I was coming home from work, I-20, rush hour traffic, 5:30pm, the highway just narrowed from 4 lanes to 3 lanes,  I'm inow n the middle lane of a 3 lane higway. The, left lane is about to end in one mile, cars are in the left lane and wait till the last minute to get over into the middle lane. The cars in left lane start to merge with cars in middle lane and its now quickely a 2 lane highway, and I'm in the left lane, and the left lane just got crowded real quick,  I see the cars ahead of me hitting thier brakes, I see brake lights come on,  I had a safe distance between me and the car in front of me until they started to merge, and then my comfort gap got smaller, so i hit the brakes, and the gap got smaller still, and i pressed a little harder on the brakes, and the car just went to the left, onto the shoulder,  and I lost control of it, and went into a concrete guardrail, nose first, air bag deployed, my eyeglasses were knocked off my face, windshield cracked, head hit rear view mirror and knocked it off, smoke everywhere inside the car, , and then the car ended up back into the passing lane facing forward, cars swerving behind me and to the right of me, trying to avoid hitting me, I start to panic,  I'm shaking,  my eyeglasses got knocked off my face from the air bag, I can't see a thing without my eyeglasses. I'm trying to turn the engine off because i smell smoke, it wouldnt turn off, i then unbuckled my seatbelt, then realized the car was in drive, so i put it in park, and then i was able to turn the key to the off position. i tried opening the driver door but it would not open, i then jumped over into the passenger seat, and tried that door, and i was able to open that door and get out, avoiding the cars that were trying to go around me. I went to the shoulder area, the girl who was in the car behind me and pulled over  and helped me.  She called 911, she got my phone out of my car and called my wife, she kept saying "God was with you today" , she couldn't believe i was standing there relatively not hurt. She said she thought the car was going to flip over the guard rail onto oncoming traffic. She told me she was from Texas originally, and asked me where I'm from since I had an accent. More people got out of their cars to help me. Even people who were coming from the opposite direction.  EMS came, looked me over, asked me questions, all unbelievable to see that I as alive. I am extremely thankful that no other people or cars were involved in this accident.  I'm so thankful for that. I really don't know what happened or why the car did that. The girl said that it seemed to her that  I over compensated and hit the brakes too hard when cars in front of me were hitting thier brake.  SCDOT came, the state police came and took a statement. They didn't give me a ticket, but they did give me a document stating that I was responsible for the accident.

Car is totalled. I have mixed emotions right now. I'm angry, i'm depressed, I'm thankful to be alive, I'm confused as to what they heck just happened and why, it all happened so darn fast,  I was driving straight, hitting the brake, and the next minute i'm into a concrete barrier.

Last edited by MarkinSC (8/22/2014 7:36 PM)