Car Accident

A few weeks ago we were involved in a car accident on the way to church. We were rear-ended while waiting for traffic to clear so we could turn left into our church parking lot. The weird thing about this is that I saw everything happen in slow motion. We've had friends rear-ended in this same location so I've always been extra cautious here. I slowed slowly with my turn signal on. and kept watching the car behind us while I stopped and noticed they were not slowing down. I had the brief thought that I should start accelerating forward to reduce the impact but there really wasn't time to do anything about it. Luckily the car noticed before they completely rammed into me and slammed on the breaks. I heard them skidding and by the time they hit me, there wasn't much of a jolt. It was just me and my little boys. They barely realized something had happened. Max was 2 cars behind us, (Yes he was behind the car at fault, and saw the whole thing happen.) He had tried to honk to warn the car to slow down but in the brief moment he couldn't find his horn in time and just saw a car speeding into his whole family. I was glad he was there though so we all pulled over. We were all a little shaken up. And then we realized the couple in the car that rear-ended us were our very good friends that were going to church as well. Before Max realized it was them he was worried about how he would react. It takes a lot to make Max mad, and apparently watching a careless driver ram into your family is one of those things. Once he saw it was our friends he just felt love for them and after checking to make sure the boys and I were okay, he made sure they were okay as well. We then checked the damage. Our car didn't seem too damaged and we were so grateful in that moment that we had a car that protected us.

I was surprised when I saw the damage on their car because it really didn't feel like they hit us that hard.


When we finally pulled into the church parking lot, Charlie was really concerned about the accident once he realized what happened. I told him we were blessed that everyone was safe and there were no injuries. He then asked if our friends' car was broken and when I told him, it was pretty damaged, he was so concerned and said "I didn't want anyone's car to get broken!" It made me feel good that he was concerned with others. We then just talked about how it is good that no people were injured. I also had felt our baby moving a lot shortly after the accident so that was reassuring. ( When I talked to my doctor later, I found out that they would have wanted to do some fetal monitoring immediately after the accident, so, remember that if this ever happens to you. I just didn't feel like a big enough impact for me to worry about it) Our friends admitted that the driver was changing the clock for daylight savings time and the turn snuck up on him. It was sad this had to happen but it was good that we knew we were dealing with honest and well-insured people. We had our car in the shop for a couple weeks and it was evaluated that there was $3000 worth of damage. We got to have a dreamy rental van that the boys did not want to give back.  It was a 2017 Chrysler Pacifica with all the bells and whistles. My boys were so sad to give it back this week. Charlie requested we take the automatic doors off the van and put them on our car. haha! Anyway, it was quite the learning experience and had the best possible outcome for us. Our friends have a parent that sells used cars and gets them cheap at auctions then fixes them up so they had access to getting another car pretty easily, so that was something positive for them as well. But now I may want a van!