It's like those car crashes I was in as a kid.

We drove everywhere on trips. Hours and hours and so long that it seemed like days. I was always lying down somewhere. The back seat. The back back seat. The place where a car would have a trunk, but the station wagon and Suburban (even though we never lived in suburbia) just had big spaces where we put luggage and blankets and pillows and toys and at least one of us kids.

If Dad was driving, the warning was mom saying sternly, "Bill!"

If no crash was coming, Dad would say, "I see it, dear" or something like that as he avoided whatever was out there. When the crash came, he didn't say anything. Until after.

I would roll and hit the back of a seat or something like that. We never got hurt in any of the crashes. My brothers, also in states of relaxation, would do something similar. We never wore seat belts. Seat belts actually got in the way, and I never understood why back seats had them.

Nothing like the stupid commercials where rich people talk about how they were driving really badly and their expensive luxury car saved their lives. Because they don't know how to drive or stay awake or pay attention, but they've got one of those "smart" cars that drives for them (or maybe they're delusional and think the cars actually will drive for them). Rich people don't know how to drive, but they have a lot of cars with fancy gizmos on them.

It's funny, but in the commercials none of these horrible driving rich people talk about people they killed when they crashed their expensive "safe" cars. Probably wouldn't help the sale to talk about a car as a weapon.

The motorcycle was actually the second or third one. We were going fishing with a family friend and his son, so five of us in a relatively small car (but us kids weren't very big, and the drive wasn't going to take more than an hour). We were on big turns in the highway, and the motorcycles kept swinging out into our lane. The one that hit us really kind of glanced off the side of the car sending him skidding and us into a ditch. We didn't get to go fishing that day.

I don't know why people can't drive anymore. Or why car crashes seem to be more catastrophic than when I was a kid. We all wear seatbelts. We buy crash repellent. And then there's Spiderman and everything.

Obstacles came at me all the way to our gig Friday night. The not so long drive up to Santa Fe. I felt like I was driving horribly, even though my guitarist assured me I wasn't. Watching for flashing taillights. Marveling at all the lightning (and never getting any rain). Cars pulled off the side of the road. Cars driving 45 mph or less with their hazards blinking on a 75 mph highway. Lines of cars getting off at 550 to go see Muse. It took us a little longer to get to the bar than we thought. At various times on the way there and back I found myself singing the ballad of crashing cars in my head. And reminded myself that I was not driving a "smart" car that would drive me wherever I wanted to go on its own.

The one when my mom was driving, and we had just gotten to Manhattan (Kansas, the little apple) to see our grandparents. A guy was either running a red or turning through a red or something. Smashed up the great white station wagon so bad we didn't have a car for the whole summer.

And the day we got the car back, we drove to the public swimming pool at the park (something we never did but we just got our car back!) and someone stole the keys out of one of our shoes. They went back to our car, stole mom's purse and went back to our house (didn't steal the car). Took some cash and maybe something else. But not much. Never found the purse. Or the needlepoint my mom was working on inside the purse.

We looked in the bushes and ditches for weeks after, trying to find the purse we were sure they just threw away. The search coincided with our constant collecting of discarded aluminum cans to make a little extra money from recycling.

When the suburban was pretty new, and we were only an hour or so into our long drive to Dallas. The lady who had tried to cross the highway in front of us was standing by the front wheels of her newly wrecked car screaming.

"My baby! My baby!"

We freaked out for a few seconds before realizing she was talking about her car, not an actual baby.

We flew to Dallas eventually. Never finished that particular drive with the family.

The crashing cars didn't kill anyone. They just changed our plans for a while.

Matt Worley has never been in a car crash when he's been driving.