I’ve seen a couple mild fender-benders, but the most recent incident was mid-December a couple years ago. A girl was crossing the road at an intersection, against the light. The girl was walking a bike alongside her. A guy who was turning right didn’t see them and as he began to accelerate, he bumped her and the bike and both fell down. The guy got out to see if she was ok. I have first aid certification so I and a couple other people went over to see if help was needed. The bike had been between her and the car and absorbed most of the blow (the front wheel was toast), and the girl was fine. Her English was not good, and that combined with the shock made it all but impossible for her to understand anything we were asking her. The guy and the other witnesses there tried to tell her that she had been crossing against the light and shouldn’t have, but she kept trying to indicate that it was the driver’s fault. She was unhurt and there were already 3 other people there, so I left. I don’t know what ended up happening with all that.
I heard an accident just last night. I was on the computer and had the window open a bit. Around 2am I heard the sound of someone accelerating fast and shifting gears down the road, then a horrible squeal and a crunch that made me wince. I was waiting to hear sirens but didn’t. I’m guessing whoever it was wasn’t hurt (at least not badly) and took off again. Had police or ambulance gotten involved, he probably would have been charged with reckless driving, because that’s what it sure sounded like he was doing.
I’ve only seen in person fender benders and once a car that skidded on the snow into a parked car. Busted up the parked car pretty good (if there was someone in the passenger seat, they would have had serious injuries) but the car taht skidded was an SUV had had just small damage.
I’ve seen the aftermath of bad accidents (benefits of being in a fire department.) You’d be suprised how twisted metal anf ibergalss can get and how hard it can be to get someone out of there.
I’ve seen two, not counting the ones that I’ve participated in.
One of them was a disabled car right past a major intersection. Another car turned left onto the road the disabled one was on and slammed right into the back of it. Didn’t look like any injuries, though – he was only going about 30 mph.
The other one, my father and I were driving back to our workplace from lunch, in the right-hand lane of the freeway. I look over to the left, and there’s a car in the left lane suddenly heading the wrong way, nearly on its side, with its right two wheels up on the concrete barrier diving the freeway from the central HOV lane. Unfortunately, we were going too fast to be able to see what happened to it; I presume it got smashed fairly severely, and hope nobody was seriously injured.
I’ve seen several - a few of them a little too up-close-and-personal, if you know what I mean.
One of the most deserved ones happened at an intersection where I was waiting to make a left turn. This was a controlled intersection (with traffic lights) and it had a double left-turn lane. I am about 3 cars back in the leftmost lane and the light was solid green (yield to oncoming trafic) rather than a green arrow. The second left turn lane was empty. As I’m waiting there, watching a steady stream of traffic coming from the opposite direction, a car zips past me on the right and turns left, directly into oncoming traffic. By the time I can form the thought "What a complete jackass, there is a loud thud and crash. The jackass is spun 180 and his car comes to rest backed against a light pole. The look on his face was one of classic stunned astonishment, as if he expected the oncoming traffic to somehow avoid him.
While I felt very badly for the person in the other car, they had done nothing wrong, and certainly didn’t deserve to have their car and evening destroyed like that, it was perversely gratifying to see someone so abruptly and decisively punished for their assholish behavior. Tried convicted and sentence carried out automatically by the Court of Physics.
The first was about 20 years ago. I was following another car down a street when for no reason at all, it started fishtailing and wound up on it’s side in some old lady’s yard. I had stopped to see what was up and about the time I got up to the car, she comes out into the yard and asks, “Is he on drugs?” Turned out I knew the guy from school and no, he wasn’t on drugs or anything else. He’d just looked down and drifted. When he looked back up and saw what was going on he over corrected and it was all downhill from there. I pushed his car back over on it’s wheels and he apologized to the lady and promised to come back and repair the damage to her yard. And then we all drove away.
The second was only a few years back. I was driving down the interstate and for some reason I actually looked in the rear-view mirror. Something I seldom, if ever, do. The car behind me starts fishtailing for no apparent reason and finally spins out in the median. No other vehicles anywhere near it and no wind to speak of. Thought to myself, “Now that was interesting.” and kept on going.
Hrrmm… Never thought about it until now, but there seems to be a trend developing. Wonder if I should be concerned.
If I have seen anything but minor accidents, they must not have left an impression as I can’t even recall them. I didn’t even see the worst one I was in - as I had my eyes closed at the time (no I wasn’t driving).
