A7 km 71

That's where it happened, on the highway A7, km 71. I had left the house for about one and a half hour. We had one emergency stop after Mokka pooped in her box. Roads were not really snow free but at least the right lane was clean. Still I was driving 90 km/h as I didn't want to risk anything. I was actually thinking that at this speed it will take me 2 days to get home and told the cats to be quiet as I needed to focus on the driving.


I was holding the wheel going straight, happy that we were at the first milestone of the trip, when the highway split between going to Paris and going to Lille.

Suddenly the car started to shift to the side, I tried to get the control back but that didn't work. Right then I knew it was a lost cause and that I was going to hit something and there was nothing I could do about except wait. This scene lasted maybe 1-2 seconds but it's amazing how much thinking happened. Then the car hit the fence of the highway. The car did a complete 360 degree rotation, hitting the fence on its left side.

Then it stopped. I was shaking all over trying to figure out whether I was ok, not injured, same for the cats. In shock, I was.

A very nice man, who saw the whole scene stopped to check on me. I'm very grateful he was there as while my whole body and mind was in shock, he opened the door of the car, asked me whether I was injured, asked for the triangle to signal my car, told me to put the yellow jacket, then to call the assistance. He's also the one who reminded me to put my coat on as it was freezing. Once assistance confirmed they were sending someone he left. I don't know who he was, but a VERY BIG THANK YOU to this stranger who stopped.

I texted Wolfram so he would know. Shortly after the assistance call me back as they were already looking at getting me a replacement car. I called home to let my parents know what happened. I'm so happy I have a mobile phone so I could take care of everything without having to walk to an assistance phone on the highway.

A bit later the police arrived. First question they asked was whether I was drunk. And I answered "it's only 11am" meaning no I haven't been drinking. Still it's standard procedure so I had to blow in the ethylometer. We filled some paperwork as I damaged the fence so my insurance will have to take care of that. They also showed me the ice on the road, right under the bridge "see the shiny part: that's ice" with a very big smile. Don't ask me why but I was the only one who slid on it. Bad luck I guess.

Assistance arrived 20min after I called, that's very fast as I was already wondering how I will survive 1 hour outside behind the fence (maybe with the sleeping bag). The pulled the car on their truck and drove me to their center. It's a busy day for them so they will bring my car to the garage tomorrow or Monday.

In the meantime insurance called me back with the address of an Europcar dealer where I could pick up my replacement car. One of the assistance men drove me to Europcar and helped me pick up the car, a Mercedes Class A. We drove back to their center, he helped transfer everything from my broken Micra to the rental car and the cats from their office. While I was going after the replacement car, the 2 secretaries over there kept an eye on Mokka and Muffin, scared like hell at the very back of their box.

Around 1pm, we were back on the road, driving extremely carefully and the slowest ever. 12 hours after we left home, after snow, accident, changing car, traffic jam, more snow, rain and Mokka pooping one more time... we arrived at my parents. Exhausted, but happy to be with my family.

I am grateful that nobody was hurt. I'm not injured, cats are fine, we've all been terrorized but not injured. Luckily I didn't hit any other car as that would have been really bad. I'll have to get the whole left side of the car changed as right now you can see the mark of the fence all the way from the front to the back, roughly mid height of the doors. But like everybody else kept repeating: no one was injured that's the most important, it's only metal sheet and plastic.

I keep wondering what I did wrong what I should have done differently to keep control of the car... sadly I have no answer. Maybe next time we take the train.