A Close Call and a New Perspective...

Friday night (July 21), 11:30 pm or so, I was driving to Erin's, in her car, with her in the passenger seat, when I came over a hill and there were a bunch of raccoons having a convention in the middle of the road.  I saw them at the last second (since they were just over a hill and they aren't the tallest creatures in the world), and didn't have time to stop, so I swerved onto the gravel shoulder.  Had the shoulder been paved, we would've been fine, but since it was gravel, the back end of Erin's wagon (loaded up with dog food, cat food, litter, a TV, and 2 boxes of empty wine bottles--and no I hadn't just emptied them) slid sideways, thus lauching the car out onto the road at a bad angle, heading into the oncoming lane, so I oversteered to the right to get out of the oncoming traffic lane, and went head first into the ditch at 80km/h.  After impact, the car did a 540 in the air and came to "rest" in the ditch.  Luckily, we both walked away.  I was completely ok (not even seatbelt bruises), which I attribute to the death-grip I had on the steering wheel (a slightly sore neck the next day, but that's all).  Erin was pretty banged up, but nothing broken, just a lot of deep bruises (I hear ribs banging against each other will do that!), and she's almost back to normal now.  But how the car didn't roll I'll never figure out.  How we went into the ditch just after a telephone pole and came to rest just before the next one I'll never figure out.  How the ditch happened to be flooded at that point, thus making the ground soft and muddy, I'll never figure out.  One thing I did figure out is that next time, there'll be some raccoon carnage...I'd always told myself that I'd rather ditch the car rather than hit an animal (or 3 or 5), but now I realize that I could never live with having seriously hurt Erin, and had to tell her mother that she was f'd up because I didn't want to hit a raccoon.  Rest assured that I won't make the same mistake twice.  Here's hoping it's not a moose next time !