A funny thing happened to me last week

On a rainy, cold night while I was walking down Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn… I was hit by a car… 

It sounds worse than it was. Luckily I wasn’t seriously hurt but I’m still in a bit of shock over it.

It happened like this - I was crossing a side street when a car turned into it from Glenferrie Road. From the corner of my eye, I could see the car coming towards me. It was a green light for me to cross and I thought the driver would wait until I was finished.

Clearly I was wrong. 

He kept going. His car hit me on my left hip and I hit the ground on the right side of my body. 

It was quite surreal feeling as the car came towards me and I realised that it wasn’t going to stop. I pushed my hand out in front of me as if I had superhuman strength that would stop the car.

When I think back on it, it really does feel like it happened in slow motion. Did my life flash before me? No. My first thought was ‘really? Is this really happening to me right now?’ As I fell to the ground, my second thought was ‘f**k, how hurt am I going to be because of this?’ 

I was lucky that the driver had slowed down because he was turning and didn’t hit me at a high speed (the commercials/CSAs are right people!). I ended up with a graze and bruising on my right knee and internal bruising in my right arm and hip. My left side was fine, I suppose I wasn’t hit hard enough to be hurt one that side as well. 

As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed off that this happened. People around me stopped and helped me up, genuinely concerned if I was alright, which I really appreciated. As the driver got out of his car and came towards me, it was a chaotic scene. Apparently he had just missed hitting another car and other pedestrians, I just happened to be the unlucky one. 

My natural reaction was to rip right into this guy. It started with “what the f**k are you doing? I’m f**king crossing the f**king road”. As I was screaming at him, the man who he just avoided knocking down started to abuse him as well and all the witnesses began yelling that I should report him to the police. 

He only had one response to my ranting - “sorry sorry sorry”. He didn’t speak much English but had a passenger who did and she came out of the car at this point. She was in a state of shock, asking me if I was alright, that it was an accident and the car was broken, pointing at the fact that all the windows were completely fogged up and he couldn’t see where he was going. 

“Why are you driving if you can’t see where you are going? Don’t you know how dangerous that is???” I yelled out in response to that. 

I didn’t end up contacting the police, but I think one of the witnesses called them while I was shouting at him. He gave me his name and number just in case my injuries were worse in the morning. My visit to the doctor the next day confirmed that I was alright, no major injuries. 

After two days of rest, I was back at work. 

Although getting hit by a car kinda sucks, I know how lucky I was to walk away so lightly. I really should go and buy that lotto ticket…