I’ve witnessed so many accidents, I wouldn’t have time to describe them here… even if I remembered all of them.
The first one I remember was when I was maybe 8. In those days we walked to school (yes, uphill both ways ;)), I was on my way home and was approaching a crosswalk without a crossing guard, only safety patrols telling the kids when to go. A friend’s little brother broke free of the patrols and dashed 2/3’s of the way across the street… where a car hit him. He bounced and rolled maybe 100 feet before stopping. I didn’t stop to check on him, I knew his brother was ahead of us so took off in pursuit. I finally caught him and convinced him I wasn’t lying. He ran off to get his mother and I walked home.
That was a Friday, I didn’t learn how the kid was until Monday… when I saw him and his brother walking to school. The kid was beat up looking, but had no even halfway serious injuries.
The most distrubing one I witnessed was a guy on a bike getting hit. It was a very hot and muggy day. He was a man in his 50s, giving off a Jimmy Buffet vibe with his floral shirt un buttoned, khaki shorts, and flipflops. It was a very wide intersection… three lanes each direction, not including turning lanes. He started across the road while the light was green (he was going west, I was the first car stopped going east), but didn’t make it to the far side before it turned red for him, but he needed to clear the intersection. A car full of a family of Indian descent that was in the last lane before the curb started when their light turned green and whacked the guy on the bike. The driver never looked any direction but forward.
It seemed to happen in slow motion. I swear I heard his head hit the pavement even though our windows were closed. One of his legs was at a bad angle. He cracked the windshield of the car that hit him. But there were so many witnesses and traffic, that my husband who was driving insisted we just go when our light turned green. I checked the local news every day for a week after with no mention of the accident, so he must have survived.
I saw a minor one happen once. I followed some doofus for MILES while he drove with his right turn-signal on. And eventually, we came to the entrance to a shopping center. A teenage girl was waiting to turn left out of the shopping center, saw his right turn-signal on, thought he was turning into the shopping center. She pulled out, he smacked her. Everyone was okay, but I had a feeling something like that would happen, and no way to tell doofus to turn his signal off. :smack:
I’ve seen several. Most recent was a screeching-tire gentle rear-end on the freeway followed by the sparking grind of the motorcyclist immediately following having to lay down the bike to stop short.
More serious was one I missed by maybe a minute. Years ago, my brother and I were on the freeway very late at night and came upon a surreal scene: a boxy passenger car (think K-car) upside down in the middle lane. There were no emergency vehicles, so it must have just happened. We were so stunned we didn’t stop, but we pulled over a quarter-mile past where there was a state patrolman parked on the shoulder and informed him of the incident. No idea how the driver managed the inversion.
The most serious incident I actually saw was a pedestrian getting wiped out in a crosswalk. I’ve posted about this before, but it seems to have been lost in a previous archive. The basics: I’m on a city bus. We’re at a stoplight; the parallel lane next to us is empty. The crosswise street is just changing from yellow to red. A pedestrian dashes from the corner, running across the face of the bus, perpendicular to our lanes. And a sports car comes zooming up in the neighboring parallel lane, timing his approach to the intersection so he hits the line right when it turns green. Car intersects human. WHUNK. Human disappears. Hat, however, falls to the pavement where the human used to be.
Then the bus pulls forward and continues on its way, while we riders stare backward at the receding scene.
I’ve seen one very bad one. I was young, not more than 7 or 8. It was only a few weeks before Christmas and we were on the way home from ice fishing. Next to the road was a small hill, decent for sled riding with a long enough stretch before the road to stop yourself. Unfortunately one little girl didn’t get stopped. She was a couple of years younger than me and I’ll never forget the image of her shooting into the road and disappearing under the car in front of us. The driver of the car didn’t even know what happened for 50 feet and didn’t get stopped for another 50. I didn’t see much after that. My dad and some other people went to try to get the girl out from under the car, it was bad enough that my dad had the other gentleman we were fishing with take me to my grandparent’s house. The only thing I heard about it, this from a bit of eavesdropping on my parents, was that she was a complete mess tangled up under the car. She didn’t make it. My parent’s took me to her grave to try to help me “emotionally heal”. I like to think I didn’t need much healing, but I’ll never forget two sights from that entire experience. Her sliding under the car and her small gravestone in the corner of the cemetery. My grandparent’s had a large hill behind there house with a small road at the bottom. It was the best hill in town for sledding, long and steep with some interesting bumps and such along the way(including a bird bath). It took me a long time to not leap off the sled anytime I came near the road.