However, my former roommate saw an accident which caused her to never drive again. She refused to even renew her license for over 20 years. She was outside her work, smoking a cigarette. A compact car (with two elderly female occupants), was coming down a steep hill. A very large construction type truck was going the other way, up the hill. The car hit ice and skidded right into the path of the truck. Because of where she was standing, my roommate had a perfect view of BOTH women being decapitated.
4 months ago. I saw it because I was in it. Level 5 trauma care. nuff said. (Yeah I have recovered and so has the other person. I have some nerve damage in my shoulder and a little guilt but that is getting better with time. It could have been worse, including me not sitting here typing this.)
I witnessed a horrific motorcycle crash one evening while driving through Katy, Texas.
It was dusk, and a guy on a Harley was riding about 75 yards ahead of me when a car turned in front of him. His bike T-boned the car, and he went flying over and to the right, landing in the gutter of a cross street.
I was the first one on the scene, but this was back in 1982, before I had CPR and first aid training, and before everyone on the planet had a cell phone, so I didn’t know what to do. The poor man was all twisted up, his arm under his body at an awful angle, and the wrist on his other arm was clearly broken. There was blood coming from his ears and nose, and he was struggling, trying to move. He clearly had a head injury, but he didn’t seem to be bleeding externally anywhere. I kept telling him to lie still, debating whether I should leave the scene to call for help, or hope that another passerby would stop. Mercifully, someone came out from a nearby business and I told him to call 911.
I didn’t do much but talk to him while we waiting, asking him the whole time to please stop trying to move, telling him that help was coming, help was coming.
Geeze, just typing this up was hard. I can see it all in my mind like it happened yesterday. I was 19 years old and had only been in Katy for a few days, on a job. To this day I wonder what happend to him, wonder whether he lived.
I saw one maybe 10, 15 years ago. I was driving with some golfing buds, two lane 45 mph-ish road. Coming around a corner in the opposite direction was this big old 1976-ish BOAT Pontiac. He came around the turn too fast, his back end slid out in the gravel. He shot across the road (in front of me but well in front) overcompensated and veered back off his side. Up a bank and THROUGH a telephone pole. Not into it but straight through. I’ll never forget, seeing in my rear view mirror, the top 2/3s of the pole, still attached to the wires, swinging back and forth. Turns out, the driver had had a few too many, didn’t want to hang around for the cops to arrive, and DROVE AWAY. Boy, they just don’t build cars like they used too.
I’ve seen a few. The most dramatic was a headon, many years back. I was standing alongside the road and a woman made a rolling left in front of another car, it was a “Y” intersection so she was probably doing around 35 and the other car around 50. I can still remember the strange feeling of knowing it was going to happen and unable to do anything about it. This was before mandatory seat belts, but the guy had his on. He hit his face on the wheel and had a bloody nose, maybe broken. The woman was pretty messed up.
On a rather windy bit of Northern Atlanta suburban road. I and another car are behind a drunk driver in a light truck. Said truck is operating too quickly on the road, and attempts a rapid change of lane/direction. Laws of physics kick in, and at 25 yards ahead of me, said truck loses it and starts flipping/rotating around the axis defined by its’ drive shaft. Truck comes to a stop, drunk driver staggers out and away he goes into the adjacent woods/subdivision.
I’m stopped at an intersection. Light goes green, a car immediately ahead of drives across the intersection, gets T-boned by another car violating the green light.
I’ve witnessed a spectacular - more intense than the movies - wreck, right in front of me.
My ex boyfriend and I were following behind another friend who decided he was going to race a Porsche on a road unknown to him. The ex’s car wasn’t “built” yet so we decided to hang back and watch.
As we curved around the unknown back roads I got a sick feeling in my stomach. I told the ex to follow slowly.
The 2 cars that were racing accelerated to 100+ on this backroad. Simply put, the road turned and the driver (our friend) didn’t. His car went careening off the road. The view from behind was something you’d see in the movies. We saw the taillights disappear and a cloud of dust came up. Then we saw the taillights & headlights flipping end over end atleast 4 times. It flipped over a highway on-ramp. and ended up in the grassy section between where several highways join together.
