When Words Collide, Sentences Form

They're Stopped. They're Stopped. We're Gonna Hit Them.

Seriously. What a start to a road trip.

Our tennis teams (men and women) were heading south a little over an hour to play a match this afternoon. We get on 35W - typically a log jam...and typically you would avoid it and take 35E from where we started. Typically. But today was obviously not typical.

We're in a bus - there's 18 of us or so...two teams and 3 coaches. The 3 of us coaches are sitting in the front row of seats, the players behind us. This isn't one of the big, full-sized buses. Everyone just fits in. 2 or 3 times our driver came pretty darn close to hitting the car in front of us...not really paying attention, not really understanding what the brake lights in front of us meant? Each time he did it, we stopped so suddenly that we had to brace ourselves. The other assistant coach (OAC for future reference in this story) and I just kept looking at each other...both wondering "When are we going to hit someone, what will we hit and how fast will we be going?"

It didn't take long to find out the answer, about 5 minutes, right at the one place on 35W where you can be guarenteed that there is a sudden stoppage in traffic no matter what time it is, a Kia Sportage (or something like it) and going at least 25 mph. We just PLOWED into it. As we approached the soon-to-be scene of the accident, we knew it was going to happen. We weren't stopping. The OAC goes, "They're stopped. They are stopped. Hey, we're going to hit them." Which gave everyone in the bus plenty of time to brace themselves (and if we had had seatbelts, we could have buckled, adjusted and refastened them - that's how long it took because that's how much room we had), fortunately. Except for the 1 kid who was asleep. I have never seen an ENTIRE back window of a car crumble and pop out onto the windshield wipers of the car behind it before. We crunched the Kia (who was completely stopped), who slammed into the car in front of her, who slammed into the Explorer in front of them. Yes. It really happened. The Kia is probably going to be considered totaled - destroyed radiator, crushed frame, and who knows what else.

The other coaches feel bad for the driver. They agree with me that he had no right to be driving a bus...but they feel bad for him. I absolutely don't. Not one bit. He had nearly 20 people's lives on his bus for which he was responsible, and he drove recklessly and irresponsibly. It is truly amazing that no one was hurt, or killed. And it is a miracle that the baby seat in the Kia in front of us was not occupied by a baby. The crash was 100% avoidable...and I don't feel sorry for him. I don't care. He was reckless and dangerous from the time he got on the road with our bus...and we are just lucky that the crash happened early on in the trip (so that we didn't have a heart attack before we got to the matches) and no one was hurt.

The company sent a new bus to pick us up...and a driver that was no better. She was afraid to be passed, so if someone came up alongside to pass she slowed down dramatically and pulled over onto the rumble strip.

Seriously, how do some people get to drive buses and are entrusted with the lives of others? I wasn't angry before...but now I am.

posted by Steph @ 9:29 PM