Well, I’m kind of embarassed to admit I killed my truck.
I went skiing last Thursday and on the way home, I had a mishap. I can’t explain it, just all of a sudden, the truck was spinning and hit the snowbank, not nose-first, not back-first, but full on sideways and flipped over. It caught the running board in the snow and rolled, ending up sitting on the driver side in someone’s side yard.
No one was hurt. No other vehicles were involved and no property – other than mine – was damaged.
I’d never been in a rollover crash before. I was leaning against the driver door window with the seatbelt still holding me in the seat wondering what to do next. I wasn’t confused, nor did I lose consciousness, but I just needed to assess the situation and figure out the best course of action to a situation I hadn’t encountered before. Once I had decided that the vehicle wasn’t about to burst into flames or explode imminently, I decided to get out. I suppose that would have been the same decision, had the truck been in flames, but I had time to decide how to do it elegantly. I turned off the ignition and was annoyed that the radio kept playing. It does that. The Envoy doesn’t turn off the radio until you actually open the door.
Opening the driver door was out of the question, the truck was sitting on it. So I decided to go up, to the passenger side. I released the seatbelt and immediately fell into a heap on the door. I got up and stood up. The door was still what seemed like far away. I decided to see if the window would roll down. I then realized that to operate the window, I had to turn the ignition back on. I could reach the button for the window and it went down a bit sluggishly. Somehow I found a foothold and managed to climb up and out and sat on the side of the truck before jumping down to the ground.
The first thing I saw was a guy with a mountain bike on the shoulder of the road talking on a cell phone. He asked if I was all right and if anyone else was in “there.” He was reporting the mishap to the police. Continue Reading…