Nearly lost my wife today... I got a new scooter this week, which I've been gunning for, for over a year. Coincidently It was also my birthday. And coincidently I had my first Saturday off in over 5 months. So we set forth a plan to venture into Taipei for a meal, and a little shopping. We start out at 11am, as its around an hour's drive. We were meandering on in I was in the lead. It had rained the night before and was a little misty still. We are traveling in as I said I am in the lead and she is a couple hundred feet behind, we are in a more rural part between Taoyuan and Banchio on the way to Taipei. I look ahead and see the light changing to red and I hear a screeching sound, a little faint but clear enough. I thought it was a blue truck in the left of the two lane ahead of me stopping for the light. Then I hear a 'whump' I thought oh oh he hit the car ahead of him, but as I approach I am looking for damage. Nope none?!? Hmm must have been his load shifting, oh well another unhappy customer is all, what do they care. So I pull over and stop as I look back and see my wife a little farther back than I remembered. Her story explains the sounds very different from my thoughts.
She says " DID YOU SEE THAT?"
I say what the truck??
She says "That car behind me..I saw it in my side mirror and it swerved into the wall and flew up into the air".
I said jokingly "did it come down?" As I thought she was exaggerating a bit.
She says " It flew up into the air , I saw a scooter behind me, then I saw the car come crashing down and roll one and a half times and come sliding towards me. Debris was flying in past my scooter from behind as I hit the gas to get out of the way. I didn't see that other scooter anymore. Ivy only seen cars flip like that in the movies"
It was a bigger car like a 4 door Nissan Cefiro. The roof had completely collapsed. The speed limit there is either 50 or 60, and for this car to flip and fly like that one can only assume it was going much faster than the limit.
She said "It came from nowhere and a couple of seconds later it was sliding toward me faster than I could get away!" I look at her for a second and I begin to think 'holy crap your lucky'
I appreciated her life and mine a whole lot more now. What an eye opener.
It can all be over in the blink of an eye.
