After driving now for 23 years without an accident I came awfully close to totalling the Beamer this morning. As an experienced driver, you don’t come across a whole lot of new situations any more that can get you into trouble, but this morning was different.

On the last stretch on my way to work I drive on a 2 lane road with a 55mph speed limit. There’s a right shoulder and our turn-off to the office is to the right.

I was driving in the left lane in heavy traffic, trying to get past a truck, before making my way over to the right lane and then to the shoulder for deceleration to setup for the right turn into the office parking lot. I always make a point of not cutting in closely in front of a truck, so I went really close to the next car in front of the truck before merging into the right lane. Since I was moving through the right lane to the shoulder I wasn’t too concerned about violating the safety distance behind that SUV – I was following the vehicle at about 10ft, going about 60mph. The truck was closing in from behind, but I was moving out of his lane. Then when I got over onto the shoulder and onto my brakes, I got the shock of my life: there was a broken down car sitting on the shoulder. I locked up the brakes and waited for a long second, when it became clear that I wouldn’t come to a stop behind that car (a Jetta TDI with an american flag as a bumper sticker – funny how much detail the brain processes under stress). Merging back into the road was out of the question, as the truck was too close for an emergency braking maneuver and the truck always wins. So my only options were hitting the parked car or move onto the grass to the right. The car wasn’t blocking the whole shoulder, so I kept my left two tires on the asphalt for better friction, while the anti-lock brakes did their thing. ratatatatat, and I was moving my right two tires into the grass – debris flying everywhere. I came to a full stop a half car length in front of that stranded vehicle. Then it was quiet – first I thought my engine had died, but it was just idling silently. I was really shaken, but nothing had happened. I slowly drove into the parking lot and said a thank you to whoever was listening. That was the closest I’ve come to a collision in a long time. And the fault would have been all mine. (Re-)Learnings: Safety distance and visibility are your friend. BMWs are great cars. 🙂