Last Thursday, I was heading home after meeting up with some friends. It was a bit after dark when a driver’s worst nightmare happened to me; someone simply threw himself towards my car.
The good thing is, I was prepared 🙂 yes, as I was driving towards the place of the incident, I saw the young man, who appeared to be in his thirties, running into the street. I sensed trouble upon seeing him, and so I slowed down -knowing that I was on a main street where cars don’t exactly go slow if you know what I mean-. I kept on going slowly towards my destination hoping that this guy would stop upon seeing all of these cars and maybe cross the street from another spot where pedestrians are actually allowed, but I guess I didn’t share that kind of thinking with him; he kept on running, and was not able to properly work his human braks and stop upon arriving right next to my car. By the time I arrived where he was running, my car was so slow it had almost stopped, but he just kept on running, hit the side mirror real hard and headed towards the back of the car to find his way through the rest of the cars to make it to his destination; the other side of the street (or maybe the other side of life?!! considering how he was running between the cars :S .)
Of course, when I heard the sound of the man’s arm hitting the side mirror, I just stopped there, and started screaming that I ran over the guy, not properly processing the fact that practically, HE was the one who hit my car, and RAN… It took me a couple of seconds (which felt like LONG HOURS) to figure out what happened, and only then I turned my head around to see that he was running still to the opposite side of the street.
I drove on afterwards, thinking to myself, what if I ran over the guy for real? The only thing I could think of at the time was the fact that the Jordanian streets’ law always blames the driver rather than the pedestrian for accidents, NO MATTER WHAT, even if it was proved that the pedestrian willingly threw him/herself in front of the driver’s car… well, experiencing what I have experienced that night, I have to say: THIS LAW NEEDS TO CHANGE… NOW…
Until we blame the correct people when accidents happen, we will keep on suffering from high rates of accidents in Jordan…
