Hit By Car

Last Saturday, we skipped cleaning the apartment and calling my parents in favor of going to the zoo.  We love zoos, and last time we went to the Phoenix Zoo (our first time since moving here) we hadn’t realized it closes at 4 PM.  So we had missed 1/3 of it.

We dressed in our brightest orange shirts.  Little known secret-if you dress in super-bright colors you see more animals, better.  The animals will come out of hiding places, wake up, and engage with YOU because you are bright and interesting to them.  We learned of this at Salt Lake City’s Tracy Aviary.  A bird was in the middle of a training session in preparation for the open air show they do.  It saw Cool in a bright shirt, and flew away from its trainer to check her out.  Ever since then, we have been an effort to make sure and wear our brights–I usually do, anyway.

Navigating parking isn’t fun.  It sucks enjoyment out of it for me because I don’t like driving, dealing with traffic and unfamiliar roads, or finding/paying for parking.  We moved to this apartment in part, because it’s within a reasonable walking distance to the light rail.  It’s 1.8 (maybe 0.8?) miles walk.  Easy for us since we are constantly walking to the canal to run, walking around the city to explore, and walking for exercise or enjoyment.  We’ve walked more than 3 miles at a time at least 4 times in the last month, and one day we went 7 miles.  It’s routine.  Anyway, we walked to rail and went to the zoo on public transportation.

Our day at the zoo was really fun.  Many exciting things happened.  But this particular post isn’t about that.  We made a full day of it and got tired so decided to head home around 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon.  We commented how rail is the worst on the way home, because it’s so easy just to drive and be directly, and quickly there.  Alas, we walked to the stop, waited for one to come, endured many stops, and got out at the stop closest to home.  Then, we just had to walk the last couple of miles as we have done so many times before.

At the last intersection before home we had to cross south, then cross west before walking the last block home.  The light is always long at that intersection.  The traffic was heavy in all directions, being a Saturday afternoon.  2 bikes and another walker (or was it 2 walkers and a bike?) were waiting opposite us to cross north.  Finally, the light changed, we got our walk sign, and began to cross-as did everybody else.  There are 3 lanes in each direction, and the 4 main ones were all full of cars waiting at the red light, ready to speed westward when our turn was finished.  What wasn’t full was the right-most lane.

Cool usually walks slower than I do.  She nearly always lags behind me, so that I’m constantly nagging her to catch up/keep up.  That day, she was out in front.  I don’t know why.  She was halfway across the first lane and I was a little in the intersection, when a black car came up.  Time slowed down and I had several thoughts as this happened

The car will slow down

The front bumper of this car is literally touching my shins

When this car stops, I’m going to look up and glare at the driver-asshole!

Simultaneously:

I have to jump back to get out from in front of this car

and

Cool is too far away, I can neither pull her back out of the road, nor push her forward out of the way.

The car is NOT stopping!

The black car, which had a Jimmy John’s sign on the driver’s side roof HIT Cool.  She was just past the center point of the front hood.  The car almost hit her right at its middle point–this was not like me, an almost got hit.  It was also not, feel the wind a close call.  Cool didn’t get hit a little on a corner or at an angle.  She got hit in the center of the car, because she was in the center of the lane–maybe just past it.

It struck me (pun) how hard Cool was hit.  I couldn’t believe my eyes, and my brain was astonished that this was really happening.  The car making a right turn on red (west bound with intention of heading north-bound) when it struck Cool hard.

What my brain also noticed was that instead of going down and under like I’d thought, Cool was lifted off her feet.  She hit the hood of the car with everything from her ankles up.  Physics are sometimes counterintuitive.

And she hit hard, with a dramatic crunching sound.  It ran through my mind that a lot of people might saaay they’ve been “hit by a car,” when what they really mean is they had a close call, got pinged by a little edge of the car, or felt the wind.  I thought-Cool is getting hit by a car–for real.

Then, she bounced off the car and into the street.  I didn’t really see her land, because my attention turned to the driver.  I was furious!  The driver  only noticed people in the crosswalk AFTER Cool bounced off her car.  Even though we had the right of way, and both of us were in bright ORANGE shirts.  She had been on her cell phone.

