Cities in the Astral

How weird. So I was about to post this dream as an example of how lucid dreaming has made it so I no longer have to deal with bad dreams. Last night I was casually experiencing dreams and images. My attention was drawn to the scene and it suddenly shifted into a vivid scene of an auto accident. A car got smashed but it also included emotions and was generally not pleasant. The imagery changed so that I was inside the car and experiencing the emotions involved in getting in a car wreck.
I simply stated to myself, "this is stupid, stop dreaming unpleasant things," and I made the scene vanish. The stream of standard interesting dreams resumed. I was going to mention that this is a bit different than what beginners think about lucid dreams. I pretty much have to plan on having a true lucid dream for what you think of as LDs to happen. However, I basically never think a dream is real and am aware that I am dreaming to some degree, I just don't really pay attention. I saw that the dream was not pleasant and was able to prevent that sort of thing shifting back to nice dreams. That was what I was going to report here.
I did think the dream was vivid and really stuck out in my recall, so I warned my wife that I had had the dream and to be extra careful. I told her that this morning I came much to close to backing into an old lady and her dog and perhaps that was what the dream was about.
I just got a call from my best friend! His first words to me are "I just got in a wreck." He took a job delivering pizza and just got in a smash up. This was about 14 hours after I had the dream.