Column: Getting Back on the Vespa After a Brush With Death on 96th Street

The author on her Vespa, before the crash.

By Katie Barry

I drive in New York City like everyone is trying to kill me, scanning the road “Mission Impossible” style. It has this illusion of fearlessness when really, fear is my mental fuel.

None of that seemed to matter on a sunny Tuesday morning in July 2017. In not even a blink, I was careening into the back of an SUV that cut me off, before bouncing off his bumper. Replaying the crash, I couldn’t find anything I would’ve done differently. I wasn’t listening to music, looking at a map, or flirting with pedestrians. I wasn’t belting out karaoke jams in the sound system of my helmet space.

It happened on 96th street between West End and the entrance to the West Side Highway in front of the Mobil gas station, a block from our former apartment. Gas attendants later told me they thought I was dead. I was headed to the DMV to report missing plates, later realizing it was opportune timing to have all my paperwork on me down to the title when the cops arrived. After the DMV, I had grand plans of scootering to Jacob Riis beach to act like a World War II pin-up girl with my Irish comrade Tom Cleverpig visiting from the south of France.

I heard the front end of my Vespa make contact and crack, then squealing tires and action-film sound effects. I sprung up in a total haze, denial, wondering why there were construction workers clamoring to talk to me. Normally they just whistle from afar. I could see people’s worried faces and hear hollow-sounding comments. I told Siri to call Krispy Koala.

It took a few months before the random outbursts of ugly cardio-crying stopped. My twin sister Kristy would look at me bug-eyed, bewildered why my face was a bowl of soup.

“You’re alive!” she’d coo. “So what’s wrong?”

When I knew there was no braking and impact was coming, this flash went scorching through my head: Kristy is going to be so mad. I thought of how angry she would be sorting my belongings, deciding whether to take ownership of my clothes or throw them out. Does she wash my dirty workout clothes and keep them or chuck them out with the Thai takeout containers? She would have no use for the handmade trophy a boyfriend made for me or my spare sheets. Dresses that we had two of — would she donate them to a Goodwill or another set of twins?

There were grim, grim days, reminding her that I loved her dearly nearly hourly. I iced my black bruised knees and knuckles with frozen okra while sprawled out on my couch, making welfare calls to humans I adore. I thanked my mom for building me like a bull when she invented me. She reassured me she would still ride with me, as we did together on red Vespas in Paris two months prior.

The author during her recovery.

I picked up the police report of the accident at a midtown precinct two days after the accident. Three days after that, I was on the Upper West in my work van and swung by the 24th precinct to finally report those missing plates. In the lobby was the driver of the SUV. I nearly fainted. He didn’t recognize me at first because I wasn’t wearing a helmet. The one I was wearing the day we unfortunately met was cracked and in the trash. He told me that he fixed his car and everything was “back to normal,” perplexed why I wasn’t sighing in relief. I asked him if he had killed me, would he have come to my funeral?

“Hell no! Just because you decided you wanted to kill yourself means I have to go to your funeral? (Insert numerous expletives)”

Cops told him to “keep it down” as he left a scream trail out of the precinct. They assured me everything would be okay. And it will be, I think. I have a newfound dual respect and confusion for football players who sustain helmet-to-helmet concussions yet are back in action a week or even two weeks later. A month out, I couldn’t wear headphones, drink coffee or alcohol or be in the sun without splitting headaches. Running jostled my brain and the unnerving fear of a random object flying in my direction hindered normal life.

No defensive driving course, endless Mario Kart-playing or studying YouTube collages of wrecks could have prepared me for that day. I got a new cream-colored Vespa and a sparkly gold helmet from my sister. “Maybe this will help people see you more,” she added. Friends and family still ride with me, their faith unrocked. I don’t throw caution in the wind, I put wind in my caution and hold on for dear life. Which it really is.

The author and her new ride.