Sunday night, slurping a Frosty

[cleolinda]

My poor mother--she didn't even get home until 8 pm, and I think she and Sister Girl spent 5-6 hours faffing around in the ER. Sister Girl has some contusions (bruises?) and strained muscles; she's gotten prescriptions for a painkiller and a muscle relaxer. I haven't seen the car (or pictures of it) yet, but between talking to my mother and my sister, this is my understanding:

She's on the interstate, I-65, and a guy hits the brakes so as not to hit a dog. Sister Girl, who is on the phone with me at that moment, hits her brakes, and I hear her say, "Wow, I almost got in a really bad accident there--" and then I hear some noise, some distortion (her voice kind of sounds like it's far away), and the phone goes dead. I didn't know where she was at the time, so I thought it was yet another case of bad cell phone reception; I can hardly get through a phone call around here without one or the other of us, whoever I'm talking to, saying "Let me call you back in a minute." So I go on my merry way looking up midnight Harry Potter tickets for her and I figure that she'll call me back.

A few minutes pass. She calls me back. "Lauren," she says, "I've been in a really bad wreck." She sounds a little shaky, but stoic. Honestly, Sister Girl has really shit luck on the road--she's always getting into accidents that aren't even her fault. That said, she has really good luck at surviving said accidents, if y'all remember Smashup 2006 and her run-in with Mr. Magoo (not to mention Dr. Homewrecker and Rocky Brazil); she generally walks away with bruises and, at most, a knock on the head. Meanwhile, I should have been righteously creeped out, and would have been, if I'd understood what I was hearing at the time.

Back to the accident: she hit her brakes and was l33t enough to stop in time and not hit the first guy. But the guy behind her doesn't hit his brakes soon enough, or he was following too closely, and he rear-ends her. This is what I heard over the phone--apparently her phone was knocked out of her hand. She says she screamed, but I didn't hear that. I haven't gotten a play-by-play from her yet, so this doesn't entirely make sense to me, but apparently she crossed a median at some point, and spinning may have been involved. If she hadn't been completely stopped, the momentum of her car moving added to the momentum of the other guy's would have apparently shoved her into traffic, and she'd probably be dead now (I imagine some cheerful police officer told her this). She says she's "kind of sore," and she hit her head, but she's mostly okay. Also, when she got out of the car, she stepped into a bed of swarming red ants. As for the car itself: "How bad is it?" I ask. She's deeply attached to her car ("Mookie"). "The back of the car... is not the back of car anymore," she says.

Here's what we're probably going to end up suing over, no lie: during the impact (again, I don't quite know the logistics of it), the driver's seat fell, or was thrown, into the back seat. Apparently cars crunch up and accordion on purpose so as to absorb the impact, but Driver Seat Detachment is not a safety feature. In fact, it rendered the seatbelt completely useless (it wasn't holding her in place against anything at that point, obviously), and she was thrown around the car. This may actually be how she hit her head, I don't know. All I know is that my mother was already weighing various lawyer options within an hour of the accident. Today, Tomorrow, Toyota.

Meanwhile, the rest of the car is totaled, and not like last time when it was kind of totaled and then they fixed it--really totaled, in that there's not even a trunk there now. If you were driving on I-65 outside Birmingham earlier today and you saw school papers and loose yearbook pages littered across the road? That was my sister's accident. Apparently the yearbook exploded on impact (who knew it was the least stable object in the car? Even the driver's seat is all like, "Look, I just fell over "). She keeps a lot of school stuff in her trunk and/or backseat, and it's pretty much all gone or ruined--her textbooks, her Culinard recipe notes, her CDs, gone. "I had four pairs of shoes in there," she said, "and I think I got most of those." Her best friend drove up and helped her pick up what she could--apparently a number of bystanders helped as well--but there wasn't much left to recover. Best Friend then drove Sister Girl back down to the UAB ER, since Sister Girl was coming back from Decatur, and our parents met her there. And thus began the long wait in ER Purgatory. Everyone's finally home now, fast-food-fed, and Sister Girl's high on pharmaceuticals. Oh, and her glasses broke.

ETA: I have more details now. The guy hit her at a slight angle, so she spun out into a ditch in the median nose-first, and yet her airbags didn't deploy. She's really going to enjoy that condo Toyota's going to have to buy her. She was driving a Camry, by the way. I've seen the pictures now, and that thing is mangled.

Comments

Oh, the poor thing!

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

I hope that no delayed physical effects show up from the accident, and that your sister's lawsuit is successful. What an awful thing to happen! I hope that you all rest well tonight and feel better soon.

[sarafinapekkala.livejournal.com]

Oh man. I'm really glad your sister's okay.

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

...Holy crap! Well, glad she's all right in any case?

[anne-jumps.livejournal.com]

Aw, poor kid.

Um, what sort of Toyota, exactly?

[kdorian.livejournal.com]

What you said. I may be looking for a car in the next couple of years, and I want to know what not to get!

[lafemmezilla.livejournal.com]

Yikes, scary! Accidents are unfun enough, and then to have it happen on the interstate? I'm glad she's okay. Tailgaters piss me off like whoa.

