The "Speed Was To Blame" Story

It was an ordinary day. Carol had just called me at school to tell me that Tad had been involved in an automobile accident at the corner of Pleasure Road and Cameron Ave. That's right around the corner from us. He was on his way to pick up Krista and Chad who live behind us to take them to school with him when he pulled out from a stop sign and someone broadsided him in the rear of the car. Seemed like it was his fault, but ...... Only caught the rear quarter panel and the bumper. Not a whole lot of damage to our car, and the other car sustained about the same amount of damage. Tad said that he had stopped for the stop sign and couldn't see up the street to his left because of the frost on all the windshields of the cars parked near the intersection. He slowly pulled out and realized that someone was flying down Pleasure. He tramped on it to try to get out of the way, but the other car hit him. He was in our Nissan Pulsar that we had bought a short time before. The other driver was a boy who had graduated from high school a year of two before. My neighbor Wayne, who is the dad of Krista and Chad, and also a policeman, heard the accident and went to help. No one was hurt and since the damage was minimal, they just exchanged information to turn over to their insurance companies and both went on their way. Seems that a few days later, the father of the other boy wasn't happy with the payment arrangements since he thought the accident was Tad's fault. Wayne had seen that there were over 50 feet of skid marks and the other car had the speedometer frozen at 48 MPH from the collision. The speed limit on the road is 25 MPH. Wayne called the father and told him what the police would do if they investigated and the father decided it was wise to forget the whole thing. The intersection is a dangerous one and has never changed. And ... no one ever goes 25 MPH on that stretch even though the police do set speed traps on that section of the road to try to slow the traffic. Luckily accidents at the intersection have always been minor, as was the case with my son that morning. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.