I can still remember the feeling I had after seeing that wreck. It was like my heart stopped and I was thinking "This is unreal! :eek: " My ex and I stopped where the road curved, got out and ran towards our friend’s car. We could see a small flame coming from underneath the hood. By the time we got to the car our friend and his passenger had gotten out safely and were far away from the car.
They were dusty and a shaken up but both of them managed to walk away with no more than a few stitches to the driver’s hand and head.
The car didn’t do so well. To explain just how much flipping the car did - there was not a dent-free area on any part of the car.
They were lucky to be alive and even luckier to walk away from that wreck.
We never saw the Porsche again.
(To avoid any harassment or comments - I do not condone street racing. I think it is irresponsible and dangerous. It’s one thing to put your hown life at risk but putting other people’s lives at risk is definitely wrong.)
I’ve been in several. One rollover, that was the only time I was hurt.
I was driving a sport van (smaller than a minivan, but dorkier than an SUV) I was going about 20 mph in a neighborhood.
I was hit in the right, rear quarter panel by a late-for-work guy going about 50.
I rolled so slowly, that I had time to think, Man, it’s going to be hard climbing up to that passenger’s side window…
Then I was hanging from the seatbelt.
The stereo was blasting and the motor was running. I figured out how to turn off the radio, but the ignition was beyond me. One of the firemen turned it off later.
The guy who hit me dragged my door open, while yelling, “Are you ok?” “Are you ok?” “Are you ok?” Until I told him getting out was a bit complicated, so could he please stop shouting? I managed to get myself out of the seatbelt, then out of the car.
When I stood up, he said he thought I should sit down. I told him very reasonably, that I’d just gotten up, why would I want to sit down?
He responded with, “You’re bleeding.”
I looked down at my hand and saw a quickly expanding pool of blood near my left foot. I thought, who could be bleeding that much? I didn’t hurt anywhere, so it couldn’t be me… I’d put my left elbow through the side window, then dragged it on the pavement. I had 28 stitches in it and had glass come out of it a year later.
The vanette was totaled.
Once, driving on a packed freeway, a '65 Mustang, four cars ahead of me, “stood up.” I guess she rear ended the car in front of her. Whatever it was, the car was, at least for a moment, standing on its rear bumper.
I spent the next hour on the ground, holding the driver’s head still until the 'medics could get her on a backboard.
Another one was a convertible that flipped, tossing the unbelted, 11 year old passenger into the medium.
I was going the opposite direction. I pulled over on the medium (it was unusually wide) and ran across.
By the time I got there, a crowd had gathered and a reservist cop, and a hospital assistant were doing CPR. However, the girl was trying to get away from them. She had a strong pulse, and she was breathing .
I stopped them from doing anymore damage.
She had hit her head, knocking a palm-sized piece of bone from the side of her head. The lining that protects the brain was intact, so I just made sure no one touched it, and waited for the bus.
She ended up in my unit. So I took care of her the next day at work.
She did fine, by the way.
I was coming up from the inner harbor in Baltimore and stopped at a light. The car to the left of me stopped so that it’s back end was pretty much right beside my door. The car behind it didn’t stop. At all. WHAM! I was like WTF? Lots of broken lights, but no one was hurt.
I got off from work and got onto the Baltimore beltway. It was raining, and as usual the beltway backed up. I started to slow down, knowing that there was a major traffic snarl ahead. Some idiot in a station wagon didnt’ slow down, then when it was too late, realized what a stupid thing they had done and slammed on their brakes. They skidded about a hundred yards then slammed into the car in front of them. There was quite a bit of damage to the cars, but no serious injuries.
I was going into work one morning, backwhen I worked in downtown Baltimore, and stopped at a light. Across the intersection, the light turned green and cars started moving forward. Just then, a pickup truck going VERY VERY FAST apparently thought he could make the light before it changed. He was wrong. He went up over the hood of the little white car that had just pulled forward, and the truck flipped over. It had one of those tool boxes on the back that immediately dumped all of its tools all over the road, and I looked over thinking holy shit there’s a flying pickup truck heading towads me. :eek: There were cars in front of me and cars behind me, so I was stuck. I couldn’t move. The pickup truck (after spinning 1 and 1/4 rotations in the air) slammed down on the ground and started skidding directly towards my door, and I braced for the impact. The truck stopped about two feet away from my door. I jumped out of my car, and a bunch of other people jumped out. The guys inside the truck were screaming to get out, and couldn’t because the truck was on its side and they couldn’t get the door open. Everyone outside the truck just stood there. I jumped up on top of the truck and opened the door, and helped pull the guys out. One guy’s forearm was all cut up. The truck landed on its side, so he probably had his arm against the window when it hit. Either his arm got cut up from all of the glass shattering or from skidding along the pavement, or both. There were two other guys in the truck who probably needed a change of underwear, but were otherwise ok.
