I have been thinking a LOT about the accident, trying to get it out of my system. I am still bewildered how I did not see the guy, but several things are possible in the space of a couple seconds:

1) I did not look completely down his lane, just the white line, which did not have a bumper near it but cars and trucks stopped in the next lanes. So I assumed whatever car coming up would have ample time to stop, but he either didn't know he had a red or his brakes weren't fast enough to slow him down before the white line.

2) He was going to stop, but thought because I sat there for a sec, he could slide through.

3) If he really couldn't see what the light was, then he may have thought the other cars were slow to go on green or quick to stop on yellow. I don't think he was going the full speed limit of 45 because the impact site of our car was more of a fender-bender than a crater.

4) He was behind a truck in the middle lane and moved into the empty right lane to go through because he didn't want to rear-end the truck but his brakes didn't catch all the way, and he went into me.

I am sooooo grateful that things weren't worse. As I sat there in the car, my worst fear was coming true. I hated the feeling that I would turn around and my kids would be screaming and hurt, or unresponsive and hurt, especially Bubba because she sits on the driver's side and it was struck. It was their first accident, and hopefully their last in their lifetimes. I can only hope and be ever-diligent. The kicker to my ego and soul is that I thought I was diligent, and yet a car slipped through anyway. In my emotions, it will always be a bad crash, because the kids were involved. In my mind, I am trying to sort out the mathematics of how fast he was going and the physics and sine, cosine and tangent of the impact. In my heart, I thank God for watching out for us and the reminder to never take anything for granted.