My family was driving home from a Shabbos in Tosh. Suddenly the 15 passenger van (with every seat occupied) started going back and forth (sideways) and then FLIPED three times. The van landed with the drivers side on the ground! B”H, WE WERE ALL WEARING SEATBELTS!!! Ever since my mother started driving, she ALWAYS enforced that EVERYONE wears a seatbelt. If not for that, I may not be sharing this story with you now. I am a witness that seatbelts SAVES LIVES! Many of my siblings and my mother had seatbelt marks across there stomach! WEAR A SEATBELT!!! THE HASSLE OF PUTTING ON A SEATBELT IS 100 TIMES BETTER THEN THE PAIN AND SUFFERING IF C”V . . .
Everyone started getting up and going out. The driver (my sister) went out her window. My brother went out the front windshield. My sister climbed up onto the side (which was now the top). My mother, my 10 siblings and myself all went out the back window.
The only one who was really got hurt was my father who was sitting in the front passenger seat. Somehow his head got a big cut and his hand got badly damaged. EMS and the fire department were on the scene in minutes. Using Jaws of Life the took my father out.
Now for the really amazing part: My sister (then 5) was having difficulty with Kriah. So over the summer, every day, my mother read with her Tehillim. She was getting better and better. During our trip (which was right after Sukkos) my sister was saying Tehillim non-stop. Her goal was to finish before we came home. Throughout the trip she would say to my mother, “Mommy, do you want to know what I’m up to?” “Were?” “I’m not telling you, its a secret!!!”. When the accident happened she was up to around ??”?!!!
Another miracle was that when we went thorough the van afterward we saw that the back seat was not locked in place properly. Jammed between the seat and the floor was a pocket siddur! Imagin if that seat would have moved during the accident! On the seat wer 4 people including two kids in car seats. How much damage that seat could have caused???
Tehillim and seatbelts THEY ARE LIFESAVERS. Use them, and use them often!!!!