Driver's Ed

In the past few months, I've responded to numerous traffic accidents. I'm amazed at how bad some people are at driving a car.

Then, while driving normal speed to a routine call, I crashed my police cruiser. This was my first (and hopefully last) traffic collision. I was turning left and somehow didn't see the car coming directly at me. He slammed into the rear passenger-side door of my patrol car causing me to spin 180 degrees. Luckily, neither of us where hurt. His Chevy Cavalier sustained quite a bit of front-end damage as he was going about 40 mph and didn't brake at all before the impact.

I had the embarassing pleasure of notifying the entire city over my police radio I had been involved in an accident and needed a supervisor to respond to the scene. My Sergeant and Lieutenant arrived to investigate. Several of my squadmates and other officers I don't know were sure to drive by to see the mess.

Here's the result of my precision driving:

It didn't take long for the hazing and ridicule to begin from my squadmates. I carried the nickname "Crash" for the rest of the night and was the target of many driving related comments and jokes.