Whoa.

I’m just sitting here watching random people bake cakes on t.v. (it must be cake-baking day on PBS’s Create channel here), when I hear tires screeching. We hear this a lot since we live on a very busy intersection in town and never in the two years that we’ve lived here have we heard what sometimes comes after:

CRASH!

This time I did. In fact, I heard two metallic crashes, so I ran to the window and looked out. A huge fir tree stands on the corner of our building, so I could see nothing of the crash, but I inadvertently witnessed the “run” part of a hit-and-run accident. A smallish car with the passenger side front smashed all to hell squealed its tires again and peeled out, across three lanes of traffic, roaring off past our apartment and dropping pieces of itself here and there.

I rush into our office and tell Neal I’m going to make sure everyone’s okay (I know the person didn’t hit a tree from the sound), so we don shoes and jackets and head off down the hill of our driveway. About halfway down, I see a white SUV on its top in the parking lot of gas station on the corner and hear the sounds of sirens coming nearer. I’ll admit, this freaks me out, and I run the rest of the way down the hill and ask the first person I saw if everyone was okay. She was apparently the person on duty in the gas station, and she let me know everyone was fine. How, I don’t know, but I’m so glad.

The owner of the SUV (not the driver, however) came up to us and said, “That’s my car. He just called me and told me what happened!” He was amazed the side airbags didn’t deploy, but I was amazed that no one was hurt after looking at the SUV (seatbelts, seatbelts, seatbelts!) I overheard the driver talking to the cops: “The next thing I knew I was upside down in the car, hanging by the damn seatbelt.”

Another cop car drove up to the scene and almost immediately took off in the direction of the runaway driver (apparently a lady). It’ll be pretty easy to spot her with half of the front end of her car up about two extra feet in the air.

I hope they catch her, but if they do so tonight, my bet is that she’ll be completely drunk. What is wrong with people?