Head On

Today I thought I would post a comment about the head on collision that we almost were involved in on our trip to Albuquerque.

We got up early on May 25th to head to Albuquerque, NM. Grandma Hobbs was riding in the backseat, Tammy was in the front passenger seat and I was driving. Just outside of Cortez, N.M. at approximately 2:00 p.m. we had a very close call. In fact, it was so close that we are thankful to be alive. If any of you have ever traveled the road to Albuquerque you know that it is a 2 lane road most of the way there.

I was driving the speed limit at 65 mph when a full size truck pulled into our lane presumably to turn onto a side road. I needed to make a split second decision, which later I realized saved our lives. This truck was in our lane of traffic and I was headed directly at it. I needed to make a decision based on what I thought this person was going to do. My thought process was amazingly quick, but very scary. I thought, if he saw me he might go back into his own lane; this meant that I would need to swerve off the road to the right. However, if he were to turn then I would need to swerve to the left to miss him. For some reason I chose the later and swerved to the left. Thankfully, it was the correct choice. If I had swerved to the right we would have hit him head on as he decided to complete his turn by crossing the road. Turning to the left was very risky. If there had been a car behind him I would have hit it head on. There was no way of knowing this as the decision had to be made without that fact and I was also betting that he didn’t see me and would turn into my lane completely.

I applied my brakes hard, swerved to the left, barely missing his truck by fractions of an inch. At one point I thought our car was going to roll, but thankfully I was able to keep it upright. After this close encounter I pulled the car off the side of the road and walked back to the scene. There was at least 20 feet of rubber on the road. The truck did not stop, but kept going down the side road. I am assuming that whoever was driving the truck was intoxicated.

Gratefully things worked out okay and we were protected by angels from above. Experiences like this make you realize how short life can be and make you grateful for each day you have and that prayers for our safety really are answered. This is one that was answered for certain.