I was heading into work on I-70 heading into Baltimore, when a car about four cars in front of me drifted into the lane beside it, hit a truck, then went flying to the left and off the road. The car flipped end over end with some serious air time, then rolled several times. I thought holy crap I just watched someone kill themselves. I and a bunch of other people stopped and jumped out, and surprisingly the driver and the woman who had been in the back seat both got out of the car without any assistance. The woman in the back seat had a broken nose. The driver was mostly unhurt. Apparently they were coming in from somewhere, and had been driving most of the night. The lady at the wheel fell asleep, drifted into the semi beside her, woke up when she hit the truck, and jerked the wheel left, causing her car to go flying off the side of the road.
Many years ago, when I was in high school in West Virginia, I was driving with a friend of mine when we saw a semi coming up an exit in the opposite direction flip over. Apparently he was going around the turn when the load in the trailor shifted. The trailor went over, then pulled the cab of the truck over with it, slamming it against the ground. I saw the truck driver bouncing around inside the cab when it hit. We immediately pulled off on the nearest exit and ran into a restaurant to call 911, then went back around to get on the same entrance ramp where the truck had been. By the time we got there, a police car had already arrived, and the truck driver was sitting on the guard rail smoking a cigarette. His hands were shaking, and he was a bit cut up, but he was basically ok.
I was taking some classes at UMBC. One night, after class as I was walking back to my car, some guy in an old 1970’s era big car (a big buick or oldsmobile or something, I don’t remember) came around the turn and slammed into a little black sports car that was parked on the side of the road. It pretty much took the back end off of the sports car, and you could barely see any damage at all on the 1970’s era car. The campus police pulled up, and the guy who had been driving raised his hand and said “I did it. It was my fault.” I can’t imagine the look on the guy’s face when he came back from class and saw his sports car completely mangled.
I was going to town one morning last July and a car in oncoming traffic crossed the line and ran the truck in front of me off the road and I thought, “And he’s about to hit me”, so I ran of the road too. I looked back and he hit the car behind me head on. The driver of the car that caused it all was really drunk. The woman in the car behind me did not survive. It was 11:30 AM. That was not the most recent accident with a fatality that I have witnessed, it just stands out. The most dangerous thing most of us do in America is drive or ride in cars, the threat of terrorism means nothing to me.
I would think that a motorcycle crash would be hard to witness. Not that regular old car accidents can’t be deadly, but at least in a car you have some protection. I almost saw a motorcycle accident last weekend. The driver was so focused on weaving full-speed through traffic that he almost ran into a car that was stopped at a red light. He stopped so suddenly that the bike stood vertical on its front wheel. I was amazed that he didn’t crash.
Years ago I witnessed a car accident on my way to work. A driver tried to make a left turn into oncoming traffic. Unfortunately the oncoming driver didn’t have time to brake and ended up hitting the side of the first driver’s car. I ended up being a witness for the police and insurance company investigations (the guy who was turning tried to pin the blame on the woman in the oncoming car).
The boys and I were visiting my family and were riding in my dad’s van. We were stopped in a left-turn lane. A sedan was next to us, also waiting at a red light.
A truck came from behind and smashed the rear of the sedan before it managed to stop.
The driver of the sedan got out of the car quickly. He was in shock, and kept saying “Thank God the kids weren’t with me.” There were two car seats in what was left of the back seat of the sedan.
The driver of the truck also got out, cursing. His main concern seemed to be whether he’d keep his job after messing up the truck and missing the delivery deadline :eek: He appeared to be under the influence of something, I do not care to speculate what, except that he didn’t act like someone who should still be driving.
The intersection was a busy one and several witnesses volunteered to wait for the police, so we drove off. Figured there was no sense exposing the little flodnaks to any more of that than they’d already seen. But it was a real There But For The Grace Of God moment. If we’d been in that lane… the car seats in the back seat of our van were not empty… not nice to think about.
