It's been so long since it happened that Fergus McCormack (28) can barely remember the nine-year-old boy who made to run across the road to where his father stood waiting that day in March 1987.
How often he must have crossed the Edenderry Road in Prosperous, Co Kildare, the family home on one side and the garage his father owned directly opposite. He had actually cleared the path of the oncoming car, Fergus says, but when he heard the screeching brakes, he panicked, turned back towards the house and ran out of time. "When I heard the horn and the car screeching on the road, I turned back towards the path, and then it happened."
That much has been assembled through the recollections of others; Fergus himself retains little of those days. "I've no memory for a few weeks after the accident. The same with before it; I've a blank memory. It's probably better though - I can just get on with life."
It was in the fifth week at the Richmond Hospital in Dublin that he re-opened his eyes for the first time. Things looked much worse then, and the stories are still told and retold in the family home. "I was told about the Richmond Hospital. My father had to give me yogurt because I could not eat solid things, and my brother had to hold up my head while he gave me it."
There were no broken bones, no spinal injury, but the knocks he had taken to the head left him with permanent brain damage that would slow his speech, restrict his movement and cause mild memory loss.
From the Richmond, he was transferred to the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Dún Laoghaire, where he would spend the rest of the year adapting, learning, readying himself for a return home. In the end, it came smoothly enough and though he is reminded of his state on first returning to the family home - "I was dribbling constantly because I could not think" - he was young enough not to dwell on it.
"I was very bad. I could not walk, and talked slowly. Only my family and close friends could understand what I was saying. I was in a wheelchair then, and when I got out of the wheelchair I was not walking good - all over to one side and all.
"After my accident, you know, it took a while for it to settle in. I was so young and I still believed in magic and that. It was a blessing I had it so young. I know it was. When I came home from Dún Laoghaire and saw my friends, I thought I was just like them. I didn't feel any different. I was so young."
And yet, and yet. He can still remember hearing his parents saying the rosary at home, investing every prayer with a quiet solicitation for the boy. He can remember, too, the kids who turned their backs.
"They left me upset. 'I'm not goin' near him', you know. I know it's cruel, but that's life. You gain some friends and you lose some, but the friends I gained since the accident are my friends full-stop."
For all that, however, life resumed in all the ways that are important to a nine-year-old boy. After some time at a school for children with learning difficulties, his teacher suggested that he would be better off back at his old school, and so he returned to Scoil an Linbh Íosa in Prosperous. From there, he went to Scoil Mhuire in Clane where he completed his Junior and Leaving Cert exams, the latter only a year after his peers had done theirs.
They were good days, he recalls. He used to tire quickly and perhaps, looking back, there were things he couldn't do, but that's not how he thought at the time.
"At lunch time, when they were playing soccer, I would play with them, and at PE time we played football and basketball, and I played along with them."
A degree in business studies followed. Did he want to go into business, then? After a pause, he smiles the smile of many a CAO-veteran. "Yeah."
Then a whisper: "Kind of. When I left college, I had the degree, but if you get my point, I would not push myself to a job. I thought it would be just there for me. A job. But it did not work out that way."
The first chance of a foray into full-time work came from computer company Hewlett-Packard, who offered him an unpaid work-placement that lasted a year. He found himself idle quite a bit, bored by the lack of tasks, but working in a large office with good people. The company seemed pleased with him too but, with September 11th still casting its uncertain shadow over the place, they could offer him no more.
We meet at the NRH in Dún Laoghaire where, since last September, Fergus has been taking a newly devised course aimed at equipping people with brain injuries with the skills that might help them find work.
For all his intelligence and strength of character, the slow speech and the impaired movement in his right side make it difficult to convince prospective employers.
He recently registered with Fás, and hopes this might lead to an office-based job - "one with an open office and a lot of people."
Some time ago, he saw an advertisement for awards for companies that employ people with disabilities, but "until I'm employed, I won't believe it", he says.
There have been applications and interviews, but little has come of them. Does he suspect his disability is a tipping factor? "Well, [ it's] not that specific. Some companies have interviewed me and said in the post 'We got someone else', but a person in my position has to think it has something to do with my disability."
In the meantime, there is much to occupy him. A few years ago, he tried a new physiotherapist in Dublin. She helped improve his walk and strengthened the right side of his body. He credits her with giving him new hope, new belief.
HE RECENTLY SIGNED up at a new gym in Naas, where an instructor has given him some new drills to work on a few times a week, and where he can prepare himself for his favourite indulgence: cycling.
Last year, there was a sponsored cycle in Hungary to raise money for Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. This September, he hopes to have raised enough - €5,000 is the target - through local quiz nights and sponsorship rounds to fund a similar trip to the Grand Canyon.
"Once or twice a week I go down to the pub and have Ballygowan. I don't drink - I began at the age of 18 and I got drunk once or twice, and my mother told me to stop drinking and I ignored her. But I could see for myself it was doing me no good. So I stopped at 21."
The future is an unblemished canvas before him. He has written poetry, and having some of it published is a whispered hope. He has also considered an autobiography, now that it's nearly 20 years since the crash. Come to think of it, being Lance Armstrong the second would be nice, he jokes.
And with luck, he'll nail down a job, maybe have a place of his own.
"And get a wife! When a girl last week asked me what I wanted to do in the future, you know, one of the things I said was to get married. Did you ever see the film that was made in Dublin about the two wheelchair lads, Inside I'm Dancing?
"Well, in that, they were at a disco and the man who was most badly affected was dancing around and he liked this girl and he made a mess of himself with her, if you like. They were dancing and he would not let go till her boyfriend came over. And it's kind of the same with me. I get on fine with women, talking to them, but it's just to move up another level, you know, I find it very difficult."
Thoughts of being a nine-year-old on the "wild side" ("but every kid is that way," he says) and the road outside his father's garage rarely impinge on the mind of the 28-year-old Fergus.
"Well, sometimes I think, but there is no point in getting upset about it. I mean, it's done: move on. I live my life like anyone else. It does not bother me. If I'm not able to do something, I'm not able to do it. It's the same with everyone.
"I mean, we are all disabled, just unfortunately some people are more disabled than others."
After our conversation,I thank him ("Anything for road safety," he replies), and he shows me back to the hospital's main concourse, where we talk for a few more minutes before he heads back upstairs.
Later in the afternoon, I sit in the small public cafe on the ground floor. Just inside the entrance, a single sheet of white paper is pinned discreetly to a pillar on the left. On it, a short poem hugs the top-left corner, its title, three stanzas and signature rendered in lettering so small that the passerby can barely make it out. It closes as it begins:
Give me one chance
To prove I am a fighter
I am being sincere.
Even if I have to fight
With might and main
I'll be my old self again.
Fergus McCormack