January 24, 2007
Car accident
It was bound to happen, after 6.5 years of daily driving to work - and for the last year and a half, passing one of the more frantic interchanges in the Bay Area.
Those of you familiar with Highway 85 at 237 would probably grok what happened right way. That area is dangerous every morning - cars trying to exit the freeway (to 237) which is often backed up to a standstill, while cars are trying to enter the freeway right behind it (from El Camino), while cars are flying by on the other lanes of 85. And if that weren’t bad enough, cars cutting in add an additional level of chaos. I think the responding CHP officer said that he had this “pre-sketched”. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a template for this - nearly every day I see near misses. The tow truck driver said that he was just there last week. The Merc has this as #9 of the 12 Worst Interchanges in the Bay Area.
Fortunately, there were no injuries. Phew.
While I was at the auto body shop, the person there tried to cheer me up by noting that at least my car wasn’t total-ed. She pointed out some cars that were total-ed. They were in bad shape: roofs crushed in. Apparently, 2 of the worst damaged cars were due to the driver falling asleep. A sobering reminder of how being drowsy while driving is truly dangerous.
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14 Comments to “Car accident”
January 24th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Unfortunate–glad you weren’t injured.
January 24th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Thanks!
January 24th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Asian drivers!
January 24th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
How’d you guess that the other party in this incident was Asian?
January 25th, 2007 at 7:34 am
so how much does the repair cost?
January 25th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Oof! Glad you’re ok. Stiil, it’s painful to look at your poor Beemer.
Driving to work through crazy DC traffic completely stressed me out; I’m glad I’m back to the Metro.
January 25th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
The repair costs will be estimated Friday or Monday. I hope it’s not more than my car’s value. If it is, then bad things will happen insurance wize.
As for the Metro - yeah, I miss taking the subway in Manhattan as awful as it was in the summer.
Though I did once take a MARC train from New York’s Penn Station all the way to Baltimore’s Penn Station (Amtrak ran out of trains and borrowed one.) That was not a fun 4 hours.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
And this is why I take Central Expressway every morning instead of 85, 237, or 101.
Freeways here in the Bay Area are death traps because of the horrible interchange designs; most freeway entrances don’t have any acceleration lanes, they just dump traffic instantly into the freeway.
DC has much worse traffic than the Bay Area does, but at least the highways around DC have mostly decent interchanges…
January 25th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
DC has much worse traffic than the Bay Area does, but at least the highways around DC have mostly decent interchanges…
I thought the Rengstorff entrance/exit on 101S was what made the Bay Area so special.
January 30th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
[...] been almost a week, and I finally have an estimate for repairs: [...]
February 5th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
And now I see you’ve taken your complaint to the Mercury News!
February 5th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Hah. I was wondering how many people would notice that little quote!
February 28th, 2007 at 11:33 am
[...] I hope it stays that way so my flight doesn’t get canceled! I’m supposed to pick up my car tomorrow [...]
March 1st, 2007 at 2:59 pm
[...] So here’s what my car looked like on 1/24/2007: [...]
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