Sent 1st class today
6 February 2015
Dear Liam
I'm the driver whose car you ploughed into head-on on the A140 on 5 August 2013, 18 months ago yesterday. I've waited to write to you until the personal injury aspect of the case settled, which it did today when I accepted a formal offer from your insurers.
I'm writing mainly for my own benefit, because there are a number of things I'd like to say before finally closing this chapter and moving on.
I've never been involved in any kind of road collision before, except a bump once to the back of my car years back. That sunny afternoon I was coming home in my 3 week old car, which I was enormously proud of and which was to all extents still brand new. You came out of nowhere on the wrong side of the road, on a bend and on a hill, overtaking. I was doing exactly 30mph. I had a second to react before the airbag went off in my face. In that time I slammed my foot on the brake. My leg was outstretched rigid when you drove into me head-on. My right hand was tensed up as I gripped the wheel.
A brand new Mercedes is capable of stopping very rapidly from that speed, in the dry, with brand new tyres. I've been back and paced out the distance from where I think I'd have first seen you, and where the photos show the cars came to a rest on my side of the road. I'm absolutely sure that I was stationary when you hit me. The full force of that impact had to go somewhere. You were probably doing what, 30, 40 mph in a 30mph limit as you overtook? One witness behind you said she was hanging back because the nature of your driving had scared her and she was worried you were going to hit someone.
The impact went into the front of my car, up my outstretched leg and straight into my spine. My hand also took some of it and I was lucky it did not break. Two of the discs in my back ruptured. You caused £29,500 of damage to my new car. It is one of the heaviest, safest cars on the road, yet the force was so powerful that the main front chassis member buckled. The damage was so extensive that the insurers wrote off the car and a £40,000 replacement had to be ordered. I had waited 3 months for the car; I had to wait another 3 months to factory order another.
The accident hurt, Liam. I was in A&E until 10pm that night. I had cuts, a sprained wrist, and I was in shock. A few days after, my back started really giving me pain. 18 months on I still get terrible lower back pain, tingling in my right foot from nerve damage, and my right knee aches after walking. I still go to the osteopath regularly and 4 experts I have seen, including a consultant spinal surgeon, don't think it will ever completely heal. I never had the slightest back problem before this. Thanks to your driving that afternoon, I will probably have this for life. I am only 43, so that is quite some time.
It isn't just physical pain either. I loved driving. I'm a safe, competent driver, who has driven in 30 countries from the US to Australia. Now I suffer hesitancy, anxiety and the enjoyment is gone. That's all as a result of your being in a rush that afternoon. The nightmares started shortly afterwards too, and the waking up at 4am religiously form an entire year, until I paid for post-traumatic counselling. Thankfully that's now stopped finally.
I wasn't the only one in my car. My collie, Oscar, had been with me 10 years that day. He was my life. I'd rescued him and he relied on me to look after him and keep him safe. I couldn't keep him safe from you that afternoon though. He was behind his dog-guard, but he was still hurled forward with the braking and the impact. Oscar died on 5 August 2014, 11 years after I got him, and a year to the day that you hit us. You made the last year of his life excruciatingly painful. He started limping because of horrific problems with his back after the crash. In February he suffered a total collapse and I thought I was going to lose him, Liam. He ended up being on powerful daily painkillers, had to wear 3 braces on his little paws, and had to go to hydrotherapy sessions to get him walking again at all. When he eventually died it broke my heart, knowing his last year had been so difficult. That's all because you decided to overtake on a busy road one afternoon. I hope whatever you were in a hurry to get to was worth it.
Then there's the stress of your refusing to admit liability after the crash you caused. I lost my no-claims for the year, had to risk running up an enormous hire car bill, chase my useless insurers endlessly, and hear you saying it wasn't your fault because you were suffering "memory loss". I'll remind you what happened: you were overtaking on a bend and on a hill in a 30mph zone, gambling nothing else was coming northwards. I was, and you hit me. You know that. There was no reasonable explanation for your actions and you could have owned up to them. It was only finally in December 2014 that your insurers admitted your negligence caused all of this.
Do you remember what you said to me when you got out of your write-off? I do, as clear as day: "Sorry, mate, no idea why I was on your side". Then you sat there on your phone making calls for 30 minutes. I don't call that an apology. That's why I want you to know what and I and my dog went through. The look on his face as he couldn't get up and the pain of his last year. The pain in my back now, that may never go away.
The case is settled. I believe you cost your insurers around £102,000 in total (2 new cars, my hire car bill, my expenses, my personal injury sum and legal fees). It was an expensive decision to overtake. It could have been much pricier - what if I'd been a young mum in an old Vauxhall Nova? My 1900kg Mercedes probably saved both our lives, absorbing the impact for us both. You could so easily have killed. I don't want an apology from you: I want you to reflect on all of this and to learn from it. I want to know that you realise arriving 15 or 30 minutes late for a meeting is infinitely better than doing what you did. Risking actual lives.
You were so lucky not to have been banned, as considered by the magistrates. You were so lucky not to have killed. Please, Liam, learn. Slow down. Don't be a cock. Think, next time, and every time you drive.
Now let us both draw a line under this and move on. I need to, and I bet you wish to as well.
Peter E.
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