Understanding In a Car Crash

"Death hangs over thee. While thou still live, while thou may, do good."

I was driving back from work today on the 710 north and I very nearly was in major accident. I was lucky because it was close. The weirdest thing is that even as I watched what could have been my approaching injury and or death I felt nothing. I felt no worry or concern, my body didn’t even tense I just watched the car coming with a sense of bemusement so small it was practically nothing.

Here is what went down.
I was driving North on the 710 going between 55 and 60. I was relaxed and listening to Modest Mouse’s song Life Like Weeds so there was a good sized gap between me and the traffic in front of me. Traffic was heavier than usual but moving really well. Suddenly everybody slammed on their breaks. It was one of those 60 to 0 things that I noticed first as clouds of smoke announced the desperate attempts of the cars in front of me to stop. A couple of cars were even forced to swing into the shoulder to avoid collisions. I was humming along with the music and as I watched the cars in front of making panicked stops I remember thinking “oh I guess we are stopping now.” I laid my foot down on the break still humming and completely relaxed. I got my car stopped in time, mostly because I had left myself the room. I was almost touching the guy in front of me when I had got it stopped. I looked in the re-view mirror to see how the guys behind me were doing and saw that the guy behind me was in trouble. He had been going a little faster than me and when he had jammed on his breaks he had trouble keeping it in line. He was fish-tailing all over the lane first to one side then to the other smoke pouring from the tires the whole while. I just sat there watching him approach and I only thought “hmm, well look at that.” My body didn’t even tense. I only looked away because my peripheral caught the guy in front of me moving again. The traffic went from 0 to 45 in a tenth of a second, no indication why we had stopped. I thought to myself “interesting” and accelerated forgetting about the car behind me still slewing sideways across the lane. The combination of my moving again and his slight reduction in speed meant that there was no collision. Had traffic not started moving again that would not have been the case.

I didn’t even think about it after the fact until I went to merge onto the 91 East and the guy cut me off. Then it struck me that I hadn’t felt anything even as I was almost run down. It doesn’t bother me, it’s just strange. Honestly in that moment I probably could have watched a semi barreling down on me bringing death and had no stronger a reaction than to think “hmm, well now” with a almost complete detachment.