I left the London area today (Sunday) to make the long journey back home. Six hours later and my shiny little sports car is reduced to scrap metal.

The crash happened not far from my home on a ‘flyover’ bridge. After some unusually warm and sunny weather conditions changed dramatically as I drove north this afternoon. At one point I was on the highway driving at no more than 40 mph in a heavy snow fall the like of which I am extremely inexperienced at driving in.

I was being very careful and on several occasions I felt the car get away from me momentarily on corners. The MG is notoriously bad handling in wet conditions and being very light and powerful things can get very interesting very quickly if you’re not careful. So with that in mind I was being very cautious indeed.

However, true to the statistic, within three miles of my home familiarity set in and I have to confess I was quite simply too relaxed. Heading onto a flyover bridge that is sided by two unforgiving crash barriers and no run-off area at all, I felt the back end of the car get lose and step out. I wasn’t particularly phased by this and simply corrected the slide. This time however the roads were slushy and greasy too. The car began to get too badly out of shape for me to have any hope to recover and I knew that I was heading straight to the scene of the accident.

It’s funny how in those moments everything kind of slows down and you are able to have a great many complete thought processes within what must amount to micro-seconds.

With no run-off area beside the road any error at this particular location would be unusually costly. Ominously the section of barrier I was about to smash into was covered in flowers. A roadside shrine to a recently killed motorist who died at that spot. I very clearly recall thinking to myself “That’s not a good sign.” Though as I tried to steer my way out of trouble I considered the fact that this might not actually be that bad because I wasn’t really going very fast at all, probably no more than 30 miles per hour or so.

SMASH! The first sickening impact with the barrier happened as the front left of the car crunched heavily into the barrier on the left side. “Ah, time to rethink this as being just a slight knock.” I thought to myself as the car now slid backward heading for the inevitable rear impact. SMASH! One final pirouette and then after the sound of shattering glass hitting the ground finished, all was quiet.

My first reaction, aside from “SHIT!” was to start the engine and see if I could continue on because I was sitting precariously in a dangerous spot around a blind bend on a narrow bridge. The car started without a problem so I drove it slowly off the flyover and then parked it.

I got out and reviewed the damage. The front is heavily damaged from what I can see and the impact with the crash barrier at the back of the car has made several unsightly dents. It might be worse that it looks of course, but in truth this surely will be an expensive accident.

I called a recovery truck and sent a text message to my friend Jon saying “I’ve crashed.” He rang me right back and arrived at the scene a few minutes later.

The annoying thing is that the accident is probably not worth putting though my insurance as the premium increase over the next five years will probably offset any saving I make by getting the insurance to pay out for the repairs or replacement car. In truth it will probably be easier and more cost effective to simply either repair the car on my own dime or simply buy another MG swap the Roadster roof and the other modifications then scrap the wrecked one.

I could have done without this drama. But as Jon pointed out, there was a flower memorial on the very same barriers I crashed into. At some point in the last few weeks someone never got the opportunity to worry about how much their accident was going to cost them.