A near miss

Second last light before I was home.

I sat, waiting for the red light to turn green, anxious to be home and anxiously looking in my rearview mirror at the young man texting behind me.  I hope he puts his phone away before he starts driving, I thought, worried about getting rear-ended. I have book club tonight and didn’t need the hassle of a traffic accident.

The intersection was a tricky one, where three streets met – two perpendicularly and one diagonally. Left turns were tricky, but I was simply going straight through. I watched as the traffic lights turned from green to red for the people on the road perpendicular to me, and waited for my red to become green.

My light turned green and I counted in my head before moving my foot from the brake to the accelerator. As I did so, the van beside me honked. I assumed it was turning left and someone was in its way. I slowly moved into the intersection, still worried about the texter behind me.

Thank goodness for the honker because I had enough time to slam on my brakes as a grey sedan barreled through a red light, clearly speeding. I hadn’t been able to see it until I pulled forward because of the size of the van.

Thank goodness I had just begun to accelerate because if I had been going the speed limit, I would have been T-boned.

Thank goodness that young man behind me had been on his phone because he was late following behind me.

I was a little shaky as I drove the rest of the way home, but thankful that it was a near miss.