The violence of a car crash...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Do you know just how violent a car crash is? Screeching tires, busting glass, dust flying, liquids pouring; it all yells, CAR CRASH! So very loudly and suddenly it all comes to a halt.
I work in the body shop buisness. We also tow cars. I’ve seen mild bump ups, devestating crashes to burned beyond belief vehicles. I’ve seen death and disfigurig injuries. I also get to see the leftover fluids, skin and hair. Scalp an hair from a 2 year old child, bloodied flip flops and food wrappers. Open containers of alcohol.

 Today we pulled in a brand new tahoe. You'd think a big vehicle such as that tank is so safe. right? In a head on collision it's not much better than anyother car. The story is the woman tried to pass in an area of low visibility, she swerved to miss a car and BLAM!!! She hits a tree head on, directly on her side, at over 55 mph. Truly devastating. This woman is close to my uncle and aunt,  her family is upstanding and kind. She had to be taken away on a life flight to duke. I imagine massive internal injuries is the case.

The kicker, the floorboard of the vehicle was pushed up,a nd the thin meltal near the e brake and under the dash apparently took hetr legs almost off. We’ve all seen a cheese pizz right? The way the sauce and cheese mingles and mixes…That’s what chunks of her fleash looked like on the floor and stuck to the metal and plastic. I mean large chunks mixed in amongst cds, food wrappers and personal affects. Imagine having to see your wife, mother or childs skin in that manner.

I also see the end to a chance encounter with deer. It usually bashes the front of the vehicle badly. You’ll see the usual, hair in busted head lamps, snot and crap on the hood and winsheild. How’s about a car that hit a 16 year old kid. He was roller blading and flew into the road. It was really dark and he wasn’t seen until he hit the glass.
I looked the car over and saw something in the glass. Upon closer inspection I realized I was looking at fabric from his jeans. An even closer look revealed skin and tissue. Just shards and pieces, but somewhat sickening as well.

All it takes is one moment and we are hurt or gone. Distraction and poor judgement are horrible. My biggest fears are total anarchy and dying in a car crash. I fear it so badly.

Hug yourselves and your family, and for goodness sakesput down the phone, stop being distracted by sights and sounds and drop that burger. Be safe for you and yours. Be safe for me.Stop by my shop if ever in the area, Ill show you a few sights that’ll mae you think for a while at least…

Sharing personal experiences will be greatly appreciated…

2

Oh Govindha.

What horrible, horrible images to have in your head.

Peace.

3

There are people in the world who clean up after the awful things that the rest of the world suffers. You’re obviously one of those people.

I’m an E.M.T. I’ve also been in this position quite a few times. It is very frightening, and there is really no way to get through the images and realizations aside from time. I know that may sound like crap, but it is my experience. The worst calls I’ve been on ( including the September 11th attack in NYC ) have required a lot of time for the emotional trauma to subside.

People get taken out. It’s a frightening by-product of the speed of our society. I am terribly sorry for the pain you’re feeling, I would encourage you to find people who have had to deal with this kind of a thing and find a way to unload a lot of what you have trapped inside. Feel free to e-mail me, if talking to a stranger might work for you. If not, fine too.

I don’t want to share personal experiences here, it will rapidly turn into a gore-fest, and that’s not very healing.

Cartooniverse

4

Just a tidbit: a 2000-pound car travelling at 55 MPH dissipates 549,338 joules of energy, which is equivalent to .26 pounds of TNT – about a stick of dynamite. And you’re in the middle of it.

5

One of my biggest fears on long car trips is a car crash. Excuse me, won’t you?

<hides under the bed>

Really, I’m so sorry to hear about the friend of your family. An update would be appreicated, if you feel up to it.

On a lighter note, my father was in a minor fender-bender when I was a kid. He had a cut on his forehead, but nothing else. He came home with his head bandaged, and I raced in the bedroom and told my mom.

My mom said, “Is the car all right?”

I know it sounds heartless, but she could hear my Dad talking to my brothers in the other room. It’s funnier now that time has passed.

