster than I usually do. Maybe I started to slow down for the curve, a little later than usual, but I don't think so. The roadbed had recently been resurfaced and was a little wet, but I have driven under those conditions before. My tires and brakes were in good shape.
I prided myself on being a cautious driver. I try to drive defensively. I usually drive with my lights on. I obey the speed limits (most of the time). I give other drivers the right of way, if they want it. I don't pass on Highway 1 or 128 (very much). I never drink and drive (four friends of mine died in a head on collision when I was 18 after they had been drinking). When I get tired, I will pull over and rest.
After the accident, I realized that my biggest fault was overconfidence. I had driven so much and so long that I had forgotten how intrinsically dangerous driving an automobile is. I had grown complacent and not allowed enough margin for error or unexpected conditions.
Edward O. Wilson, the great Harvard ant expert, evolutionary biologist and behaviorist had written that our phobias about spiders, snakes, heights, water and all manner of natural threats are founded in our evolution. He believes that if out ancestors had lived for tens of thousands of years with the automobile, we would know now how dangerous it is on an instinctual level. We would be so afraid of cars, that only the most courageous among us could stand to get behind the wheel.
If I had been a little more conscious of how dangerous it is to go hurtling around at 55 mph in these fragile cages of metal and polymer, I probably would have been more focused on driving.
I remember thinking shortly before the accident that if I ever was in an accident in Mendocino, it would probably be because I came around a corner and found some idiot in my lane. As it turned out, I was the idiot in someone else's lane. If I had been a little less sure of my own competency, allowed a little bit of extra margin for error and was a slightly more cautious, I feel that the accident wouldn't have happened.
I am still wrestling with the big question of why bad things happen to us and whether there is a reason for them. Maybe I'll read Job again. I am quite sure that I will be driving with more care and mindfulness in the future. I find that I try to say a little prayer asking for help in being more cautious whenever I get behind the wheel; and that I am driving more slowly and taking turns less aggressively. I am working at not being impatient when I drive.
I wrote this story in the hope that some of you reading this may drive with just a little bit more caution and humility, and that this may give you that little extra margin of safety needed to avoid an accident at some point.
Please drive carefully.
Post script: A year and a half after the accident, I find that I am still driving more carefully. My Camry was patched up and is still running. The insurance company made what seemed to me to be a fair settlement. I found that after the accident, I had in some way intermalized the fear and guilt. I felt tense and troubled. Several members of the Jewish community confided that they had been in accidents, some far worse than mine. Hearing these stories and several months of Traeger body work seemed to difuse the tension ...
and I still say a little prayer whenever I get behind the wheel.
Copyright 1998 Robert G. Evans
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Last updated 04/23/2000 (rge)