Until early this morning, with the exception of a parking related fender-bender, I had not been involved in an accident as a driver. Around 2 a.m. this morning I was driving back from Chicago after a two day business trip. Those who know me know I hate to fly, and because Chicago is so close, driving the 4 1/2 hour trip was no big deal. So I wouldn’t rack up miles on my car, I rented a car for the trip.
Having had dinner with my dear, dear friends Alison and Annie, I got a late start on the drive home. Around 2 a.m. I decided to stop at the Michigan Welcome Center, just over the Michigan – Indiana border on I 94. While turning off onto the offramp, I hit a patch of black ice, and immediately the car started spinning uncontrollably. Amazingly, although the car was spinning across part of the right hand lane of the Interstate, I was not hit by any other cars, but my car finally spun off the road and in process repeated hit a huge highway sign as I was spinning. It all happened very quickly and although my life didn’t flash before my eyes, I did say to myself, “I’m going to die”. After numerous points of contact with the 20′ sign, the car stopped spinning, the sign completely flattened and my car sitting in a ditch. I was somehow able to get the car out of the ditch and up on to the offramp, and I calmly drove into the rest area, the car smelling of rubber and other odd smells.
For some unknown reason I felt totally calm and realized that I had to deal with Hertz and the Police immediately, so I got out of the car so I could make the call from inside the rest area. In looking at the car I found it was basically totaled, with damage and massive dents and crushed metal on both sides as well as the front and back. Because the airbag had not deployed, I didn’t expect the damage to be that bad, but man oh man, the fact that I was okay while the car was creamed was amazing.
It took almost two hours to deal with the police and for the car to be loaded onto a flatbed tow truck, Hertz had me towed to the nearest location, South Bend, Indiana, some 40 miles away. Checking into a hotel near the Hertz airport location in South Bend, I managed to lay down and get a shower while waiting for the Hertz office to open so we could deal with the car. Luckily I had taken out full insurance, so all they did was make me fill out papers and then I was given a new car. I made it back here to Ann Arbor around 2pm feeling tired and years older.
When he was filling out the lengthy accident paperwork, the sheriff from New Buffalo, Michigan told me I had the State of Michigan to thank for my accident. “Because of budget cuts, they’ve cut way back on salting roads.” The ice at the rest area was so bad that I kept slipping every time the cop called me over to his car to answer questions. In the almost two hours I was at that rest stop I didn’t see a salt truck once on the highway. Chalk up another thing that makes Michigan a tough place to live.