CRASH!!! Why I'm shaken AND stirred.

I had a crash with a big lorry. or better said, the big lorry crash into me.

There's one intensive course that I'm teaching in San Lorec Savall, a little village up in the mountains, around 45 minutes from home and bang on in the middle of the national park of the same name. The road is very bendy and goes through a national park, a very beautiful pine forest where we go for walks on Sundays. I took the job despite the distance because they're paying me twice as much as other classes and it was schedule to last only until the 10th of October.

I didn't like the bendy and small road with heavy traffic and I always drove extra carefully there as visibility is not great and there's many big lorries that takes up more than their fair share of the road.
I was counting the days to finish this course.

Yesterday I was going back home after I finished the class, driving carefully and slowly as usual on a very clear and lovely day. All of a sudden, as I was approaching a hairpin bend a lorry appeared and I stopped quite close but with a good meter or so between us. I put the handbrake and the reverse gear and when I was actually looking over my shoulder to reverse to give the lorry a wider berth... he just went into second gear and I heard the horrible scratch of metal against metal and left the car move while the big shadow of the lorry invaded my space.
My reaction was to press the horn and only then the lorry driver stopped, when it was few inches from my actual nose.
Once he stopped I was able to go in reverse and take myself out of it grips.

My neck was hurting badly and as the lorry went ahead and parked a bit far away I just sat there in the car in total shock.

Somebody came and opened the door, helped me out and asked if I was ok. Many other cars were there too and it felts as if everybody was shouting at the lorry driver who came down to check that I was ok, speaking total gibberish (the lorry driver did although probably I was doing it too)
I tried to talk to him but he didn't know Spanish, not English or French or Italian or even Romanian!! (I know a few words on that language and as he was Eastern European looking I thought that it was a good chance that he was from there). He couldn't (or wanted) to speak any known language. (bloody globalization!).

While I was trying to put myself together and call the police, take his papers or whatever, he just turned, got calmy into his lorry and drove away!! I was dumbfounded! People around me were outraged and screaming at him but there was nothing we could do. He just left.
It just happened that I had my mobile on my hand so I took a picture of the lorry before it disappeared. Then I realised that there was no coverage there and mobiles weren't working, so a gentleman told me that he was just behind the lorry and saw everything and he gave me his car an case I needed a witness of the accident and told me that he'd go ahead and call the police as soon as his phone started to work.

Just by chance a van with park rangers were passing by and they stopped and help, so when they realised that the guy was going away, they used their radios to call for another rangers to stop the lorry in the next petrol station and they called the police. They managed to describe the lorry thanks to my phone picture.

One of the rangers stayed with me and helped me to place the triangles on their place and he diverted the traffic. He said that I shouldn't move the car until the police has a chance to see it, even tough it was in a very bad place. So we spend the next 40 minutes diverting the cars and telling people that help was on its way. Every car that passed us stopped to stare, but one in every 4 was kind enough to ask if I needed something.

After a while I really wanted to call "the husband" so I started to move around the place trying to catch some phone signal. Finally I half climb a pine and was able to call, but "the husband" went off to have lunch and left his mobile on his office! Typical!!
I left him a very dramatic message, something along the lines of " a lorry just crushed me, call me", and went back to sit next to the car. Then I though than after listening to that message "the husband" could panic and call me, get no answer and call my dad and scare the hell out of him. So i half climb the pine and called my dad.
-"I'm all right" was the first thing I said, rather stupidly and rather out of breath after the climbing.
He took a deep breath and cautiously said: "ok.. .then... what happened?"
I explained the situation and asked him to call "the husband" and ask what needed to be done regarding the insurance.

The local police, the mossos de escuadra, arrived 45 minutes after the crash when I was fed up of waiting. In the meanwhile, the ranger was told that the the other rangers did manage to stop the lorry but couldn't understand him and that apparently he didn't have a driving license or any personal papers.
The mossos took a good look at the scene of the accident, the road, searched for marks on the roads, check my car and asked me questions about what has happened, they did ask me to get all my papers ready and to go with them o the petrol station where the lorry was.

The lorry was waiting with the rangers van in a petrol station around 10km from us. I arrived followed by the 2 police bikes and they went straight to talk with him. When the driver saw me he made a beeline towards me and started talking rather agitatedly in whatever language he used. The police took him away firmly to talk to him while I gather my papers.
After a while the police came back and told me that when the driver realised that they were the police and not the park rangers, he immediately produced a valid driver licence, insurance and he has even able to communicate ok enough; plus said that he didn't mean to run away, only to park a bit further in a safer place. (yeah, sure!)

That's the power authority has over citizen of the former Soviet Union.

The driver even described the same events that I did plus he added that he invaded my space and draw a little picture showing what happened adding that it was his fault. So the police filled an "amicable accident agreement" form, we added our personal details, insurances and so forth and we all signed in agreement.

Then the lorry driver was very happy to go his way and he managed to convey that we all should visit his country and take the water there in Budapest. Then I realised that he was Hungarian! That's why I couldn't even guest which language was he speaking. I thought that I was in shock. But the Hungarian language is one of only two languages in Europe without any Latin roots (the other is Euskera, the language of the Basque country), all other European languages belongs to the so called IndoEuropean languages and at least I'm able to identify them. Well...

Then I called the, by then rather worried, "husband" and explained the situation and said that I was going home to take a shower.

The car has several rather worrying looking scratch in the front left all the way from the front light to the back door, but it was working fine, (except for a bit of noise when I take corners). So I was able to drive myself home where my dad was waiting and he looked quite relieved as he didn't totally believe me when I said I was fine.

I'm going to add the pictures that I took with mobile phone as soon as possible.

Then it was time to call the insurance company. They took all my details and asked me to fax or e-mailed the form that we both signed with the police reference number. Then we have to take the car to the local office so they can assess the damage and the, with a bit of luck, their insurance company will pay for the repairs. The problem is that it's a foreign lorry, although the insurance is Alliance which are a pan-European company... so let's see.

From now on I'm going to my classes in a rather poorly looking car and I'm not able to take Patxi to his rugby training sessions on Tuesdays because they're in the evenings and my lights are not working properly. At least I'm able to keep on earning a living!

Let's hope that Alliance will sort out everything fast and we can take the car to a garage as soon as possible or the car will deteriorate even further and I don't really know if is legal to go around without my lights working. Keep your fingers cross!!