Well, my worst fear regarding my wife’s driving has been realized: she had a serious wreck Nov. 30th.

Our county maintenance people had tree-cutting equipment parked on a country road (which has a 55 mph speed limit) without road signs. What’s worse is that they were parked on the crest of a hill, just after a deep valley. As my wife crested the hill, there they were and WHAM; right into the chipper she went.

Fortunately nobody was around the chipper she ran into. There was a person in the cab of the truck that the chipper was attached to. He felt a thud and ran out to see what the matter was. He found my wife’s car and his chipper in a serious embrace, not to mention that my wife’s car was on fire.

My wife sustained a broken and dislocated right ankle, multiple mega-bruises and cuts on her arms, but that’s about it. One of the workers debated on removing her from the wreckage, but the wiser of the bunch decided that pulling her out was less of a risk, seeing how the engine was burning.

All the workers were amazed at the presence of mind my wife had and the peaceful state she was in considering her circumstances. When the workers arrived, my wife informed them about her broken ankle and that she could not open either front door. The workers were able to open the rear driver-side door and then put the seat back in full recline position to ease her extraction. She was put in an ambulance and sent to our local hospital and then onto a metro area trauma center in our state for surgery. She’s on the road to recovery and as of this writing, almost all of the bruises are gone and all that is left is a cast on her right leg.

I wrote all of that to emphasize the benefits of the airbag system in the Buick LeSabre she was driving. Simply put: my wife’s face was hardly bruised at all. She had one bruise from hitting the top frame of the windshield, but her face was untouched! She remembers the bags exploding upon impact and how fast they opened up. I’m here to report that if those bags had not opened up, my wife would have definitely sustained more head injuries than she did. I’ve seen first hand what a person looks like after a similar wreck without the airbag installed: his head was so big, he looked like an alien being and his face was so swollen from the impact with the windshield that he looked like he had gone twelve rounds with Mohammad Ali and lost every one. I thought that my wife was at least going to have a black eye, by the initial look of her, but nope! Not even that.

The airbag system, coupled with the seat restrains, has definitely reduced the injuries from car wrecks. Even the E.R. personnel will validate that statement. We are fortunate to live in a time where thinkers are making the cars safer and safer. However, I do tend to believe that my wife has a guardian angel that’s also pretty banged up as well.

Craig