On a collision course with a key life lesson

My parental Spidey senses went off the moment my daughter’s number popped up on my phone, the internal dad warning klaxon blaring loud. I just knew this wasn’t good. “Dad? I’ve been in a car accident.”

Those words on the page don’t do that sentence justice: the emotion in her voice, the tears I could feel rather than see, my gut clenching hard with fear.

She could barely get the words out, but the gist emerged quickly: she was fine, if shaken. And the car was wrecked. “I’m so sorry,” she said. My immediate instinct was to go to her, to make sure everything was really all right and to help deal with whatever aftermath was to come.

The collision had happened, as these things often do, just a few blocks from the house.

The only problem: I didn’t have a car.

My wife was out with our other daughter and I was home alone without a ride.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true; I had a stable of bikes in the garage.

And so in -15 C weather, I pedalled like a frozen mad man to the intersection in question.

I found my daughter in the back of a police car, writing her statement. She opened the door and I saw her tear-streaked face. To avoid bawling myself — the relief she was OK was overwhelming — I did the only thing I could think of. I made a joke.

“I kinda figured you’d end up in the back of the squad car, I just didn’t figure it would be this soon,” I said. And she laughed. Sort of. The details slowly emerged. She’d been driving home through a notoriously busy Guelph intersection when the light turned yellow. Unable to stop safely, she proceeded through but the guy turning left went anyway. Bang.

The police and the insurance company people — all of whom have been great through the entire process thus far — determined she was not at fault.

The driver and occupants of the other car were fine, too.

I was so relieved that everyone was safe; it didn’t occur to me to be upset about any of it. My car, however, is toast. Every single airbag went off after the collision and the left front end of the car was smashed to bits. It’s a small car and it’s been less reliable than I would have liked over the two-and-a-half years I’ve owned it.

But when I needed it to do its most important job — protect my family — it came through.

And though the powers that be have determined she wasn’t to blame for the collision, my daughter has learned a very important the lesson hard way. Like many relatively new drivers — she’s 17 — she’s now had a wake-up call as to how dangerous the roads can be, how hypervigilant she needs to be at all times.

We’ll work together to rebuild her confidence behind the wheel and hope her phone calls go back to their usual theme of asking to stay out later at night or borrow money.

Hopefully not for bail.