The Day We Had A Car Crash

After a lovely week off work together, we'd decided to drive up to see my sister & her fiance in Manchester, all went well and we were on our way home, pretty early on a Sunday morning. Some of you may even remember me tweeting the picture below around 15 minutes before it happened, John was driving and we'd just got onto the M62, normally quite a busy stretch of motorway, but it was 9:30am on a Sunday morning so it was pretty quite. We were in the slow lane as it was a temporary 50 zone, due to roadworks (which no one is ever, EVER, working on) and I remember feeling like the lorry that was slowly over taking us, felt to close.

Well that was my famous last thought because we felt an almighty bang. Before John even had time to finish his 'What the **** was...' we suddenly realised because we were turned horizontal across the front of a lorry. I remember screaming and seeing dust around us, I could hear the beeping of the lorry driver (I'm assuming this was to warn drivers behind him) and we could definitely feel the force of the lorry as it pushed us along the carriageway. We came to stop as luckily the driver braked pretty quickly, it titled our car facing forward and the force, along with some steering from John pushed us into the side of the slow lane against a metal reservation (like the one above). John jumped out, and I climbed out across his side, as my door was jammed shut, we then managed to grab Noah out through the front and clambered over the reservation to safety. A pair of absolutely lovely men had stopped in the car behind us, and the rang the police as well as helping other cars get past. The lorry driver stopped further up and eventually came down where he admitted he didn't see us.

After asking the guys behind us what happened, as we were alongside the lorry we really had no idea, it turned out, the driver simply hadn't seen us, he indicated and moved across into us, he'd clipped the back of our car and it turned us in front of him. I couldn't believe what had just happened, we were all so lucky, none of us had a bruise to show and we were incredibly thankful. How many accidents do you hear of with a HGV that come out ok? Noah didn't even cry throughout any of the ordeal. I felt sorry for the car, it's a courtesy car as mine was in for repair, so we didn't really even have to deal with that. It's now nearly a week after the crash and aside from a very achey back on my behalf, we're all roughly okay. Again, I cannot thank the quick thinking of other drivers - thus not causing further trauma by crashing into us, and although he was incredibly stupid in the first place - the quick braking of the HGV driver as we all know this could of turned out so much worse.

Enjoy my little doodle of exactly how it happened. We're all slightly nervous now about driving on motorways, although for the first time today since the accident I did overtake a lorry, with sweaty palms mind you, but I did it nonetheless. A review of Noahs amazing car seat will follow, it withstood the impact of a 70 tonne lorry so it's definitely tried and tested.

Have you ever been in a car accident with your little one on board? How did you deal with the aftermath?