Calls in the middle of the night are never good. Neither is the one when you say “Hello” and your teenager is crying on the other end. Your heart immediately drops because you are scared and know they are hurting. That was my experience anyway when I got a call from my daughter after her first car accident.
She had just left basketball practice and was traveling at the legal speed on a country road. As she came up over a small hill and cars were stacked up four deep waiting for someone to turn left. She wasn’t on her phone but admittedly was a little tired from practice. By the time she realized what was happening in front of her, it was too late to brake in time. The truck she was driving rear-ended the last car in the line. The driver of that car had her foot slip off the brake and hit the accelerator, propelling her down into the ditch. On the way, she clipped the car in front of her.
As rear-end car accidents go it wasn’t pretty. My daughter’s airbag in the truck deployed. The car she hit obviously had damage in the back end but also in the front, as it hit a telephone pole when it went to the ditch. The third car had minor bumper damage. In the end, our used truck – that we had owned for less than a month – was totaled.
Thankfully, everyone was OK. No hospital visits were needed. And the people involved were pretty nice about it. I think they could see how upset this 16-year old girl was having caused her first accident.
I hope I never have to take that call again from any of my other kids. Odds are though I will. But as the oldest child often does, she broke new ground and helped us figure out how to deal with a teenager’s car accident. So here are 7 things I learned from the incident.
