Daughter Lucks Out in Car Accident

Tom & I were awakened at 12:30 a.m. today by one of those phone calls that every parent dreads getting: "Mom, I've been in an accident."
Thankfully, these words were followed by, "But I'm okay."


As you probably recall from yesterday's post, we received quite a bit of snow last night, WAY more than the weatherman predicted. The roads were terrible. Our daughter (who is 23 and still lives at home with us) decided to drive to the city of Warren (50 minutes west of our house) to visit a friend yesterday afternoon, before the snow started. When she left to come home at 11 p.m., she was in the thick of slippery roads, and she became lost, took several wrong turns, and wound up on I-94 in HAMTRAMCK of all places!!! That's 50 minutes south of us and only a few miles from the Detroit River, the Ambassador Bridge, etc. As she was preparing to get off on an exit ramp and call us for directions, a speeding car nudged her car as he was going by and the roads were so slick that it sent her across the 2 left lanes into a guardrail, and then she boomeranged in the opposite direction across all 4 lanes into a snow bank on the right shoulder of the freeway. At that point, she was stuck in the snow, and something was wrong with her front passenger tire, so she couldn't move the car. THANK GOODNESS there was hardly anyone on the roads last night or she could have been hit and seriously injured when she flew across the freeway and back!!! The man who hit her stopped briefly on the side of the road, then left the scene. What a jerk.

Tom & I drove to Hamtramck to get her, and it probably took us at least an hour or more because of the slick roads and reduced speeds. She had already filed a police report and was waiting on a tow truck. Of course, with all of the accidents on area roads last night, tows were taking forever, and ours was no exception, which was a bit nerve-racking because we weren't in the greatest of neighborhoods. A tow truck finally arrived at 3:30 a.m., we got home at 5 a.m. after paying a $127 towing fee, and now her car will have to sit in the garage until she has the money to pay the insurance deductible to get it fixed. It appears the car has a broken front axle, or at the very least, a broken tie rod end, ball joints and who knows what else. Did I mention she's only had the 2009 Chevy Cobalt for 2 1/2 weeks? Unbelievably though, the exterior of the car had very little damage. I think all the extra snow on the sides of the road served as a cushion.

We are very thankful that God was watching over all of us last night, and that Angela is fine. Her car? Well, that's just "material stuff," and it will get fixed when it gets fixed. In the meantime, she & I will share a car--she can take me to work mornings and my hubby will pick me up on his way home from work each night.

Thank you, Lord, for protecting all of us last night!