6

Funny you should mention this. I just saw “Adaptation” and there are two pretty disturbing car crash scenes. Ever since I saw the movie, I have been thinking about how jarring it is to see gruesome “realistic” crashes versus the bang-em-ups that tend to be portrayed. Truly horrifying.

7

SHUT UP AND DRIVE YOUR DAMN CAR!

Cell phone use in a moving vehicle should be against the law in every state.

8

The woman is ok. I say ok, she is alive. Her legs were crushed. Her ankles are broken, her hips were damaged badly(pins will be needed). She may have fallen asleep, possibly had a seizure, lots of speculation, but she will live.

The tahoe is still there. The meat is rotting and it all seems so strange that part of her is still there. What a crash does to a human is almost unbelievable at times. The key is to remove the feeling and horror of the situation and look at it for what it is.

That’s hard for some, but for me, it’s rather easy. Maybe that’s sad, but when it comes to helping those in need its essential, I believe.

cartooniverse, thanks, I’ll email you soon.I’d like to talk to you.

9

Six years and five months ago to the day, I was in a Dodge Neon driving up to Morris, MN, with two friends. Jodi was driving, I was in the front passenger seat leaning against the window half-asleep, and Erin was in the back, behind the driver.

Somehow, Jodi lost control of the car on the two-lane highway and skidded into the other lane, and a pickup truck hit us squarely on the driver’s side. Erin was airlifted to North Memorial in Minneapolis, and was pretty banged up. (Happy update: she’s finally completed her degree requirements at San Diego State and has graduated this past month!)

While waiting for the EMTs to arrive, Jodi and I were packed into the cab of a waiting truck so we wouldn’t stand out in the cold. I recall very little about the experience - I wasn’t aware during the crash, and I only have brief glimpses of memory involving the ambulance to the hospital and the night spent there, but one thing has always nagged me.

We were hit on the driver’s side, yet the front passenger door was missing. I’m still trying to figure out how that happened.

10

Govindha and Cartooniverse, along with any other emergency personell who may be reading this. I must say, of all the jobs, yours have to be the must under-appreciated. I mean, the absolute horrors that you must have seen, and do see, on a daily basis.

I mean, coming across one body, or seeing the results of one crash, would be enough to haunt me for quite a while. Even seeing pictures of horrible stuff like that is enough to make me queasy, and I have a pretty strong stomache.

I certainly appreciate what you guys do on a daily basis, as I for one, certainly would not be able to handle seeing stuff like that.

As for the safety of SUV’s, it is highly overrated. In a car to car collision, the SUV would win just by virtue of its increased weight, but at the expense of the Honda Civic that it just drove up and onto, killing all the passengers.

In a crash with a solid object though, they are actually less safe. The rigid frame keeps it from being able to absorb energy as readily, resulting in stuff like the OP.

11

Ino, the front passenger door was gone because of the impact along the upper frame of the car. The vertical bars supporting the roof and defining the frame of the passenger compartment were torqued when the head-on happened. That energy was dissippated partially by bending the entire frame outwards and to the side where the passengers sit. The net effect is that the door was popped away off it’s frame. That kind of energy dissippation may well have saved a life. The physics of that kind of accident are awful to behold- the massive forces must go SOMEWHERE.

I’m grateful the door was lost, rather than one of you.

12

Me too. It was touch and go for a while with Erin, but she’s doing just fine now. I never really thought of the door as releasing stress that way, either.

[sub]And it’s L-no, not I-no![/sub]

13

Oh. My apologies, I misread your name. :frowning:

14

No worries. I tell myself that if I correct one person a day, at ~36000 users, it’ll only take me … one hundred years.

Wow, that’s depressing.

15

I watched a car crash last night. I’m thinking about starting a thread, but here’s the gist. The car two cars ahead of me on a stretch of 2-lane road suddenly swerved into on-coming traffic and hit a minivan pretty much head-on at about 40 mph (65 kph). People in both cars were injured, but fortunately no one else was as traffic backed up. I hope they will be all right, but one woman seemed pretty badly injured. I couldn’t do anything to help them.

Govindha, Cartooniverse, Badge and all the rest of you EMT’s, policemen, firemen, and other emergency workers, thank you. I’d also like to thank the tow-truck drivers who wind up cleaning up after the wreck. I was pretty well taken care of by a good one a few months ago, and he was quite good about dealing with me in my rather rattled condition.

