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So last night my wife and stepson are with me returning home from visiting my mother in law at a local care facility. As I take the offramp from the freeway onto our exit I see what appears to be two sets of very bright back-up lights near the top of the offramp, maybe 200 yards away. I figured maybe someone stalled and the guy behind was backing up to get around. Then I realize that I'm seeing headlights, and a car is accelerating THE WRONG WAY down the offramp to get on the freeway. I've always wondered how the hell somebody can get so badly turned around to get on the freeway the wrong way.

I hit the brakes and stop my car to give the other guy as much room as possible to realize his error and stop too. Except he doesn't stop. And he doesn't swerve. He just keeps on accelerating until he plows perfectly centerline to centerline with us.

His airbags deploy, his windshield breaks, steam hissing. Then I realize he's trying like crazy to back up! My son jumps out, grabs the guy out of the car and walks him to the edge of the offramp and sits him down. He's got a passenger with him who's got a bleeding eye and a fat lip.

Two drunk illegals. Apparently they turned left onto the offramp and clipped a car going the other direction, spinning her car onto the offramp facing the wrong direction (that was the other pair of headlights I was seeing). So in order to avoid deportation and other unpleasantness, they drove away from that accident and ran straight in to me.

Let me tell you - Lexus builds one hell of a solid car! Whatever POS he was driving is toast. My airbags didn't go off, nobody in my car was hurt. My car doesn't even have a wrinkled hood. Except for some surface scratches, all the damage appears to be below the midline of the front bumper. I think what happened is that his car was a bit nose-down - he must have hit the brakes at the last moment - that caused him to hit my car low. Since I was stopped with my foot on the brakes, my car was level and I didn't meet his bumper at the same height. There is some cross-member stuff that supports a radiator that is pushed back, and the car sounds like a high rpm fan is hitting something. I'll know more whenever I get an adjuster assigned and get a call from them.

I guess the bright side is that I stopped them before they had built up a full head of steam and killed someone farther down on the freeway.

The downside is I just found out that I don't have rental car coverage included in my insurance. What a pisser! Sure wish I had already found and bought my 911 by now.