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A hundred things happened in a minute. I didn’t know how to react.
And then it was over, and my day would inevitably be different.
Driving in Jerusalem
I was driving my daughter to school in the morning. I don’t like driving in Jerusalem. There’s never a moment to breath. You need to be focused on everything at all times, and there’s constant threats to your safety and to that of others. People drive and walk around without a care in the world, so one small slip up and disaster will follow.
Plus the classic anti-friar mentality forces everyone to always be looking out for themselves. They’ll cut you off just to get ahead. Pull in front of you when you have the right of way. Inch their vehicle right out into traffic to try to take advantage of the perceived weakness and slowness of advancing cars.
So you have to be on constantly.
My Car Nightmare
As we drove down an unnecessarily thin two-way street, I saw a car backing out into traffic right in front of me. I gave a little honk and the car stopped. All was well in the world… for a quick moment.
But then as I was sitting waiting for cars to move forward, I felt a violent jolt. My car was hit from the side, my back started welling up with pain, unclear if it was from the hit or from a concentrated moment of stress.
And over the course of the next 30-60 seconds so many things happened, and it was all a dramatic, intense blur to me.
I shouted in agitation, and immediately checked to make sure my daughter was OK. She was, perhaps, a bit confused, but otherwise rather calm. Far calmer than I was.
What Should Happen vs What Happened
Now I know what one is supposed to do at those moments. You stop your vehicle, take pictures of any damage, exchange information with the other driver, file a police report if necessary, and after about 20-30 minutes, you move on with your day. You determine how much damage your car has. You figure out if you’re injured in any way. And if something needs to be taken care of, you address all the issues. And, of course, even if the other driver is a perfectly decent and reasonable person, in your heart you’re quite aware that what’s coming next could be time-consuming and unpleasant.
But my thoughts were racing.
There was no obvious place to stop my car. The average Israeli seems perfectly fine with just stopping where they are, blocking traffic, and making dozens if not hundreds of people miserable for the next twenty minutes. This is not something I’m yet comfortable with, even if it’s the right thing to do.
It was my daughter’s second or third day of school, at a new school. She had expressed earlier how important it was for her not to be late. And even though she didn’t say a word at the time, I was concerned I was going to stall everything and cause her day to be much harder.
To make things more overwhelming, a cab driver was passing me, yelling at me. Ultimately they were trying to be helpful. They wanted me to stop and deal with everything happening. But their intensity just put my confusion on hyperdrive.
And so I did what I did.
I drove on.
Judging Myself
I’m not at all proud of my final in-the-moment decision. But it’s the one I made. And it’s hard to really judge in hindsight a decision made with fifty variables with less than thirty seconds to decide.
Nevertheless, I’m judging myself. And I think I handled it all wrong.
A few blocks later, I stopped my car and got out to check. A couple of pieces were out of place and easily popped back in, but it’s didn’t look like there was any proper damage. It’s been some time now and it continues to drive great, so there was no real damage. My back is still bugging me a little, but that really could be from anything. Maybe it was exacerbated by getting hit, but it’s not necessarily the case. And it would be entirely improvable. And it’s basically irrelevant anyway, since Israel has socialized medicine.
So overall, the moment is over. My daughter’s fine, I’m fine, and the car’s fine.
But I’m not really fine.
I’m annoyed at myself. I’m annoyed that I didn’t stop the car right in the spot and take pictures. Yes, cars would honk and people would yell. Yes, there would be a ton of traffic created by my stopping. And it would be stressful. But that’s what you do here. It’s the Israel way. If you don’t, you’re just allowing yourself to be crushed under the feet of everyone around you.
And I’ve already been that guy. I’ve let Israel chew me up and spit me out enough times. And frankly I’m sick of it.
A Careless Israel Tale
Israel has real problems. Existential problems. But it’s loaded with plenty of other relatively small ones as well, and they don’t go away no matter how many rockets are launched at us or citizens are kidnapped.
And in sixteen years of cumulative time living in the Holy Land–20% of time the country has even existed–I still can’t get a handle on what to do for what is, sadly, a daily occurrence.
Why did this happen?
It’s not because I wasn’t vigilant. I was. It’s not even because the roads are too thin and should probably be one-way streets. That might also be true.
This is 100% a cultural issue.
People in Israel are not careful. They drive throwing caution to the wind. They treat other vehicles on the road like irrelevant twigs you might drive over.
Everyone jokes about new cars in Israel just being a week or two away from their first scratch. It’s funny… but no, it’s really not. Whoever backed into me probably doesn’t owe me money. And they can keep their empty apology. I’m not interested.
I want them to give a damn!
I want people to think that their careless, aggressive, and mindless behavior not only physically hurts people and causes lost time and money. I want them to know how much they can ruin a person’s day. And I want them to care enough to not do the same stupid thing tomorrow!
