The view of an accident takes on a different perspective from the front line. You know the front line I’m talking about – it’s the place you’re in when you’re the first car in a line waiting for an intersection signal light to change.
When you’re in that position and an accident happens in the intersection, not only do you get a front-row seat to the demolition, there’s always that part of you that wonders if someone will spin out of control and make you a part of it.
Last week, on my way to our Brandon office just before nine o’clock in the morning, I was in the left-hand turn lane, facing east at the Bloomingdale-Providence intersection when two vans collided about 20 feet from me.
A white work van came off Providence Road at just the same time a red newer-model van hit the intersection headed west on Bloomingdale Avenue.
The white van moved through at the end of a long line of cars that had just passed through the intersection, so I assume his signal had been green and just turned either yellow, or red.
The red van was just leaving the starting gate after the green light came on. Yes, it was her turn, but I’m sure in retrospect the driver of that van would have gladly given up those first few seconds after the light changed to alter the outcome of the event, which was – of course – a collision.
Now I’ve seen plenty of accidents, but something about being pinned in that helpless position at the front of the line, watching the event unfold, gave me a different view.
The white van plowed into the passenger side of the red van – smack – and parts flew everywhere. The next thing I knew a woman jumped out of the red van and pulled open the back doors and was unloading children in the middle of the road.
As the light changed, I had to move through the wreckage to get out of the way of others roaring behind me, but saw over my shoulder that the man in the white van was helping the woman get the children out of the road and had a cell phone to his ear, so I assumed he was calling for help.
I’m telling this story because I know these accidents are happening around us every day. And some, like the one I witnessed, could be avoided with just a moments’ delay.
With our traffic jams, driver’s tempers overheat even faster than their cars and people often stomp on the gas the second they get the chance. In this case, it was before they observed what was going on around them and that caused an accident.
So be careful out there. Traffic around here is really a mess.

If the shoe fits ...
Tod McGinley wrote me an interesting letter this week about a theory he has about some of the accidents he’s seen. One type of accident in particular – where a driver goes through a store window.
It seems he’s seen several of these lately, all with senior drivers behind the wheel, in or around Sun City Center. When our office was in Sun City Center Plaza, I saw several of them, too.
“Usually the person says their accelerator stuck and they lost control,” McGinley said. “But I have always suspected what actually happened is that their foot slipped off the brake and over to the gas pedal.” Armed with this theory, Tod began to ponder how this could happen.
“In thinking about what could cause this, I focused on the possibility the soles of their shoes were slippery, or newly purchased and the driver just doesn’t have the ‘feel’ they should have.”
Tod admits this has happened to him while wearing men’s dress shoes with leather soles. “I was fortunate enough to avoid landing with my foot on the accelerator,” he said. “But it might be a good thing to tell readers about so they can get a real ‘feel’ for any new footwear they are wearing before they get behind the wheel.”
So let’s all take Tod’s advice and check the tread on our feet as well as the tread on our tires and we might be able to avoid coming face-to-face with a store window, or worse.
u Send your questions and concerns to me at 3036 College Ave., Ruskin, FL 33570 or e-mail them to .

Penny Fletcher is the editor of The Sun and the South Shore News.