To any readers who might have encountered a bit of a traffic jam on Montague Expressway last night, I want to apologize for my part in it.

It wasn't really my fault, though. I was making a left turn on a green arrow. It was the car I collided with that ran the red light.

I got a pretty good look at the other driver's face just before my airbag deployed. He looked as scared as I felt.

The impact spun his car around about 90 degrees, and knocked mine back into the center of the intersection. The broken glass that sprayed over a surprisingly wide area must have come from his windows, since mine were intact. The bumper that flew across four lanes of traffic to land in the carpool lane going the other direction on Montague Expressway was mine. Both of our cars started to leak assorted evil-smelling fluids onto the road.

I'd like to thank the three kind strangers who stopped to help and to call 911. (I called on my cell phone, and got put on hold. The CHP arrived before I got through.) I wish I'd gotten your names and numbers, because I think that at least one of you might have witnessed the accident. But mostly I'm eternally grateful that I did not have to deal with the situation alone.

It seemed to take an eternity for the police to arrive, but I think it actually took less than 5 minutes. The ambulance arrived seconds later. They put a neck brace on the other driver and strapped him to a board and eventually they took him away in the ambulance. I hope that he's okay.

I appear to have suffered nothing worse than bruises. (They are some doozies of bruises, though. Some parts of my chest are the color of ripe plums.) I guess my airbag and my seatbelt and my crumple zones did their job. I owe some serious gratitude to a bunch of designers and engineers at Acura.

They towed away my car, and Daniel came and got me, and fed me, and made me take a hot bath. And I was still too keyed up to sleep for most of the night.

Daniel drove me to work this morning, and I've managed to be marginally useful, but I feel like crap, and I think I'm going to go home early.

I talked with my insurance company today, and tomorrow I'm getting the car transferred to a body shop that they recommended, and we'll get to find out if the car is totalled or not. (I think not, but it's hard to be sure - the front end was pretty badly trashed.)

I don't even know at this point if the other driver has insurance - I didn't get a chance to talk to him at the scene, not that he was very talkative - so this could all be very interesting. Fortunately, I have very good insurance, so I think the worst that can happen to me is that I end up paying a small deductible. We'll see.

In the meantime, I have no car and I hurt. Ow.