The driver opened the door and leaned halfway out, black curly hair coming out wildly from under the black Jimmy John’s cap.  She was wild-eyed in terror and said, “should I call an ambulance?!”  I looked right at her and yelled, “Pay attention!”  She totally ignored me and panic-stricken repeated, “Do you need me to call an ambulance?” And I repeated, “You need to pay attention!“

Then I turned my attention back to Cool, who was sitting up in the road.  She looked to be in one piece.  I didn’t see anything dramatic wrong with her.  And she looked like she was in shock, but not brain-damaged.  Her eyes and face looked OK to me.

All I thought was, we need to get home.  I didn’t want a repeat of the snowboard incident (that took us 4 years to pay off) so I wanted to get her home.  I tugged on her arm, trying to help her up and said, “get up, get up.”  She didn’t attempt to get up at all, and I knew she was in shock after taking a big hit like that.  I coaxed, “please get up, c’mon get up, get up, honey, get up.”  She thought for a minute, then stood up.

She made a shuddering sound and I thought she might cry.  Which is fine, but we were in the middle of the street, and I also didn’t want her to think too much so that she collapsed and we couldn’t get home.

Cool has been known to be a hypochondriac, and this was a ‘for-real’ big thing, so I didn’t want her to think about it and aggrandize it any bigger than it already was.  I figured we would get her out of the busy street, get her inside the house so I didn’t have to carry her or something, and THEN we would take an inventory of the damage and deal with whatever from there.

She limped as we walked the rest of the way through the crosswalk, and I didn’t know what injuries she might have sustained or the severity of them.  But I didn’t want to find out in the middle of the desert street.

I was obviously distracted, but I don’t remember any of the other pedestrians crossing the way actually stopping.  And I can’t recall any of them voicing concern, or asking Cool if she was OK.  I think they just continued on their way.

The other thing I think  I remember, but I’m not sure, and it doesn’t seem right, is I think I saw we still had 13 seconds on the crosswalk countdown.  But that doesn’t seem right at all, so much happened, I don’t know how it could have been that fast. . .  But I don’t think the traffic went through and the light changed cycles either.

On the way across, one of the drivers of a car waiting at the red light rolled down their window and asked if Cool was alright.  I don’t remember what either of us answered, but I thought that was nice of him.

Then, I don’t know if I was preoccupied with worry, or also in shock, but I don’t remember waiting for the next crosswalk sign.  We had to now cross the other street in the intersection west, and I remember standing there a long time.  I remember  Cool seemed like she might start crying again, and I told her she could cry, but please wait til we were safely home.  And I remember another bicyclist was waiting also, to cross south where we had just come from.  I think he missed the incident, because he told me we could cross, but when I looked up I’m sure I saw the red hand.  So I don’t know if we were out of it and missed our turn, or if he saw no cars so he suggested we shouldn’t wait for our signal or what.  But I saw the red hand and told him she was just literally hit by a car, we’re not taking any chances.

I thought I should call Jimmy John’s and report their careless driver.  Mostly, I wanted them to reprimand her, and send a company-wide message to not be using cell phones while making deliveries.  I called the closest location, and the manager wasn’t helpful.  She kept (pretending) not to hear my story of what just happened, and didn’t really want to deal with me.  She ended the call by saying that no female delivery drivers were actually on the schedule–now.  I called the other closest branch, and that manager said he doesn’t even have any females employed as delivary drivers.  The third, farther location didn’t really make sense, but I called and some dope answered.  Turns out, the dope WAS the manager, and in charge of scheduling, but also didn’t have any females driving that day.  I asked to speak to HIS boss.  He told me he didn’t have the phone #.  I asked for the corporate number, and he did seem to take a while to try to find it–I could hear him shuffling papers, then typing.  I feel this ought to be easily found, but he never could help me and he sent me to the internet.

We got home, and I was busy trying to find corporate Jimmy John’s.  When I finally did, they had regular business hours only M-F 9-5–must be nice.

Cool seemed OK when we got home.  Her clothes were half ruined–covered with a fat stripe of road tar.  And her elbow and knee had the same road-rash tar scrapes.  She complained 1 little spot of her jaw hurt, and there was a lump.  Other than that, there was nothing to even take pictures of.  She was sore, but nothing big happened.  Thank goodness–that’s not usually our life!

She took a shower right then, because I was afraid signs of concussion might come on and she wouldn’t be able to stand.  We tried to scrub tar out of her wounds, but there were a lot of micro-scraps from the asphalt and the tar was pretty well embedded.

Luckily, she was OK. It was still one of the scariest things that has ever happened!