Anatomy of A (Near) Car Crash

I could have been killed today.
Ok, I know that sounds a bit melodramatic but it's true.
I was driving back from church and I was going about 70. That was in the "slow" lane.
A car in the "fast" lane that was about 3/4th of a car length ahead of me began to drift into my lane. I began to drift
to the right also to compensate but there was only two lanes and the rough shoulder dropped off
so I could not have pulled onto the shoulder, even if I wanted to, without possibly crashing.

The other car, smaller than an SUV but bigger than a pinto, definitely big enough to make me spin like a top if it hit me, wasn't seeing me.

Then suddenly the other car saw me and saw that if it kept drifting it would hit me and we'd both be spinning around at 70 mph and we had cars ahead and behind us.

The driver overreacted and the car swerved toward the shoulder on the left side, then it swerved again toward me at what seemed like a 33 degree angle. If the driver didn't correct I was about to get hurt.

Then at the last minute the driver jerked the car again, this time in the direction of the shoulder. The car went off the road and partially up the incline in the median. I was now watching this car turn around while I pulled off to the shoulder and began running up the interstate to make sure the driver was ok.

I was thrilled the car did not flip over. The whole thing was reminding me of my own car crash where my truck flipped and spun. I wrote about that here. I was originally going to post this as a comment there but decided better to
give it its own entry because I'm curious if others here have close calls like this and how they react to it.

Anyway...
Not only was this car not flipped, though, but another driver beat me to the car in question and was returning to his car. He shouted at me, "She said she's ok" and gave me a "thumbs up" sign.

I tried to think of the sign to indicate "I need to check on her because I'm the car she almost hit and--" damn, there was no sign for that. I kept running - well, walking now as I realized I was out of shape - toward the car which now seemed to be... was she turning her car around? She was.

I thought quick. Is there some kind of car accident etiquette here. I felt bad and yet I really had no reason to
feel bad - I had the right of way and did nothing wrong. Was this driver obligated to tell me herself she was ok
and/or bore no ill will. Or I to her? As I now got closer to her car - about 50 yards now - she had her car turned around
and was signalling to re-enter the fast lane.

It hit me suddenly that there was going to be no conversation. And while there was no real technical or legal
need for us to exchange "I'm ok, are you ok?" it still seemed the right thing to do.

Was the other driver embarrassed? In a hurry? I was starting to, frankly, get kind of pissed off. This person
had come close to making a movie that could have gotten both of us killed and she did not now even have
the courtesy to... Her car started to enter the fast lane and there was no indication the driver was going to come in my direction.

That was it. I turned around and started back to my car. Not only did the driver avoid slowing down as she approached me but she was speeding up. A hand shot out and I'm not sure what it was. I was expecting a thumb's up or a wave to indicate she was ok. But it wasn't that. I don't think she gave me the finger, either. I really have no idea what that gesture meant, which is why I wanted to exchange words, to avoid
this type of ambigious exchange.

I thought about this in the larger picture. Has it come to this: Are we now not even going to talk to people
we crash into?

I was reminded of the movie Crash and while I liked much of the movie I thought of a line referring to the title
was absurd, perhaps intentionally so: "It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

As I got into my car I drove a little slower, more aware of how quickly my life could change, and pondered that statement. No, I decided, not only do we avoid having our cars touch each other strangers don't want to touch or talk to strangers either, even if, for one odd moment, their lives intersected.

I could not decide which I find more troubling - how close I came to being hurt in a car accident or the latest
indictment about the sad state of our society. I still have not decided. The butterfiies of alarm are still
rumbling in my stomach but those will go away - what will be with me tomorrow is the knowledge of the
driver's actions or inactions. And that, I think, disturbs me the most.

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