Imagine that you are loyal to a car company with every purchase you have made for the past decade...then imagine that one of those cars saves the life of one of your loved ones.
There is not a single year of my life that has not been spent as a resident of Orange County, and as such, when I say that this winter’s rainy season was the worst I’d ever seen, even beating out 1993, which seemed impossible, I know what I’m talking about.
The worst day this winter for us came on December 28, 2004 when I was awoken by a call from my wonderful girlfriend of 7 years, Teresa, while on her way to work, telling me that she had been involved in a car accident.
If you’ve ever received one of those "accident" calls, you know the feelings I was experiencing at the time.
That morning, as I was driving down the 73 to get to where Teresa was, I was driving through, literally, one of the worst rain storms I have ever seen in my life.
Now, I figured that if Teresa had been able to call me to tell me she’d been in an accident, that was the most promising sign that she was, in fact, all right. The fact that she had been able to tell me that she had not hit any other cars and describe what had happened as she slid off the road was also reassuring, but I must admit that as I arrived to where the car had slid off the road, literally bent the guard rail into a "U" and was sitting in six-inch deep mud, I became very worried.
Then, when I saw the car, I became extremely worried...but, as I got to Teresa, she looked a little shaken up, but seemed totally fine. The OC Fire Authority was there and I can’t thank them enough for the job they did caring for Teresa that morning.
Teresa was taken by ambulance to Hoag and was given a clean bill of health. Though she had a bit of soreness in her neck for a couple days, otherwise, Teresa came out of the accident completely unharmed.
That morning, Teresa’s 1998 Mercedes-Benz C230 did exactly what we had bought it to do...save her life.
When something in the road blew out the car’s right front tire and the mass of water in the road from the downpour sent the car veering off the road uncontrollably, it wasn’t the "luxury" part of the car that saved Teresa that morning, it was the century of unparalleled safety engineering.
Later in the morning, when we went to the towing yard to get Teresa’s things out of the car, the workers there commented about how they hoped whoever was driving the car, described by them as in the worst condition of any car they’d seen in a long while, was making it through okay, and I amazed them by telling them that she was right there, walking next to me.
A Mercedes-Benz looks beautiful sitting, shiny and new on the car lot and looks and feels beautiful as it performs out on the road, but you’ll come to find that the most beautiful Mercedes-Benz that you will ever see is the one that saves your life.
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