[poinsley.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds so scary. I'm glad she's ok!

I was planning on buying a Toyota soon - which model did she have?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

A Camry--a few years old, but she was obsessive about getting it taken in and checked; she was kind of a car-hypochondriac about the brakes and steering.

[jedilora.livejournal.com]

I've crunched a car pretty bad before, but holy crap, that sounds terrible. Do you have rice in the house? I found that the soreness was helped by putting warm dry rice into a pillowcase and just holding it in various places. Much better than ice packs.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Actually, we have some of those beanbags filled with cherry pits that you can freeze or microwave, kind of the same concept.

[linz-lou.livejournal.com]

Aw, bless her heart. I hope she isn't too sore tomorrow. It could have been a lot worse, though, so I'm glad she's OK!

[bakednudel.livejournal.com]

Thank God she's ok! I hope you all have a peaceful evening and a healing sleep for your sister. And good luck with the lawsuit--that can't be right!

[sound-of-bells.livejournal.com]

My god. That's awful. I hope everything turns out all right.

[darth-snarky.livejournal.com]

Glad your sister's all right. That's horrible about the car, though. Good luck with your suit--it sounds like you definitely have a case there.

[claddagh812.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad she's okay! And so sorry for everything she lost. I hope no worse injuries show up later on.

(Huh -- I was in an accident a few months ago, and my airbags didn't deploy, either. Toyota-made, less than a year old vehicle. Crap.)

[greenwitch.livejournal.com]

Dude, Driver's Seat Detatchment is bad but just plain random -- the air bags not deploying?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Condo. Srsly.

Glad she's alright, considering...

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one thing's bad, but both of them together are pretty damning.

[xanath.livejournal.com]

OH, my God.

I am so glad your sister's okay. The poor thing. :(

I'm equally grateful for the bystanders who helped her. I really hope they also gave their stories to the police.

And THANK YOU for noting what kind of a car it was. I was also considering buying a Toyota Camry. After this? HELL no.

--Kris

[pennyverse.livejournal.com]

Oh man that sounds awful. I'm glad she's okay and hope she stays that way!

[chorusgirl.livejournal.com]

((((((((((((((((sistergirl)))))))))))))))))

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

Wow, sounds like a scary accident. Glad she is ok!

[edda.livejournal.com]

OMG. *hugs your whole family, especially Sister Girl*

Let me know if I can do anything. At ALL, OK?



Also I can't remember if this is something you normally do, but you used your real name in paragraph 3. Just FYI if that was a goof.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

No, I did it on purpose. I don't really mind people knowing my real first name, since it's pretty common around here.

[jettcat.livejournal.com]

Well HELL!
I suspect she'll enjoy very much studying at the Cordon Bleu in Paris on Toyota's dimes...

And what happened to the dog that started all of this?

[disgruntledgrrl.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm the only one curious.

Hope it's a nice condo...

[msilverstar]

*sends healing thoughts to her* I got bad neck and back pains after a rear-ender back in the day.

But wtf is up with the seat detatching?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I KNOW! I seriously do not understand that at all. Go look at the pictures I just posted, it's bizarre.

[vampychick.livejournal.com]

Also, when she got out of the car, she stepped into a bed of swarming red ants.

Talk about adding insult to injury! Fire ants, the perfect cap to any bad day.

Also, never buying a Toyota.

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

So odd the number of people saying "On the basis of this one story, I am ruling out any car of any year from this particular manufacturer!"

On the same basis, one day reading through any automobile forum would lead you to rule out every single car manufacturer out there. What auto maker out there do you think has achieved a 0% failure rate of all safety features?

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

This might be a little silly of me, but is she going to be able to replace her yearbook and her texts and stuff? 'Cause I'd kick ten bucks towards the Mookie Memorial Fund.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Awww, bless. I don't know about her (high school) yearbook or her (Culinard) textbooks, but she did just graduate cooking school, so it was more a matter of her wanting them than needing them for class. She lost her massive recipe notebook, but she's saying she's either going to try to Xerox someone else's or see if her chefs will let her copy theirs (since she's graduated, after all).

"Driver Seat Detachment is not a safety feature": QOTD, omg

[elbales]

...Holy shit. By your fifth graf, I was literally sitting here with my mouth hanging open, closing it only to say "Oh my God," and then "oh my God," and finally "oh, my God."

We humans lose our vocabulary in times of shock, ys.

Aside from the obvious head injury, I think I am sorriest about her notes. You can't replace those. Textbooks, yes. Car, yes. But not notes.

Also? Never ever ever buying a Camry, ever, in the history of ever, because, Jesus. Toyota should ph33r your mother. Refer them to the Sonic incident if they fail to show appropriate cowed-ness. I'd feel sorry for them, except, Jesus.

p.s. Dear Universe: The ants were just plain overkill. Really.

[dramedy.livejournal.com]

My brother has a Camry, and it's airbags deployed(See: why I never drive when I am remotely tired). I'd guess more than anything this is not a standard problem with Camrys, but an issue with this particular car. IMHO.