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Conflict Resolution

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 30/07/18 18:00
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It was a Friday night at 8:15pm, three hours earlier I had just found out how badly Dom had been hurt and I really was not myself.

I drove up to the farm where the girls keep their horses, a journey I’ve done a thousand times before, crested the brow of the hill and started to prepare to turn right.

It’s a busy road, single carriageway but people run up and down there at 60mph quite regularly.

I turned right into the drive of the farm and thought I’d driven over a brick because of the noise I heard and the bump. I pulled in on the drive, got out of my car and looked behind me. There was a motorcyclist lying in the middle of the road.

It’s interesting to reflect back on these things because you’re autistic for a few moments, not really understanding what’s happening and trying to process a lot of information at once.

I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen a motorcyclist coming up the road in front of me. I couldn’t understand why the front of my car wasn’t damaged or why he hadn’t hit my window.

He got up, a little bit like a headless chicken, and I went to see if he was hurt.

There was a guy on the other side of the road with a dog, he’s a mental old guy, we know him. He was shouting at me. I didn’t hear him.

My instincts kicked in and I just wanted to make sure the motorbike guy was ok, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t seriously hurt. I couldn’t have dealt with another serious RTA guy at that time.

He took his helmet off and he was fine. He walked around a little bit shaken. I helped him take his bike off the road. He kept saying to me that my indicator wasn’t on and immediately I started to blame myself as it became clear that he had come from behind me at speed.

He started to settle down and we started that little dance of who was going to break first. Who would accept responsibility. Whose fault it was. It’s always about blame these days.

I told him the only thing I cared about was that he was ok - the pieces of metal could be fixed and the fact that he walked away from that was the most important thing.

He softened. He started to agree.

I helped him with his bike, I found him somewhere to put it, I made sure he was ok and that he could phone and then went to check my girls (I was late for them)

As always, they weren’t finished so I came back to check him again and he was grateful.

He was on the phone to the insurance, he told them that luckily no one had been hurt and everybody was ok.

He started to say “I’m sure your indicator wasn’t on”

I said to him “It’s just important that you’re ok”

In the end I took him home, we chatted in the car. He used to be a Royal Engineer and his son has just joined. His son will be going to Sudan in the next few weeks and he’s really proud.

He was in his 40s but he said he didn’t want to tell his Dad that he’d had an accident on his motorbike because his Dad hated it.

He told me he was fully comp and I told him I was too so we agreed that other people would sort this stuff out.

In the end it turned out he’d hit the back of my car in the back-right hand corner. He didn’t believe I was turning right.

As he left my car he asked me to check if my indicator was actually working, and it was and he realised it was. It started to dawn on his that it was just an accident, something that he misjudged and walked away from.

The insurance came the next day to collect his bike and I haven’t heard about it since.

It might be that he tries to contest something, to say that I was at fault or says that he was actually more hurt than he was to try and get a pay-out.

I really doubt that and if it does happen I’ll update you later.

What actually happened was that my instinct to make sure another human being was ok regardless of the damage to the metal or the costs involved diffused the situation immediately and made us almost friends.

The minute I got out the car I stopped, I breathed and unconsciously counted to five.

I taught myself to do this when I do surgery and things aren’t going great; I tidy my instruments and ask if everybody is ok. I then look at the problem again and feel I have a better insight into how to fix it. That’s not a gift and not a talent, it’s practice. It’s a skill that I read about a long time ago that I’ve used time and time again.

It might just have averted a personal crisis on Friday night.

Not the biggest personal crisis I encountered on Friday night but it would have been another one on top of another one.

 

Blog Post Number: 1719

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Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
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