Thursday, September 22, 2016

A Near Miss

Last night I attended an Artworks meeting downtown. After the meeting which adjourned about 9:06PM I dropped a friend off at her home, also downtown, then headed home to the north side of Westfield. I had two choices after leaving my friend's house- I could go right and get on route 20 and go home that way, or go left, head to Elm Street, cross the bridge and either go up North Elm to Holyoke Road, or take Union Street to Springdale to Dry Bridge to Holyoke Road to East Mountain Road. I chose to go left.

I had no problems as traffic was fairly light from Union Street on. I reached the stop sign at the end of Holyoke Road at one of Westfield's more dangerous intersections because there is the Pioneer Valley RR overpass to the left with extremely poor visibility for any vehicles coming from the left. There are also the two Mass Turnpike overpasses directly behind the PVRR underpass. I am always super cautious when attempting a left turn onto East Mountain Road from the end of Hoyoke Road. I'm also super cautious when coming up to the stop sign just past the PVRR when traveling south on East Mountain Road because the Lane Construction big haulers SELDOM stop for that stop sign at the end of Holyoke Road because I guess it's too difficult to apply the brakes and obey traffic rules when you come to a stop sign. (But that's another issue)

I looked in both directions twice and saw no cars, nor headlights approaching in either direction, so slowly began to pull ahead, and still I saw no lights coming through the underpass. I started to cross the road and suddenly a car came flying through the underpass at a minimum of 40MPH, but I'm thinking they were going maybe 50MPH, which isn't unusual, and blew through the stop sign, swerving onto the other side of the road to miss me by mere inches.

It happened so fast that I don't know how I managed to stop. If I hadn't caught that rapidly approaching glow from the corner of my eye and slammed on the brakes I'd have been broadsided at the driver's door and probably killed at the speed that car was traveling.

I must have a Guardian Angel with super fast reflexes...and for that I'm truly grateful! Still here today to continue with things I want to accomplish in my life!

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