I'm fine, and so is the car

On my way home from work last night, I was involved in a minor traffic accident. Everyone is fine, as is G's vehicle, which I was driving.

I was stopped in a line of traffic, listening to a story on NPR that I was interested in, when all of a sudden, the car behind me ran into me. I thought this was weird, since I had seen her stop behind me just seconds before, but there was no mistaking that bump.

Of course, it was raining and dark. The woman behind me (a college student) ran up to my car and said she'd talked to the others and we should all pull over up ahead. Ah, there were others. This makes more sense.

Turns out there were a total of four cars involved. A taxi hit an older woman in a big car, who hit the college student, who hit me.

So we all stood out in the rain (under umbrellas which at least kept the top halves of us dry) waiting for the taxi driver's supervisor and the police to arrive. All told, we spent over an hour waiting for the whole thing to be taken care of.

The funny part was the older woman in the big car. She was a little kooky, I think, although I don't think the accident caused that. She talked on the phone to someone (husband?) several times. At one point she told him that she's "good in panic situations." First, I don't think this was necessarily a "panic situation" since no one was hurt and the only vehicular damage was a couple of scratches. Second, she followed this up by yelling, "NOOOOOO. We're WAITING for the police. NOOOOOO. They're not here yet." Although perhaps not panic, that certainly wasn't calm.

To top it off, she kept thanking me and the college student for stopping, as if we had done it for her. "That was so sweet of you two to have stopped. Thank you so much. That was really nice." We were involved in the accident, too, lady. They don't like it when you leave the scene of an accident. So maybe it wasn't so much sweet as it was required by the law.