Anyone who knows me knows about my less than holy driving record. I totalled my first car at 16, my second at 17, and have damaged the third (and current) car within an inch of its life. It's a brave little Rav4, and it has kept me safe in many a dangerous situation.

This morning, angels surrounded me as I swerved to avoid a broadside collision in the middle of an intersection, and yes, it was my fault.

Seconds earlier, I was gazing stupidly at a man in a pink shirt. He was carrying groceries in his right hand and warning off traffic indignantly with his left. You guessed it. He was crossing the six-lane highway right in front of me. Why he felt the need to cross the middle of the highway I don't know, but I do know that there was a crosswalk not half a block down at the light. My shock at this man's lack of good decision-making skills distracted me just long enough that I apparently missed the light ahead turning from green to yellow, from yellow to red.

Just as my mind cleared the image of the pink-shirted man, my range of sight was filled entirely with a white truck, the kind used by cable installation or commercial painting companies. Time stopped and I sped up and swerved a half-circle the size of an entire lane around the front of the truck, completely and miraculously missing the entire front end.

What had made me speed up instead of brake? Instinct? Divine inspiration? Adrenaline? Whatever it was, it saved me from a very serious situation. I'm angry at the man who felt the need to cross a highway unsafely, but I'm sad and apologetic to the man whose truck nearly broadsided me as I flew through that red light. I wouldn't have blamed him one bit if he'd called the police on me for reckless driving.

I've been trying so hard lately to drive carefully, which is perhaps why my anger is (probably unjustly) directed towards the man in the pink shirt. I feel that if he hadn't appeared out of nowhere and distracted me, I would have noticed the light change, and none of this would have happened. However, inside, I do realize that I allowed myself to become distracted, and while the man may have contributed, the choice is mine whether to learn from the experience and grow, or to simply lay the blame on him and move on unwittingly. I choose to grow and only hope my attentiveness while driving can be improved.

X-posted to Fuzzy Radar.