Fear nearly killed us yesterday ~

Jennifer and I nearly died yesterday.

We were literally inches from death.

We were driving back to Mudgee from the Hunter Valley, where the previous night we’d screened the fine-cut of Facing Fear to a veteran film distributor.

(He loved it, by the way!)

We were on a two lane highway, and there was some traffic coming towards us.

Suddenly this car – this lime-green muscle car – went to overtake a truck in front. There was simply no room to overtake. Like, I mean, NO room.

When I saw this oncoming car edge out I thought – nah, surely the driver’s seen me and he or she is going to abort the overtake. But the car kept coming. Accelerating. It was traveling fast – probably 120 to 130kms/hr or so. And I was doing maybe 103km/hr.

This car was now barrelling straight towards us – like I say, fast – on my side of the road. I couldn’t believe it. There was no time to do anything other than to swerve onto the shoulder of the road. Which is what I did.

Fortunately there was enough shoulder to take the width of my car – but I was aware that I could very easily lose it in the loose gravel and go into a slide then roll.

But I kept calm.

I swung across, the green muscle car screamed past with only inches to spare between our two vehicles, and then I managed to swing back onto the road again – and the whole thing was over.

From the moment the car began to overtake to the moment it flashed past me was maybe five seconds, that’s all. Possibly even less. But I could be mistaken because it seemed as though time stood still.

There are a few interesting things about the whole bizarre episode.

For starters, the car was the exact same colour as my film on fear, Facing Fear. The exact same colour of green.

Also, it was a muscle car and it was low to the ground and its engine growled and it was like an attack on us – this green growling bullet heading straight for us – its sole intent being to take us out.

Fear was attacking us.

I mean, overtaking like that, with absolutely no room to overtake – it made no sense. It was suicidal.

The other interesting thing was as this unfolded, I was calm. I didn’t panic, I didn’t freeze and go into fear – I quickly assessed that this was a life-or-death situation and I very calmly manoeuvred Jen and myself to safety then when the danger had passed I returned back to the road.

And I didn’t go into panic mode after the incident.

No adrenalin rush, no shaking or shortness of breath or any sign of delayed fear – nothing. I just kept on driving. Jennifer looked across at me and said: Have we just died and gone to heaven? I said to her: I’m not sure. Maybe.

I mean, how totally bizarre, the whole thing.

The coincidence of that car being the exact same colour as our artwork on the film is bizarre. Jennifer and I don’t buy into coincidences. And this coming straight after a successful screening of the film to one of Australia’s top distributors.

And the fact that this seemed like a deliberate, almost kamikaze type attack on us. I’ve driven a lot of miles in over fifty years of driving and I’ve never had an experience like that before.

Jennifer and I analysed it later and came to this conclusion:

The car represented fear, and it wanted me to experience fear, and had I experienced fear there’s no doubt that Jennifer and I would now no longer be alive. If I’d gone into fear I would have been incapable of taking the evasive action that I did – which required calmness, focus and steadiness.

So we faced fear and we didn’t succumb – and we’re here now still wondering why it happened…