T-Boned by Fate

The sound of metal on metal came first, then the screech of tires. A car crash in my quiet neighborhood. So, of course, everyone came out to see what was going on. My fellow gawkers and I decided the small blue SUV ran a stop sign and clipped the right rear panel of the red pick-up truck crossing the intersection, which then spun out, traveled forty feet or so before crashing into a concrete wall on the property on the corner. We guessed it might have looked like one of those maneuvers cops use to stop fleeing vehicles - steering into the back side of the fleeing car.

Whenever I see an automobile accident, I can't stop thinking about what led up to it. Not the immediate thing, like one car not stopping at a stop sign, but all the little things that had to happen in the lives of the two drivers that day to put them on the exact same spot at the exact same instant.

I wonder if the SUV driver had put the car keys down at home in an unusual spot and had to spend three seconds looking for them, would he not be at the intersection yet when the pick-up passed? If the driver of the pick-up had forgotten his phone and had to go back in the house to get it, would the SUV be long gone before he got there. If the driver of either car had paused to adjust the radio before pulling out, would they have missed each other?

And then there are the other people on the road. If the SUV had been slowed down by a pokey driver before getting to the intersection, would the accident not happen? If the pick-up driver didn't have to tap his breaks for a bicycle weaving into the lane, would he be through the intersection a split second before the SUV?

Then I get to wondering, if there really is a series of events and decisions that inevitably lead to two cars being in the same spot at the same time, has that sequence already started for me today? Could my accident be out there in the near future but already inevitable?

But then I get a little crazy, thinking, well, if I had remembered to buy that toothpaste yesterday when I was at the store, I might not be taking the trip at all. It gets worse.  If I didn't buy the car I did five years ago, and got one with a little more power, would I get to the fateful spot faster and breeze through free and clear?

And then, and then, I think, well, if I didn't take that teaching job in Massachusetts in 1968, would I be living a whole different life in a whole different state, heading toward some other completely different car crash? Then my hair starts to hurt and I stop thinking at all.