Yesterday a bunch of NYCGHAers went to Long Island for the Hockey: The Musical! fundraiser I wrote about last week. On the way back we almost got into a huge car accident.
Let me breakdown this diagram on the right for you (and I’ll apologize now for the out of whack proportions… an artist I’m not). We were going through a green light when this van ignores their red light and comes right into the intersection. We can’t make the right turn because there are cars in the turn lane making the right. We end up turning into the lane of traffic that’s stopped at the light (that’s the red car).
Luckily the right turn lane there was empty of cars so there was room for us. And there was a circular driveway right there we could pull into to get out of the traffic. Conveniently that driveway dropped us right back out onto the road we wanted to be on in the first place.
All of this happened so fast, no one in our SUV freaked out while it was happening. The people in the van seemed to be screaming at us. The people in the red car looked freaked out we were coming at them. Meanwhile, while we were stopped at the circular driveway waiting to come back out onto the road, two cars of people who were behind us at the light drove by and gave us the thumbs up for that defensive driving… it felt like being in a stunt car.
This is the closest I’ve ever come to a car accident… and it was freaky. By the time we got back to the city it had become kinda funny, but in those moments right after there was some distinct emotions all around. The four of us could’ve all been seriously injured (or worse) because of a single person not paying attention to the signal light.
Meanwhile, the Hockey: The Musical! event was great. I wrote a bit about it over on the hockey blog, you can check it out here. Once I get the pictures I’ll post more.
