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“There was a lot of traffic on the interstate so I was actually going about 55 (miles per hour),” recalls Bennett, 32. “I don’t know what (the truck driver) was doing or what he was looking at. I was just driving and he smacked me out of nowhere.”

For the past 16 months, Bennett has thought about what could have been that day.

“It just happened out of the blue,” he says. “My first thought was, ‘I’m just glad I’m here by myself and my family wasn’t in here.’

“My son (Fred Jr., who was two years old at the time) wasn’t back there in his car seat. If he was, it would have been a different outcome. It would have been tragic.”

Bennett was treated at a local hospital after the accident, but he walked out that day. His injuries were relatively minor: A case of whiplash that ultimately forced him to miss the first few days of the Stampeders’ training camp.

“There was a lot of soreness,” the 6-foot-1, 197-pounder says. “But fortunately for me, I’m an athlete. I think the weightlifting and stuff that I was doing helped prevent a lot of stuff.”

Bennett remembers going to court to testify after the truck driver was charged, but Bennett doesn’t know what came of those proceedings. He had — and still has — his own battle to fight.

“It took me a while to even drive on the interstate,” Bennett says. “To this day, as far as big trucks, I’m kind of paranoid driving by them.”

The accident changed Bennett’s perspective on virtually everything, but not on the game that he plays to make a living.

“I always appreciated football,” says Bennett, whom Saskatchewan acquired from the Stampeders on Aug. 16. “Football is a platform for me to do a lot of things in my life that I never expected to do. It allowed me to travel, buy things I never thought I’d be able to buy, and live the way I wanted to live.

“That accident made me appreciate life more — just being alive, being able to tell my wife I love her, being able to kiss my kids at night, and being able to be around my loved ones. I’m just blessed.”

ihamilton@postmedia.com

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