One moment the road is there, wide open and safe, the next there are loud noises, acrid smells and pain that you may or may not recover from. A car crash comes as a shock and that's an aspect he movies and novels aren't good at showing. It is the equivalent of looking without seeing, a form of emotional blindness.
Seeing car crashes is no preparation for being in one.
When you are in the car crash you see things the folks doing a slow drive by are so very blind to.
"I know you want to hear about the crash, I can see the questions in your brain as if they were cartoon birds flying around your skull. The thing is, there is the before, the slick road and the belief everything would be okay and the after, when I walked away from what many don't. It's as if it happened to someone else, if I'm honest, or perhaps as if I saw it in a movie one time. It was noise, mangled metal, and injuries that are healed up already."
The end of the car crash was the start of hell, or recovery and pain on pain; yet the road remained and I could become a good driver once more.