I had my first ever experience being rear-ended earlier this year — a rear-ending of the car accident variety, not that other kind. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter, and I’m sure some might like nothing better than being rear-ended by an 18-year old blonde, though I personally would prefer not to be, regardless of the variety of rear-ending. The 18-year old blonde in this case was a dopey guy who had just gotten his license, and perhaps much like in that other kind of rear-ending, I didn’t see him coming…

He was driving a black 4WD. While it might have been my first rear-ending, it was actually the second time a 4WD has crashed into me, and both times I was stationary at an intersection. It makes me wonder if there are any competent drivers of 4-wheel-drives out there? Or is there some grand conspiracy of 4WD owners secretly gunning for me?

In this case, it was late at night, and I was waiting to turn left onto a busy main road from a side street near a shopping center. At first I thought my car had backfired. There was a bang, my car shuddered, but didn’t move much, as I had my foot on the brake. Just as well it didn’t jump forward, as even at 10 PM there was a fair bit of traffic on the road I was waiting to turn into. It took me a moment to realised someone had just slammed into the back of me.

Wonderful.

I turned off the engine, put the hazards on, and got out to see the damage.

A black 4WD was behind me, engine still on, headlights illuminating the young, dopey looking guy with bleached blonde hair pacing uncomfortably in front of it — the driver, I assumed.

"You alright?" he asked.

"I’m OK," I told him, as I sized up the damage to my car. There was a huge dent in the bumper, on the right. Fortunately, from the outside it seemed the damage was confined to the one rear panel. It could be uglier underneath, but there didn’t appear to be anything leaking, and the electric radio antennae mounted near the damaged area was still working, which indicated the wiring was probably OK. Just as well, as I had just had the thing replaced.

"So what do we do now?" asks blonde-guy. "I don’t know what to do. I just got my license today."

Great. So I’m a victim of youthful inexperience.

As a member of Generation X, I don’t feel overly old (yet), except in momnents like this when I can’t ignore acts of stupidity perpertrated by Generation Y. It’s probably doesn’t help that I’ve lived next door to a family of loudmouth ferals, and over the years couldn’t help but overhear the constant screaming — outside my bedroom window — of their feral kids as they matured from young ferals to teenage ferals to noisy-Commodore-driving-ferals with lots of noisy feral Commodore-driving friends going through that feral right of passage involving hooning around in their Commodores with loud stereos and even louder engines.

"We swap details then let the insurance companies sort things out," I told him. "You’ve got insurance, haven’t you?"

"I have no idea. It’s not my car. It’s my Mum’s car."

This just keeps getting better and better.

I took some photos of "his Mum’s car" with my mobile phone camera, making sure to get a clear picture of the number plate in at least one. I’m sure his Mum would be pleased to find out there was little damage to her car. A young brunette girl with a vacuous and slightly perturbed look in her eyes was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, staring at me the whole time — a girlfriend, I assumed. Not sure what to make of that look. Was she surprised by how calmly I was taking the whole thing? Was she expecting more outward anger or frustration in this kind of situation? Or does she just look mildly perturbed about everything? Is that her default way of dealing with life’s tribulations?

I got the young idiot’s details, gave him mine, told him I’d be in touch.

There a few things that annoyed (not to mention perturbed) me about this whole thing, not the least of which it happened during what turned out to be a busy few weeks for me, and the last thing I needed was the hassle of getting my car fixed. But I suppose I should be grateful that at least my car was still drive-able.

This is one of those annoyingly random incidents that almost didn’t happen. I was on my way home, and decided on a whim to stop at the shopping centre. I wasn’t planning to, and had no urgent reason to do so, and if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been at that particular intersection at that particular time, and so none of this would have happened.

But of course, it was a stupid and completely avoidable accident — it shouldn’t have happened anyway. And it raises the question of what would have happened if I hadn’t been there at that time? I was stationary at a reasonably well lit intersection. I really don’t know what the young idiot was thinking. He could obviously see my car there, as well as the traffic on the road I was waiting to turn into. Was it simply inattention? A misjudgement of stopping distance? Or was he not planning on stopping at all? Just jumping out into oncoming traffic? Perhaps if my car hadn’t been in the way he would have careened out onto the main road without checking for oncoming traffic, most likely straight into an oncoming bus, killing him and his preternaturally perturbed girlfriend in a Darwinian clusterfuck of twisted metal, exterminating his driving-impaired genes, and those of the perturbed looking girl, who I suspect would literally have had no idea what hit her.

But instead he just fucked up my bumper.

I possibly saved his life by being at that particular intersection at that particular time, and as a result he and his dodgy genes will survive to drive his Mum’s car another day. And because he is young, his best breeding years still ahead of him, he will most likely live to procreate, perhaps with the perturbed looking girl, creating genetically inferior offspring that will go through life looking unusually confused, and won’t be able to drive for shit.

The human race is doomed I tells ya, doomed.