Thankfully yours.

[DCrom]

Dale, I've very glad to hear that she's OK.

I hope, for all your sakes, this leaves her is properly cautious but still able to drive when necessary. One of our best friends' boys totaled their minivan just after he graduated from high school. He got out unhurt (and didn't hurt anyone else), but it left him terrified of driving - 10 years later, and he still won't drive. Before the accident, he was - if anything - a bit of a lead foot.

Kids and cars scare *me*. Now that she's nearly out of college, I've began to worry a bit less about our older girl, but I still have *lots* of white hairs that appeared about the time she was learning to drive. Even though she was one of the most careful teens I've known. Funny, that. Now our youngest is due to take drivers ed over the summer. I anticipate all-white hair, a massive bald spot, or both showing up soon thereafter . . .

Unfortunately, since we live in town there's no way for them to learn the way I did on the ranch - by the time I was old enough for driver's ed I had already had several years practice driving a 1943 John Deere tractor. With, usually, a harrow or fertilizer spreader hooked on the back. And the first car they let me drive was a poison green AMC Gremlin. For some reason, my folks never worried about me speeding - for that matter, I didn't want to even be *seen* near the Gremlin

[Tikva]

Phew. Thank God everyone's okay. It seems like a miracle seeing what the car looks like now.

I hope she'll have no problems to start driving again. About ten years ago, a short time before my first driving lesson, my mum had a car crash with my sister and me in the car. It wasn't her fault, no one was hurt and we all thought we were okay. But until today, I often realize this tiny moment of fear - just mere seconds - when a car comes closer to a street to my right relatively fast. While at first I really had to concentrate to not steer the car subconsiously closer to the midline of the street, I'm now doing fairly well, often predicting my reaction and actively telling myself not to do that.

Talk to her when she wants to be driving again if she'd feel safer if someone else was riding with her for the first few times.

Best wishes, Tikva

[anniemcu]

So glad she's safe. I imagine she's a bit shaken though. Hard to go through one of those without a few attacks of the heebeejeebees.