I was in the Honda with my kids, it was their first birthday and they were asleep in the back. We were perpendicular to a very busy street (Lake-Cook Road, if you know Chicagoland), waiting to turn right.
As their light turned yellow, the eastbound guy did that left-turn-at-the-last-minute thing, despite the little pickup truck in the westbound lane who clearly had the right of way. Then another guy in a big SUV turned left, too, following the first. Blew right past me.
I thought there’d been a wreck, I thought the pickup had hit him, I knew there was no missing a collision, but the little pickup had veered to his left. I watched as he proceeded to tag 4 different vehicles, but he managed to avoid flipping and as far as I could tell, he didn’t hurt anyone. He was an excellent driver for managing that as well as he did.
I called the police when it happened, and then later testified on his behalf.
I’ve seen several, in the US and in Bangkok. The funniest one – if you can call it funny – was in Bangkok. A pickup slammed into the back of a taxi at an intersection late one night. It apparently did not notice everyone stopped at the red light. I was in a bus next to the taxi and happened to be looking out at that moment. The pickup was decrepit, and judging from the looks of the occupants inside, the driver may not have had a license. That could be why the driver backed up immediately and took off! The last I saw, several taxis were in hot pursuit of the pickup, racing after it along Sukhumvit Road. Late at night, so traffic was not at a standstill. I pity the occupants of the pickup if the taxis ever got ahold of them (which I suspect they did).
Outside of Boston, heading for a meeting on a business trip, I saw a smaller car on the other side clip a Caddy. The Caddy went right, hit the curb, and flipped right over the guard rail, landing on its roof. As good as a movie! Everyone stopped, and I ran over to the other side, and the guy in the Caddy, who was wearing his seat belt, was upside down but otherwise fine.
Second, on 880, a 6 lane road, this small truck started weaving from the fast lane two lanes over to the slow lane, then did it again to the fast lane, hit this poor woman, and then back to the slow lane where he stopped. I had noticed this guy being erratic so I had kept back. I stopped. He told the cop that the woman had hit him, I took great pleasure in giving the real story. A month later someone called me about this, I think from his insurance company. I said I’d be happy to testify this guy was at fault, and never heard from them again.
Yes. A car almost hit me on the way to my apartment. I heard a loud pop, instinctively turned around and saw a small black car carreening between the lanes. It must have been going way over the speed limit. The car hit a sale sign on the corner of the street. That was the only thing that stopped it.
What I didn’t see is that this car hit another car and that other car was pushed up the side street. The impact, which was the loud pop, tore off the back bumper. The guy that hit the car, his car was totaled. The front was nearly compacted in and good thing he had air bags. The guy, it turns out, was drunk. He didn’t have his licence. He might have been an illegal. He was driving his sister’s car!
The couple in the other car were college students. They were pretty cool but a little shaken up. They were just going to the mall and then to a party. It was some night for them. So the police arrested the guy and then me and the two went to a restaurant up main street. I think we all needed to chill after that. She did most of the talking on the phone because it was her car and I think the insurance covered it because they weren’t at fault and the guy was obviously in the wrong.
Not an accident per se, but during my last road trip last year, I was heading out of I think Indiana on the interstate, and I saw that the unmowed median had a “trail” leading into it, from the other direction, and then I saw the SUV which had “mowed” it, and a very confused looking black guy who had just gotten out of the car with a completely stunned look on his face.