How many fatalities have you seen?

I passed the site of a fatal crash this morning. The mess was still there, but the body wasn’t. But that got me thinking: How many fatalities have people seen?

The last I saw was several years ago, not far from Baker, CA. A van with ten or eleven people in it had a blowout and crashed. I think there were seven bodies lying under sheets. When I was in college I decided to leave class at the break, since I was doing very well and didn’t need to stay that night. A motorcyclist had been coming down the road, and a woman pulled out of the parking lot to make a left turn. He had a sheet over him, but someone lifted it off of his face to take a scene photo. When I was in high school there was a body under a sheet outside of a 7-11. Guy tried to rob the place and got shot for his efforts.

One, well the start of one. It was rather horrible. A man I’d been going out with for about 9 months shot himself, and I was the one to find him. He was still alive, but his family pulled the plug about a week after he did it. I was about 25 and it was pretty traumatic. No one had a clue, not even his best friends who’d grown up with him.

None.

When I was a kid, the family drove to NYC, mostly along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. At one point traffic was backed up do to a major accident. As we finally passed one of the vehicles, we could see the charred bodies of two people in the front seat.

When I was living in a college rooming house, one of my housemates hanged himself in his room. I was the one who found him.

Once in Midtown Manhattan I saw a bicyclist lose his balance and fall directly under the tires of a semi. He was squashed like a bug.

I’ve seen many people die in hospitals, including my parents, but that doesn’t count.

I used to be a volunteer EMT and saw lots and lots. Now I’m a foreign aid worker and I have seen many many more. In Indonesia, I remember one drive where we saw three dead bodies in one drive from Aceh to Meulaboh (I shit you not). If you count random executed people in the streets of Baghdad we are talking major sixth sense level of seeing dead folk. So many that it doesn’t really register. That can’t be healthy.

Two that I can think of, but somewhat removed from the action.

I was at the Seafair hydroplane races in '77, just a few days before my twelfth birthday. I was in a boat on the log boom, near the north end of the course. A driver named Jerry Bangs had an accident in the south turn (about a mile away), was thrown from his boat and killed.

And the woman who was lost overboard on my sailing trip a few years ago. I was in my bunk, woke up to “all hands on deck,” helped get the ship turned around, and went to my lookout post.

Not counting skeletons in museums (and one store), I’ve seen one. Driving to work one night, some guy (I read the details the next day) had jumped off an overpass into the freeway below. I forget the details—it was either a suicide, or the guy was so high/crazy/both he probably didn’t know what he was doing.

They had the lane blocked off as I passed—I think it was less than half an hour—and what had to be the body covered up by a tarp. Very flat—er, I don’t think he’d even been run over, just no muscle tone/air in the lungs. Poor bastard.

  1. Guy had a heart attack

  2. Guy was dead in alley after being shot - police tarp was blowing in the wind

I’ve seen a few. I saw one guy that was walking around his truck that was cut in half by a passing 18 wheeler. The splatter was all up the side of the truck. Horrible.

I’ve seen other casualties around on the highway.

One I can’t quite explain was a car parked at a service station with a sheet covered up person in the front seat.

I saw what I assumed to be a corpse at the site of an accident a few years ago. So one, I guess. I’ve never actually seen anyone die and I’ve never been within fifty feet of a dead body (that I know of!).

When I was a kid my parents used to take Sunday drives. I remember seeing people(not dead) injured on the road all the time. Cars are much safer now and you don’t see people ejected as often. Cars roll pretty easily.

With that as a backdrop, my friends and I were speeding along a two lane in Canada and came across an accident with four dead people in it. That was 50 years ago and I still remember the man in the rear seat of that 1957 Chevy with his head nearly removed as it stuck out of the back window. He had red hair and a gold ring on his finger. I never focused on the other three. Police were just waiting for pickup.

I’ve seen other fatalities beyond automotive.

A motorcyclist in the 1980s in the UK, single vehicle accident, hit a telegraph pole, my dad and I arrived 5 minutes after the incident. He died in the ambulance, so I guess that’s a fatality.

Hong Kong, 1993 - a Triad had been gunned down by another Triad. Cops everywhere and a corpse under a tarp.

Vietnam, 1995 - a van had driven down a shallow ravine, about seven people in it. I saw several other fatal accidents during that trip, but they’ve all blurred with time. The worst thing I saw there though wasn’t fatal.

Vietnam, 2005 - a guy on a motor scooter had been smushed by a car.

Vietnamese driving leaves a lot to be desired.

I was with my ex-husband when he died last year in the hospital. It was very strange to be there, as we…how shall I put this? did not get along, and I had not seen him in years. He was so out of it I don’t think he knew I was in the room. Our thirteen year old son, my mother, and one of his co-workers watched him go.

One. My husband and I witnessed a car accident and got out of our car to help (my husband is certified in first aid and CPR). There were two people injured in two different cars. There happened to be an EMT driving by and he went to one guy. My husband went to the other, but there was nothing he could do since the guy was trapped - he just held his hand and talked to him. I stood with him and called 911. “Our” guy died while we were waiting for help to show up. The guy in the other car was okay (well, he lived).

Personally witnessed? Four dead in a B-52D crash. I watched a good friend die when he was struck by lightning while inspecting a wing of another B-52D. A car crash I stopped by where the driver died in my arms. I saw a truck driver park and step out of his cab, and he was dead before his other foot hit the ground-blood clot.
Seven.

Just my grandpa. I was with him when he finally succumbed to lung cancer. I’ll never forget that last rasping breathe. He was a tough old bird, living two years past when the doctors said he would, and he chained smoked every day of the two years.

I was on an Amtrak traveling cross-country back in 1993 when our train hit a car that was stuck on the tracks in the middle of the night. The driver was outside of the car trying to get it moved when it was hit. Our train hit the car, the car hit the guy, and the guy got flung about 75 feet to an embankment to the side of the train. We were in the eleventh or twelfth car back so by the time the train was able to stop, we had a front row seat to the wreckage. It was pitch black outside, couldn’t see a thing, and we eventually saw the conductor or engineer investigating the scene w/ a flashlight. The light fell on the poor guy’s face and he was quite dead. They left the guy where he lay w/ a sheet over him until daybreak, so they could take photos and everything else that they need to do. Ended up being stuck there for about eight hours.

Some pedestrian decided to walk across the highway and encountered an RV.

Traffic on that side of the road was diverted around it.

Traffic on our side wasn’t. Right in the middle of the road, covered with a tarp waiting for the full emergency crew was the dead guy. The RV’s grill was barely dented.

On the way home from work one night on the freeway, I saw a woman who had fallen out of her car, and been subsequently hit by various vehicles. She no longer had a head, which was completely smooshed all over the road. I wasn’t expecting to see anything, as there were flares out, but no aid cars had arrived yet, and nothing was covered up yet.

A friend of mine has told me about walking on the way home from school one day and seeing a man’s head sticking out from under an RV, which had fallen off its jacks and was flat on the ground.