I’m a relatively safe driver, in fact I’ve never been in an accident until recently.  It was a finder binder and, thankfully, everyone was okay.  The SUV I ran into was perfectly fine while my car is pretty messed up awaiting the verdict of my insurance company.  Whose fault was it though?  Just because my car ran into the back of the other car, well that doesn’t necessarily mean I caused the accident does it?  As judge and jury of the web I’d like to ask you all to tell me who should receive the blame.

Please take your time to study exhibit A:

This is my phone, at the scene of the accident and in my hand until it flew to the dashboard.  I was in mid sentence talking with my roommate when I suddenly noticed the car in front of me had stopped.  I slammed on the breaks screaming expletives at the top of my lungs.  Seconds later my car hit with a sickening crunch and a poof of the airbag.  A stale sort of odor permeated around me from the release of the airbag.  I felt very shocked that such a thing would happen to me.  My first thoughts were, you have just been in a car accident. Well obviously.

Members of the jury you must understand, I was not the one to cause the accident.  I was talking with a friend and driving just like everyone else does, just like, I’m sure that you do.  Driving and talking on the phone is pretty much normal in America.  It says here that 8 out of 10 people agree with having some form of cell-phone usage while driving.  (It also says driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent, but we’ll ignore that.)

I’m a safe driver, I keep far enough away from the car in front of me, I play twitch-based shooter games which give me good reflexes.  If it weren’t for that cell phone I would have been paying attention to the road.  So I say we blame my accident on Verizon… Yeah I like that.

But we can’t only blame Verizon.  There are other culprits out there that we must take special note of.

Exhibit B:

This is a picture of the hitch that destroyed my car.  What was it doing back there?  The man who was driving only had junior high girls with him.  What was he doing with a hitch?  What was he going to pull?  If it had not been for the hitch then my car would have had less damage.  His big bad SUV would absorb some of the impact which would mean I would have to pay for the damage to his car as well as mine… on second thought lets ignore exhibit B.

Exhibit C:

You must understand, there was an ambulance on the road we were merging onto.  He was going the opposite direction on the other side of the road, yet the person in front of me thought it was the right thing to do and stop for it.  I was too busy talking on the phone to pay attention (thanks a lot Verizon).  I did see the ambulance, but since he was going the opposite direction and on the opposite side of the road I thought it would be okay for me to keep merging.  This is when I noticed the car in front of me had stopped.

So um, I don’t know, perhaps the ambulance shouldn’t have so may flashing lights or something… it was distracting and very loud.  I couldn’t even hear my friend on the phone over the sirens.

But what about the person in the ambulance that got hurt, or the road for being um… frustrating to drive on, or my friend for inviting me over to his house, or… my mother for birthing me to have this finder bender twenty-eight years later.

So what’s the verdict?  Whose fault was it?

I’ll tell you something else, a few days later while in my rental car, I caught my hand hovering over the cell phone ready to call someone.  Then I remembered the accident and put it back on the wheel.  What did I do after that?

I drove my car.