My Festivus miracle

I have a confession to make, this year’s Festivus miracle did not take place on Festivus, I’m not even entirely sure that it took place in December – but because the events that transpired that fateful late-afternoon in November or December were infinitely more exciting than anything that has taken place today – I am going with a Festivus miracle from just another day of the year.

It was around 5:00 p.m. after a day of work that was really quite enjoyable (a miracle in itself). I was driving home and I had successfully beaten rush hour by taking off about 20 minutes early. As I turned off the river road that allows me to bypass a good portion of the traffic between work and home, I had a decision to make: do I take the narrow road past 7-11 where I always have two wait for two or three light changes to cross the intersection to take me to my road; or do I head south for a couple of minutes and take the two-lane road that rarely involves any waiting at all? The second option won, and I planted my foot on the accelerator and headed for the two-laned slice of heaven.

I got to the big but largely unused road, turned left. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way, but not much on my side of the road. “Sweet”, I thought, “the lights have been red for a while”. They were due for a change. I maintained my speed, which was roughly 60kmph, faster than the speed limit, but not too fast for that road. I decided to exercise caution when I neared the parking lot entrance of the hardware store and slowed a little – some idiot always pulls out suddenly so it is best to be ready for when it happens. I gave a quick glance just to make sure that nobody was coming… then I looked back in front of me.

Some jackass had decided that he was going to turn from the left-hand lane on the other side of the road (this is Japan so that is the furthest away) and cut into the car park. Either he hadn’t seen me or, more likely, he had seen me and expected that I would just slow down and wait for him. Either way I was about one-and-a-half car lengths away from t-boning him when I slammed on the brakes. I put all of my weight on the pedal, and stupidly leaned on my horn, he stopped dead in his tracks and left me with even less time to stop.

My car has anti-lock braking – the anti-lock system engaged and pumped the brakes on and off. I knew that there was not enough time to avoid the accident, so I turned the steering wheel left in order to give myself a few valuable inches of extra space. The truck was now about a foot away and I was helpless as my car kept moving steadily towards it. I braced for impact and waited for the sound of splintering fiberglass bumper. It didn’t come… my anti-lock brakes had worked exactly as they they were designed to do… a true Festivus miracle.

I was so relieved that I didn’t even get out of my car and yell at the old man for the potential insurance nightmare that he had very nearly created. I simply drove home and silently thanked the automotive engineers who had saved me from something that could have been a lot worse.

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