What Happens When Your Teenager Gets Into a Car Accident…
I am not one of those mothers that think “it won’t happen to me”…au contraire… I am the mother that expects it.
And so it was Saturday, the 13th of January that the dreaded panicked phone call came. I had just sent my daughter on an errand less than fifteen minutes before to get me a Starbucks. It was unusually cold in Southern California, and I was at the ball field while my young son tried out for spring baseball. A triple shot of adrenalin would be just the fix. Off I sent her on a regular errand, only two blocks away.
In what seemed like minutes, I answered the phone, and all I hear is babble verging on hysterics, as my 17-year-old teenage daughter tries to relay that she has been in an accident. She is inconsolable and hard to comprehend. A kindly gentleman who identified himself as a doctor had stopped to help and took over the phone to explain that she had hit a pole. I told him I was just across the street, and I was on my way. So off I ran across the ball field to the road.
There is nothing quite like the sight of your child’s car resting up against a light post. Half on the sidewalk, half in the street. I felt my heart sink, as I ran what seemed an interminable distance. As I approached the scene, a lady was leaning into the car, and so I imagined that Ariana must be pretty injured. And then I see my daughters face all puffed up and covered in smatterings of blood. It was worse than I thought but not as bad as it could have been. When an airbag deploys on a 105 pound 5’1” teen, it packs quite a wallop.
My daughter is crying hysterically as soon as she sees me and falls into a heap into my arms. Fortunately for her, I am a pretty strong mama, or else I might have collapsed into a pile of hysterics myself.
The gentleman identified himself as a Orthodontist, and wanted to assure me that her teeth were intact, thanks to her new Invisalign retainers. He surmised that the airbag and seat belt saved her life, as she probably would have gone through the windshield or hit the steering wheel with her face at the very least. Since her braces have only been off for a few weeks, he said it was a good thing, as they could have done severe damage to the inside of her lips. I was thankful that a kind husband and wife team that seemed to be parents themselves were there to comfort her until I arrived. As soon as Paramedics arrived, they were on their way, and I was not able to get their names to send a proper thank you. He claimed to not have a business card with him, but in a litigious society, he probably felt it better not to identify himself. They became two anonymous angels gone in a flash. I still wish I could thank them, as before they left they reminded me to get her retainers that the doctor had kindly removed from her mouth off of the passenger seat. The wife worried about the cost to replace them!
The story of how Ariana got a car is a great one. She asked Santa for a car. Her list said any car. She required that it had an engine, a radio, and air conditioning. My husband and I laughed at the list for Santa written by a 17-year old. December 25th came and went with no car under the tree. Santa it seems works in mysterious ways. Just two days following Christmas, our former neighbor came over to visit and asked if he could give Ariana his old car. What? Say that again… True enough…He had a 1992 Toyota Celica in an excellent pristine kind of condition that he wanted to gift our daughter. After my husband and I agreed to the gift, we set out to pick up the car, change the title, get insurance, and surprise Ariana. Our other three children were involved in the surprise. One night before the new year when she returned from her job at the Magic Kingdom, we told her to go into the garage to get some soda. She could not understand our desperate request. She had just gotten home, what was wrong with our legs? When she went to the garage, there sat her car all decked out in balloons with a note from Santa saying he could not fit it on his sleigh! Ariana was speechless (which if you know Ariana, is quite rare), and her eyes welled with tears. She could not believe her good fortune. Her first car! She agreed to pay half of the insurance from her job, and take good care of it and all of the usual promises a kid makes when their dream comes true.
So…who could plan for that car to be a total loss just two short weeks later? A responsible, high achieving student and a demolished car. What could have gone wrong?
Cause of accident?
The coffee I sent her to get. Seems that when she turned the corner, the coffee popped out of the cup holder, and when she looked down for a split second, she met with the light pole. It all happened in the blink of an eye. I have been victim to the Starbucks cup flying out of the car cup holder. They are not well balanced, especially if they are tall hot latte’s.
And so it goes, accidents can happen anytime and anywhere. The saving grace for my daughter involved several factors. She always wears a seat belt. Her car had a working airbag, and the ease and semi-comfort of wearing Invisalign retainers kept her newly brace free teeth from jumping through her lips or worse yet breaking.
She has cuts and bruises but will heal pretty quickly. She is not so anxious to drive again, but like falling off of a bike, she has to get back behind the wheel. When I called our dear friend who gifted her the car with the sad news, he could only say that he knew there was a chance that she would have to learn some lessons in the car. Unfortunately, she had to learn them sooner than we could have predicted.
Keep your kids safe, and tell them never to look down or reach while driving. The instinct was to do so, and the ramifications of such a natural response could prove to be deadly.