Our Little Car Incident

For Christmas, we went up to Alta in Norway to visit Linda's grandparents. It's a lovely place, away from the hussle and bussle of modern life and it really calmed us down at the end of the year.

There's an airplane service that runs between Oslo Airport and Alta Airport, so that's what we used. This meant that we drove from Oslo back to our place - a three-and-a-half hour drive. We came back on the 28th, later than planned because Oslo had had "snow chaos" - it's been snowing a lot here in Scandinavia. We had to shovel our car out of its car park place too. Here's a picture of it:

So, as you can see, it took us a little while to dig it out!

Anyway, driving conditions on the way back weren't particularly good - fog meant poor visibility for some patches - and Linda decided to drive, taking it nice and easy.

We had just got to Uddevalla when all of a sudden, the back of the car skidded sideways a little - we had obviously hit a patch of black ice because there was no indication of ice on the road - snow, yes; but there were tracks made by the volume of vehicles that we were following. Linda tried to counter the skid - not TOO much because that wouldn't have helped - and the car almost got back to where it should have been. However, it decided to "overskid" and started sliding the other way, with the car dangerously pointing towards the central crash barriers. So, Linda steered the other way. This time, the car just skidded to point towards the outer edge, but too much.

Before we knew exactly what was going on, we were skidding down the road sideways, with no grip on the road. Linda and I briefly looked at each other with that "Uh-Oh" look on our faces. Then the front of the car hit a clump of snow that was piled up on the side of the road.

We didn't so much "roll" as "bounce" onto the roof. Both Linda and I had our eyes closed at this point, thinking that we were going to be terribly injured or worse. I recall also shouting out some sort of gutteral moan as well; a noise my distant Neanderthal cousin would have made when being attacked by a woolly mammoth, let's say.

The car skidded on the roof for what felt like 10 meters, although I can't be sure, as time seems to expand in this sort of situation. Then we hit another big clump of snow and we slowly rolled again, this time righting ourselves onto the wheels. The car skidded for another 10 meters or so, dug itself into the snow and stopped.

There was a couple seconds of silence, then we both opened our eyes. We were alive! For some reason we had survived an 80km/h skid-and-roll. The car was in the ditch at the side of the road, facing the opposite way. Linda and I asked each other if we were OK, which we seemed to be. Then, because we had seen too many car crashes in Hollywood movies, we needed to get out of the car because petrol might be leaking and the car might blow up - even in temperatures of -8C (which it was).

At this point a trio of lads showed up. They had seen the incident while driving on the other side of the road, and stopped and ran over to see if we were OK. One of the lads phoned the emergency services, while I was comforting Linda who was obviously distraught at this point. The ambulances turned up within 15 minutes and they immediately put neck braces on us, just in case. We went in separate ambulances and turned up at Uddevalla hospital a little later.

Everyone there was so kind, calm and professional and we were feeling quite calm. We both had X-Rays taken and, after a couple of hours, the doctor said that, apart from a couple of bumps and bruises, we were miraculously fine and he discharged us. Linda's sister and her boyfriend picked us up and took us home. The accident happened at 21:00 and we were home for 01:30.

For what happened - or what could have happened - we were both incredibly lucky and we've been filled with a sense of euphoria for the past few days. Linda "confronted her demons" a couple days back too - we hired a car and she got straight back into the driver's seat and she was fine. I was fine as a passenger too, and I drove just to make sure I was OK with that.

So, that's what we've been up to! Below is a YouTube video of the car after the crash, and where it happened.