The Car Accident

Last night. My mother was driving the boys in her new little RAV-4 (she calls him Toby) and I was driving ahead. A car screamed around from a side street onto the road we were on right in front of me, over compensated the turn and slammed into the driver's side of my Mom's car. I think it took me about three seconds to pull the car over, run through the intersection, down the road, and grab my boys. Thankfully everyone was okay, physically. O! Thankfully!
Thank you for seatbelts that keep your family in place, and car seats that protect 2 year olds from the crushed in smashed in metal of a car door that has just been plowed in.
The man who hit them came to me, apologizing, reeling, reeking like a bar at 2am. This was 7:40 in the evening. Who is drunk at 7:40 pm? Who?
The first thing I asked was "Are you DRUNK?" Incredulous. I mean really, who the heck drives drunk anymore? Doesn't anybody watch public service announcements on TV? "Yes," he says. "I am. I'm stupid. I'm drunk. I hit your kids. I've never done this before. I'm so sorry."
I lost it. My husband, thank goodness for his calm attorney self, got his driver's license and address and info from all the people in his car and the car full of his friends behind him before they could make a plan or step out of shock. He got to them while they were still talking, still there. My mother wrote down license plates and my father in law called 911. I held my boys and this man's wrist and spoke obscenities to him and tried not to cry.
Thank you to the witness and his son in the truck behind, with the "coexist" sticker, trying to get their horse home from the fair, who stayed and stood witness and helped us make sense of what had happened.
Before the police got there he left. He got in his friend's hummer "to move the car" and drove away. No blood alcohol test, no DUI. Hit and Run isn't nearly as bad as a DUI, criminally, so I guess that was smart of him. Though it sort of negates his girlfriend and sister and their repeated testimony as to what a wonderful guy, what a nice guy he is. He left his 9 year old daughter sobbing in the car he'd just smashed into other people, and drove off in a hummer so he wouldn't get in trouble for DUI. Nice guy? Really?
What kind of a person even drives drunk with their child in the car? Nice guys do, I guess.
My 8 year old said today that he thought the feeling of being in the car accident would never leave him. Thanks a lot, nice guy. Thanks for the memories.