How a real-life car crash gave me useful insights into characterisation

Warning: Please don’t try this at home!

Photo by Clark Van Der Beken on Unsplash

This is a true story. A few years ago, on my birthday, I was driving back home after a long hike in the Cotswolds. If you aren’t from the UK, the Cotswolds are a picturesque part of England, all rolling fields and thatched cottages, grazing sheep and squat churches nestled among graveyards (for the sake of full disclosure, this picture postcard image excludes the realities of deep rural poverty, poor broadband coverage, and mistrust of outsiders - but that’s a different story).  

I was nearly home, heading down a busy three-lane motorway outside Bristol, the sun low but still dazzling in the sky ahead, the ache of a long walk in my legs. There was a Friday evening grumpiness to the traffic, as people switched lanes and got too close to each other. Every driver looked more hunched, gripped the wheel more tightly, than usual. Nobody wanted to be held up, they wanted to be speeding away from where they had just come from, or much closer to where they were going.

Suddenly, there was a dazzle of red lights in front of me, as the driver of the car ahead braked hard and fast. But not hard and fast enough. The car ploughed into the back of another vehicle. It was the start of a chain reaction - I tried to stop in time, but skidded into the now stationery cars ahead. The car behind slammed into me. And the car behind that one did exactly the same. Five cars, a concertina of hot rubber, buckled metal, and shattered glass.