Car Wash Crash
This happened a long time ago. It wasn’t with my first car, but with my second. It was a gold-coloured Oldsmobile Cutlass, a beautiful car. I took it to a car wash near my home.
It was the old style of car wash, where they hitch your car onto a moving train, and pull it along through the building. The sign said to stop your car at a certain point, shift into neutral, and then not to touch the brakes or the steering wheel. My Cutlass had a floor shift that was not very accurate. It was quite noisy inside the car wash. I thought I shifted into neutral. My car moved forward just as it normally did in that type of car wash. I heard a bang. I stomped on the brake pedal. The attendant shouted “neutral!”. I pulled the shift lever back a notch. I guessed that the bang was him pounding on the hood to alert me of my mistake.
After that, the wash proceeded normally. When I drove my car out of the car wash, though, there was another car stopped in front of me. The driver came up to me and said “You hit my car”. I said “I did?”. We looked at both of the cars. There was no damage on my front bumper. I didn’t see any damage on the rear bumper of his car, either. We did exchange information, just in case we found damage later. I did not like this situation at all. I went there to clean my car, but had an accident instead. I felt dejected. My inaccurate shift lever had never been a problem before. It certainly was then.
When I went to our local public insurance corporation to report the accident, something I’d never done before, I was surprised that the agent treated it so lightly. He burst out laughing with every word I said. He thought the whole thing was hillarious. I suppose they don’t get many accidents like that one. Still, I didn’t see the humour. It was a serious incident to me.
About a week later, a policeman came to my door. He asked me if I was involved in the accident. I said I was, but that I thought I didn’t have to report it to the police if it was under $200 damage. It was over that, he told me. That was a surprise to me. I didn’t see any damage. However, I said I would report it to the police the next day. When I went down to a local police station to make a report, the policeman behind the counter filled out a form on a typewriter. He did the typing with two fingers. I’d never seen anyone do that before. Every once in a while, he would backspace over a word and type Xes to cover it up. Filing the report took ages with all that two-finger typing. I don’t recall the resolution of this accident, but I’m sure I had to pay at least part of the cost of repairs.
I’ve never told anyone of this incident before. In fact, I still get an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach just thinking about it, even though it happened many years ago. There must be some unresolved issues there for me, although I can’t guess what they might be. I suppose it was the failure on my part. The result was that events didn’t turn out at all the way I had planned. I do strive to be perfect. This was an instance where I was far from that.