This happened after school at 5:21 on a cool afternoon. After school, I drove to the gym Xperience right here in Blaine with a close friend of mine. After working out, I drove on Main Street towards Jefferson, because I needed to drop off my friend. I made my first green light with ease, but the second stoplight turned yellow at the last second. I sped up and passed that light barely. I took a right off of Main street, took a left on Jefferson, and parked on his driveway. I let him out, and pulled out of the driveway to continue driving home. I got onto Bunker Lake Blvd. and moved towards Highway 65. I noticed a green light going straight and blinking yellow arrow for left. I had poor visibility coming through the intersections, so I slowed down to 50 mph.

However, I noticed a grey car drift towards the path of my car. Within a couple of seconds I had to make one of two options: to slam on the brakes, or try to swerve around. I could see it coming. I decided to swerve because I realized that slamming into the brakes would cause me to slam into her. Instead, she slammed into the side of my car popping the wheel off of my vehicle and crushing my driver side doors in. Because I was driving 50 mph, my car whipped backward doing a 180. My vision was reduced to a flash because the inside of my car blew up with airbags. The sound was extremely loud from the car hitting me and airbags exploding from every crack of the car breaking all the plastic. The accident sounded like a gun going off in a car; my ears were ringing. My car smelled like burning rubber and smoke.  I tried to get out of the driver’s side, but the door was smashed shut. I crawled to the other side of my car and opened the passenger door. I stood up, with sound slowly coming back to me (as ringing), and saw 3 different people walk towards me.

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There were two males and one female. The first male asked me if I was okay, and stayed with me until my mom arrived at the scene. The next male that walked up to me was an off-duty police officer, and finally, the woman announced that she called the cops. Both the female and the off-duty officer left the scene shortly. The first male (who stayed with me) asked if I as okay, and if I needed to take a seat in his parked truck. I politely declined and decided to take pictures of my car so that I could have proof of damages.

I stood there with adrenaline, anger, but also astonished that this could actually happen to me. My beloved car was destroyed because I happened to be at the right intersection at the right time. Once my mom arrived and the police arrived, I walked over and sat in my mom’s car. I could picture the scene happening to me over and over again. The police officer walked over to me and knocked on my window so that he could information from me. My shoulder felt as if someone punched it as hard as they could. As my adrenaline slowly went away my shoulder slowly hurt more and more. Once I arrived at my house I checked out my shoulder and it was extremely red and tender. I iced it and finished my day with homework and movies.

For a week straight after the accident I would think to myself, “How could’ve I avoided the accident?” and “What could’ve I done differently?” I never found an answer to those questions, and I don’t think I ever will. After the week, when I started driving again I can easily say that I have some sort of PTSD. Whenever I drive through an intersection I hold my breath instinctively, my trust for other drivers decisions have dropped immensely. My heart rate also increases as I drive through a green light. I’m glad that I’m alive, but this is something that I’ll never forget.