Intuition in Action
An Anecdote
- Laura Day, Practical Intuition

I was in the front passenger seat of a car. My friend was driving us from Rome to Florence for a trade show. In Italy I often took on the habits of the Italians in not wearing my seatbelt, so as the rain started methodically beating down on the roof of the car, I fell asleep without my seatbelt on. I woke up the screaming voice of my mother: "Put your seatbelt on now!" Half asleep, I nonetheless immediately reached to fasten my seatbelt. A second later I was knocked unconscious by the impact of the crash. The truck in front of us had stopped suddenly, and with the wet roads the driver of our car had been unable to brake effectively.

The driver of the truck disentangled me from the car and lifted me out. Shock was setting in as I asked if there had been any casualties and promptly forgot the answer to my question.

The next thing I remember is being on the table in the emergency room of the town hospital with Italian voices traveling in the air above me, very confused but with a pocket of clarity when I told them that my blood pressure was normally low and that I did not think I was bleeding internally so please to wait before operating. Thank goodness they did.

No one was severely hurt: the driver, saved by the steering wheel, suffered only a concussion and cracked ribs, while I had sprained limbs. But without the seatbelt it would have been an entirely different story.

People actually came to look at the car in the small town where the accident had happened, and a few stopped by the hospital to admire the unlikely survivors. I thought they were funny until I was discharged and went to see the car. The front was smashed like an accordion; the top and back were buckled from the impact. I was struck by the miracle of my survival and the warning from my mother, who had died twelve years before.