CJ

16

I was in a total loss accident, once upon a time, no fatalities.

When you’ve just recovered consciousness and reached down to the ceiling to find your glasses, heard no response from the obviously mangled front seat where family members were, taken the time to work out how to unbuckle the seatbelt that saved at least your life so you can let yourself take a fall into the sea of cubed glass that is the remainder of the windshield, and found that the door nearest you will not open because the car decided to bend like an acordion in that direction, you’re pretty much not tracking reality like you should.

It is a very good thing to find calm and competent emergency response people on the scene.

Unfortunately, those guys showed up later. When I finally decided that kicking the window out would be a bad idea and that I should try the other door first, it was already open. The other two people in the back seat had been helped out. The guy who had helped them out was reaching for me and calling my name, which indicates that I’d been some time in getting around to the decision, since he was a passing motorist.

The guy who was reaching to help me out had been in a fire once upon a time. A bad fire. He had some serious facial burns.

I remember thinking “Oh, great, not only am I dead, I’m in Hell, and the demons are coming for me”.

I wish I’d have been in a frame of mind to get that guy’s name, and the name of the trucker who called in the ambulance, and the EMT’s who checked us out, and the RCMP member who drove those of us who didn’t get an ambulance (and our dog) to the hospital, and the countless other people who made sure that none of us died in what could have been a very bad situation.

Unfortunately, I was not functioning much at the time.

I’ll take this opportunity to thank everybody who does that, to express my sympathy for those who clean up after it happens, and to tell you about my souvenir.

Two days later we were driving past the spot where it happened, and I demanded that we pull over. I wanted to see the place I thought I had died. The car had been taken away, the measurements had been done, there wasn’t much to mark it, but I did find one thing.

There was a sticker on the windshield, and it had kept the cubed up safety glass together on its backing, and was still perfectly legible. “Seat Belts Save Lives”.

I keep it on my book shelf.

17

i never was part in a crash that resulted more than a few bruises &cuts. I am thankful.
I have never seen a crash, nor would i want to.

I also want to take a part and thank all those who help those in need. Be it bystanders, emergency-personnel, or the clean-up crew.

I once had a vivid dream that i was holding the severed head of my boyfriend, after a car crash. I dread such a thing to happen to me or anyone.
For all those ‘macho’ heads, be it female or male:
You’re so friggin sure of your driving skills. But you cannot be sure of those other 30 cars around you. Your ‘swift move’ of changing lanes, zooming between cars. You might escape untouched. But i promise you, one day, in that split second you look into your rearview-mirror, all you’ll see is the misery and death youcaused.

18

I live in a place where otherwise intelligent, healthy, educated, live-loving people let their toddlers stand up in the back or between the two front seats while mom or dad drives. Talk about horrifying. One tap on the brakes and that kid is going through the windshield, and let me tell you, there are plenty of sudden stops, driving around here. I just want to scream when I see it. I think stories like the ones in the OP are important for people to hear. There is such denial about the violence of car crashes.

19

life-loving, I mean. Not live-loving. Or love longing.

20

Creepiest thing ever, for me. This image sticks in my mind after 20 years. Not that it’s gory, although truly sad.

I wasn’t friends with this guy as much as an acquaintance. He was a classmate and he worked at the gas station with my best friend.

He and another guy were coming back from a bar in Canada (this was when we were seniors in high school). The guy driving was doing about 100 down the TransCanada Highway. He drifted right when a truck came the other way. He hit the dirt and it sent him shooting back into the highway. He over corrected and ended up sliding sideways straight into a guard rail at speed. The rail came up through the floorboard, clipped the driver’s leg and got the guy I knew right in the chest and shot him out the back door.

The image that sticks with me: on some sort of morbid pilgrimage, we went to see the wrecked car at the body shop … and his shoes were still in the front seat. I doubt the EMT’s would have put them there. It seems that he was literally torn out of his shoes … and that’s all there was of this guy I knew in high school. His shoes on the floor boards of a wrecked car.

Creepy.