Posted On: January 26, 2005, 2:37 pm CST

Posted By: Andrew

Just over 2 years ago, I was struck by someone who blew a red light. I was heading north and the light had been green for some time. There were cars stopped in the right hand lane of this 4 lane road, and the kid blew the light in the left lane. I looked both ways twice. Because of the stopped vehicles, I did not see that this guy was going to blow a red light.

He was not injured, but the fire department had to cut me out of the car, and transport my thankfully unconscious body to the hospital where I spent the next week. I had several broken ribs, a punctured and collapsed lung, a broken pelvis, a damaged left knee, a bruised kidney, and a bruise on the left side of my brain that almost required drilling. I've had to go through surgery too which meant several months of recovery both at the time of the accident and one year later. The kid was driving a bigger vehicle, an SUV, and he got to go home undamaged.

To those of you that are talking about looking both ways, that doesn't always solve things. I remember that day crystal clear until the moment of impact and I remember looking both ways. If you make that kind of ignorant comment about victims, you must be blowing lights every once and a while. I don't hate the kid that hit me, but I do hate ignorant perceptions about the severe consequences of blowing traffic lights.