It is a bright sunny morning and Graham Whyteleafe is driving fast up the A303 towards London. He is travelling back to London after attending a conference at Exeter University. He is cursing himself now because he should have driven back last night, but instead he'd ended up in the pub with one of the speakers from the conference, talking shop until he finally realised that he'd had far too much to drink and was in no fit state to drive home. After closing time he booked himself into a Bed & Breakfast, with the intention of skipping the breakfast and leaving for London by about 6am.

Now Graham is tired and hungover. The bright morning sun is burning holes in his eyes as it reflects up from the rain-washed tarmac. He is struggling to see well enough in advance the twists and turns in the road ahead. But he is a good driver.

Suddenly a Porsche is rapidly coming towards him in his lane. It is overtaking a slow tractor in the opposite lane. Graham sees the situation late because of the blinding sun and is just about to swerve onto the grass verge when the Porsche dips back into its own lane. It's a close shave.

'Lunatic!' Graham puts his hand on the horn and gives the other driver a stern beep. He slows the car a little as the adrenaline drains out of his system and he wonders what would happen if he actually had a car crash.

His mind turns to thoughts of his only son. Kieran is twelve now and he's turning into a bright boy, if a little shy. Perhaps the boy would be less shy if his parents had been able to make their marriage work. Lorraine and he had been young and - he was prepared to admit it - immature.

He smiles, and his mind turns to thoughts of the tape recording Pat and Arthur had made of Kieran when he was little more than a year old. He feels a wave of nostalgia hit him like an oncoming Porsche.

He reaches across to the glove compartment and flips it open, then turns his attention back to the road because there is a roundabout coming up.

When all on the road is safe and clear he looks down again to see a mess of cassettes. Some are in boxes, most aren't. He tries to remember what the tape looks like.

Another glance up at the road, then he starts to pull out some of the tapes, letting them drop down to the footwell, 'Where is it?' he mutters though gritted teeth.

He remembers being given the cassette by his mother at the bungalow a few years back, but he can't remember ever removing it from the car. As far as he is aware it had been in the car all along. His hand reaches deeper into the cluttered recesses of the glove compartment.

He hears the horn of the oncoming lorry too late. He looks up and sees he is in the wrong lane. An Eddie Stobart lorry is coming straight at him.

Every single nerve ending jolts to attention. He swerves to the left too abruptly. On the wet road the car goes into a skid, the rear of the red Cortina sliding out to the right. The rear right corner hits Eddie Stobart and spins the vehicle brutally quickly in the opposite direction. If he were to survive this part of the crash then the whiplash from this initial impact will put him in a neck brace for three months.

The car twists through one-eighty degrees. The Eddie Stobart lorry is beginning to slow down now. It travels far enough however for the front of the Cortina to disappear underneath its trailer. The bonnet fits under there perfectly, until the rear wheels of the lorry mount it on the passenger side like a tank and progress slowly and heavily over the front of the car, trapping and crushing his legs under the twisting metal.

If he were to survive this part of the crash, he will be confined to a hospital bed for two months having metal splints inserted into his shattered, deformed legs.

The Eddie Stobart leans sideways onto the banked grass verge and comes to rest, the sound of metal against metal is excruciating to hear.

The red Cortina is now perfectly positioned to cause a multi-vehicle pile up. It is straddling the centre line on the brow of a hill. A speeding Honda shoots over the brow and buries itself into the Cortina, rolling it sideways onto its roof, like some freakish fairground ride. The ground above Graham's inverted form presses the pathetically weak metal of the roof of the Cortina against the top his head.

If he were to survive this part of the crash he will be paralysed from the neck down, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, forever cursing his tired, hungover, sun-blinded stupidity.

But the shattered windows have sent lethal shards of glass into the car. One such shard pierces his heart. Even if an ambulance had been within ten miles of the accident then he would have had a very low probability of pulling through. The nearest ambulance, as it happens, is twenty-five miles away.

Graham is lucky enough to be spared all those things. All those things that he would have to live through.