Hit By A Bus

I was almost to work the other day, just about to take the last turn before pulling into the parking lot, when I heard a crunch from my right. A big, green stage-lines bus had decided that it needed to be in my lane as well, and either didn't know or didn't care that my car was already there. I looked to the right, and saw what amounted to a 15-foot tall brick wall closing in on me. I freaked out, and yanked my steering wheel to the left to get out of his way. I think that he saw me...or heard the noise or felt the bump that resulted from sideswiping my car...and he pulled back into the lane he'd just vacated.

I let off the gas; I was pretty rattled. I kind of coasted along for a moment as I approached the intersection that I was headed for. The bus driver must have been on some kind of a tight schedule, because he didn't slow much at all. Only just enough to take a left turn just as the light was turning yellow. He went on through the intersection, and kept on driving, disappearing from my sight, because I didn't make the light before it turned red. I was too busy, unlike that bus driver, slowing down and acting as though I'd just been in a traffic accident.

I stopped at the light, and several of the people in the cars around me who had just witnessed the accident were catching my eye, then shaking their heads and throwing up their hands as if to say, "What the heck was that bus driver doing?"

When the light turned green, I took a left, and drove on down the road to see if the bus driver had actually not meant to abandon the scene, but instead had pulled over down the street and was waiting for me. It was not to be. He was gone, gone, gone.

So, I went to work, pulled into the parking lot, and surveyed the damage. My side mirror seemed to have taken all of the damage of the encounter. When the bus hit it, it moved on the joint that side mirrors have, and flattened against the car. I had to pop it back into position.

The plastic of the reflector was cracked, and a portion of it had fallen off. The plastic housing of the mirror had split apart a little, but it was holding together.

And that seemed to be the whole extent of the damage. I couldn't see anything else in any other areas.

Either my jerking the steering wheel to the left or possibly the bus driver's move back to the right had saved my car from sustaining any real damage. It all happened so fast that I couldn't really say exactly what happened. I want to say that when I jerked my car to the left, it jumped up the curb onto the sidewalk for a minute, but now that I think back on it, I don't think it did. That probably would have resulted in some big damage to the car, because they have steep, straight curbs all along the sides of the roads around here. They always say that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and in this case, I definitely believe it. Because my eyewitness testimony is definitely garbage.

But, even though it was a hit and run, everything turned out okay. The damage is minimal, something I'm not even going to bother trying to fix. I've done worse damage to my own side mirror in the past when pulling out of my parking spot (Rish Outfield can attest to it, he was in the passenger  seat), and I didn't fix that either. So, I'm definitely not fixing this. And nobody got hurt. All's well that ends well.

I did see this scratch on the car when I was examining it for damage, but for all I know, it was already there. I wouldn't be surprised if it came from some other event--a door ding in a parking lot or something like that.

Who can say they got hit by a bus and fared so well?