Dead guy on the freeway

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

One dies in fatal accident on I-5 near Meridian Street

I was coming home from Seattle yesterday and drove by this northbound (non-crash side of the freeway). As I passed, I saw the body under a sheet. I knew it was a body because I’ve seen sheet-covered bodies before.

According to this article, ‘[The motorcyclist] was riding a black 2014 Harley-Davidson FLHR motorcycle southbound on I-5 when a grey 2001 GMC Yukon SUV… slowed for traffic in front of Boyles. The Harley-Davidson struck the rear of the GMC and Boyles was ejected, landing in the center median.’

#2

How is that a one-vehicle collision?

#3

Yeah, I caught that.

#4

I’ve seen 5 dead guys on the highway, all within a half-mile. 3 separate incidents. 3 died in a fire. Very nasty business.

#5

My first corpse ‘in the wild’ was a guy who tried to rob a 7-11 and was shot for his efforts. I saw his sheet-covered body in the 7-11 parking lot as I rode the bus to high school. The second was a motorcyclist who was riding on the street next to my college. A woman pulled out of the parking lot in front of him. One of the investigators pulled up the sheet to take a photo of him. Then there was a bad crash on the way back from Las Vegas. A van with 11 or 12 people in it lost control (possibly a blown tire). There were sheet-covered bodies all over the place. It’s been years since I saw this, but ISTR seeing five. I thought of the June sun in the Mojave Desert, and the large populations of ants that live there.

#6

Recently my Uber driver had to swerve to avoid running over the body of someone who had just jumped to their death from an overpass.

#7

Riding the train from the suburbs back into Paris one afternoon, we slowed to a crawl as we passed another train halted on an adjacent track. A group of police and railway officials were standing around the front of the stopped train, looking at a pair of pants lying across the track. As we got closer, I realized the pair of pants had feet sticking out of them.

#8

“Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile
Egg-shell mind”*

-Jim Morrison

#9

I’ve seen a bunch of roadkill, but it was of the animal variety. The worse was a horse that was hit by a compact car. The horse had to be shot by a deputy, the driver of the car was taken away in an ambulance.
I have killed a bunch of deer myself on the highway, been nearly killed myself.
I can’t imagine hitting a human. Eeek.
I have driven up on an overturned log truck before any help was there, the driver was deceased, the passenger was injured and trapped. I talked to him til police got there, he was understandably freaked the eff out. He lived.

#10

The only body that I have seen on the freeway was that of a Japanese businessman that decided to end his life while visiting Southern California. He decided that the best way to do it would be to jump off of an overpass onto the I-405 in Long Beach during rush hour. We were the last car to get through before the CHP closed the road. There were at least 10-12 cars pulled over onto the shoulder that must have either seen the incident (can’t really call it an accident) or run over the body.

#11

I haven’t seen the sheet covered bodies, but a couple of things have been worse, in my opinion.

In Summer, 1966, my family ran a boarding house of sorts. I was 14, and a couple of residents were young soldiers from the Army post next to town. One night they were going to a package store (“beer joint”) a couple of blocks away and offered to be me a soda if I’d help them carry a couple of cases home. As we approached the store a driver lost control (or something) and crashed into a concrete utility pole across the street. It appeared to me the steering column had penetrated his chest just about in the center of his breastbone. It was pretty deep, and there was an awful lot of blood. There was nothing we could do. The store’s proprietor had already called the police, and there was of course no 911 in those days. The soldiers decided they didn’t want beer that night.

In Spring, 1970, several of us on a work crew were returning from Phenix City to Montgomery on a Sunday night. We came upon an 18-wheeler whose cab was on fire. The driver was apparently trapped inside, and his screams sounded awful. We couldn’t get anywhere near the cab on account of the heat. There was no way to call anyone until we came to a house several miles away. They allowed the crew chief to call the Highway Patrol.

#12

hen I was a kid, I remember car commercials touting their ‘deep dish steering wheels’. Apparently the idea was that the ‘deep dish’ steering wheel would absorb some impact and reduce the possibility of impalement.

#13

My first job was at Ford in 1979. I was a programmer developing a system to analyze crash tests. The point of the test was to measure steering column intrusion–the distance the steering column moved into the passenger compartment following a 30 MPH head-on collision. This was done because of a federal regulation limiting intrusion to 4 inches. The regulation probably saved many lives but was too late for that poor soul.

#14

I don’t see that quote or even a mention of a trooper Axtman in either linked article.

#15

She wasn’t mentioned in the second link. The article in the first link has been updated since I posted it.

#16

Years ago I was heading home on I5 north and was caught in a jam because a motorcyclist heading west on the 85th St overpass hit the rail and catapulted himself onto the northbound lanes of I5. Landed on some unfortunate motorist’s hood.

#17

When my son was around fifteen or so a neighbor got hit by a car along with his two daughters, aged three and one, while walking to the local C-store. They were on the tarmac under a tarp in the blazing Sacramento sun because he didn’t have his ID on him and they couldn’t move the bodies until someone identified them. My son was friends with his teenaged daughters and spent a fair amount of time at their house so he stepped up and ID’d them so his wife and daughters wouldn’t have to come home to find them dead and been baking on the asphalt for hours. Man, that was awful.

#18

I was on a police ride-along while I was in law school and was taken to the scene of a street shooting less than two minutes after it happened. An overweight black guy was just lying there, dead - and there was a lot of blood. A sobering experience for me.

#19

Since it’s been bumped…dead guy above the freeway. :eek:

#20

I once drive past a really bad motor cycle accident where judging by the tarps either 2 young children died, or 1 adult was ripped in half.