Nearly killed by a school bus this morning - Skype Phone Saves My Life

1999-volvo-v70.jpgI was driving to work in my Volvo V70 XC (XC=Cross Country) which has all-wheel-drive and Blizzak snow tires when I approached a T intersection where I had to make a right-hand turn. Now normally a Volvo with AWD and Blizzak snow tires can cut through any amount of snow with no problem. I've driven it through blizzards, so I know.

In fact, there was some light snow on the roads in my neighborhood, but once I got to the main roads, they were completely dry. The road I was on is also well-traveled and appeared dry in most places and wet in others. I didn't realize the "wet" spots I saw weren't wet at all, but were black ice.

school-bus-crash.jpgI tried to stop at the T intersection, my car's ABS kicked in and the car wouldn't stop. I quickly spun my head to my left to see if I was about to cut someone off. I saw a yellow school bus bearing down on me. I decided to go over to the opposite lane, figuring I'd rather get hit by anything else but a 7 ton bus. I hadn't had time to turn my head to the right to see if there was a car coming from that direction. I had other things on my mind - like a big yellow bus headed straight at me!

Not knowing if there was a car coming from that direction and although ABS was still kicking in, I quickly turned the wheel to the right just in case I could slip in between and be riding the center of the lane - hoping if there was indeed a car coming from the opposite direction, it could ride the shoulder a bit to avoid hitting me. It worked! My car did indeed finally grip and take the center lane. Fortunately, there wasn't another car coming from the opposite direction, so I gunned the gas and rode illegally in the left lane for about 30 ft, just to be sure I wasn't going to get rear-ended by the bus, and then got back into the right lane.

I felt bad for the bus driver who obviously had to brake hard. The bus driver probably thought I was a lunatic for taking the turn without stopping. But I honestly wasn't going fast. I was slowing for the stop sign, but just couldn't stop. Although the bus driver probably saw it was an "out of control" action and I did fishtail a bit - so probably deduced it was black ice.

ipevo-wi-fi-phone-skype2.jpg Wow, another 1-2s later and I was a goner.  There was also a line of cars behind the bus, so even if I avoided the bus, other cars would have hit me and there was an SUV just ahead of the bus. So basically, I was able to slip in-between the gap between the SUV and the bus. What if my wife didn't remind me to take the IPEVO Skype phone to work, which I had forgotten in the bedroom? I actually had to walk back down the hallway to get it.

The mere act of taking the IPEVO Skype phone home last night to test may just have saved my life. Thank you IPEVO & thank you Skype! They say Skype is a cost saver - well now Skype's a life saver!
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4 Comments

Sincerely glad to hear the good news! Be careful with those black ice. I was a victim of the hard to see danger once, on a motorbike!
Indeed Thanks Skype! and IPEVO

Luckily you are safe. I can't imagine if you leave the IPEVO Skype phone at your home. It really helped your life.

errr...

So your wife did remind you to take the skype phone and that's why you arrived so late to the T intersection... just when the school bus was near.

If you had left the phone at work the previous day, you should have arrived to the intersection much before than the school bus, so It sounds to me more like "Skype phone almost kills me" :-)

I know you're joking, but... the hallway cost me about 4-6s since I was halfway down it when my wife reminded me. A little later and I would have either T-boned the bus or would have been after the bus and hit by one of the stream of cars that inevitably get stuck behind a bus that makes frequent stops. And had I left earlier, like I said, there was an SUV in front of the bus that passed the intersection before I did. So it could have been the SUV that T-boned me instead of the bus. There was other cars in front of the SUV, but further up at a stop light. Hard to say if any of those would have hit me. It's a very busy road.

Point being, I may have had an uncontrolled turn along with an adrenaline rush and my heart beating faster, but I survived intact. Who knows what 4-6s in either direction (sooner or later) would have done? The Skype phone saved me life, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!wink

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