In my years traveling, probably some unimaginable number of millions of miles by car, I’ve never been involved in an accident.  But I’ve had enough close calls that I just DON’T text or email while I drive. 

Let me clarify….I have voice activated texting.  Once I learned which little microphone icon to touch, I discovered if I speak slowly and ah-nun-c-ate, it never misses.  If I’m miles from nowhere, smooth, straight road, no cars anywhere – as in so far ahead or behind that they couldn’t see me swerve, I might send off a quick one.  In town, near home, on the freeway, forget it.  However, I do look at my phone.  And that is today’s message to all of you. 

Kathy and I had just left home recently, turning onto the divided, four lane residential artery outside our community which leads us everywhere.  I steered Hercules (our Mini Cooper) into the right lane.  Kathy, riding shotgun, pulled out her phone to check messages.  I remembered that I had just gotten ‘ding dongs’ notifying me I had emails and text messages.  I check traffic – one car behind about four, five blocks.  One car ahead, further, but remember, there’s a median.  I slip my phone out of my back pocket and take a quick peak.  Going about 45 after a masculine power shift into fourth, I’m just getting my brain wrapped around who had sent a message and the gist of what it was – a 10-15 second mental exercise – when I hear a noise, a bad noise…..milliseconds flash, Kathy comes to agitated life and as I look up, noise getting louder, now identifiable as a gigantic metal / plastic crash, tires screeching, and I see the front of a smashed car spinning at my door, passing by 4-5-6 feet away.  Gravel, smoke and debris are flying.  We whiz past… 

In about 5 seconds, a car had pulled from a crossing street into our oncoming traffic and the car I had seen headed in our direction, smashed into it, an almost perfect T-bone.  It spun around through the median crossing, flattened a street sign and came within these few feet of my driver’s side door.  If I had been in the left lane, a spot where we both frequently drive, we would have been the third vehicle involved.  And I would have never seen it coming.  Both cars were still skidding as we craned our necks to grasp the reality of this collision, both cars seriously damaged although neither actually flipped over.

If I had been asked what happened, I couldn’t say for sure…because I was looking at my phone.  So was Kathy.  We drove back through a couple of hours later and my recollection of the incident was so diminished by my phone distraction, I guessed the wrong intersection where it had happened.  The radiator fluids covered by sand showed definitively where it had taken place, one block from my first guess.

I put my phone away and never looked at it until we were stopped for lunch an hour later.  Life lesson # 4,827 – DO NOT TOUCH your phone while driving.  I swear, it’s safer to guzzle from a bottle of beer (for a few minutes)….unless you’re reading the label!