I used to commute every day on Malibu Canyon Road, one of the main routes between the San Fernando Valley and the beach. (Note resemblance to the Bolivian Death Road.) It’s a narrow two lanes but with fairly gentle curves, so you can easily get up to 60+ MPH if you’re lucky not to get stuck behind some slowpoke.
I’m driving home around 2 a.m., when a drunk driver suddenly loses control and slams head-on into the vehicle two cars ahead of me. I came around the corner just in time to see Car #1 smashed up in the center of the highway, while Car #2 tumbles over the edge of a 200 foot cliff. :eek:
Luckily, Car #2 slides only 30 feet or so, and stops. The car between me and Car #1, who (I think) wasn’t hit, does a quick 180 turn and speeds back towards Malibu, presumably to call 911 (this was before cell phones existed) or perhaps they were Mexicans fearing deportation, I have no idea which. So now it’s just me and these two bashed-up cars, in the middle of a narrow canyon road. In the dark.
The driver stumbles out of Car #1 – he’s visibly shaken, but doesn’t have a scratch on him. Pretty amazing, since the whole front of his car is demolished, looking like the aftermath of a NASCAR driver who T-boned the wall at Daytona.
The guy asks me: “What happened?”
“You’re in a car accident.”
“Am I okay?”
“You look fine. Were you wearing a seat belt?”
“Yes.”
“Saved your fuckin’ life, pal.”
“No, seriously. Am I okay? Am I bleeding anywhere?”
“Nope.”
“I feel like my face is covered in blood.”
Another car approaches, I flag them down. Tell them what happened, and how I think somebody’s already calling 911, but I’m not sure. So they drive on to find a pay phone. This is the moment when I realize I’m still wearing my security guard uniform, so everyone’s looking to me for direction. I decide to pretend as if I’m taking command, even though I don’t have a fucking clue what to do.
I tell the driver: “Maybe you should lie down or something.”
“No, I’m afraid if I lie down, I’ll pass out.”
“Umm…okay. Why don’t you direct traffic, then?”
So while the shaky, battered, halfway-into-shock driver blearily directs cars & trucks around the wreck (not many that late at night) I decide to check out Car #2. The second driver’s unconscious, but can’t see broken bones or blood or anything. I start climbing down the steep embankment, but after just a few steps the loose gravel starts crumbling away, and the car SHIFTS and slides a few more inches down the ravine. I think for a moment and decide, if the car plummets all the way down the canyon, even if I’m trying to help him, that’s probably the type of thing that would weigh heavy on my conscience later, no matter how cool it would initially look. (Hey, I was 18 and a heavy metal fan, that’s how my thinking went back then.)
So I climbed back out of the canyon, and pretty soon a couple off-duty cops stopped by, followed shortly by regular fire trucks & paramedics. They went through the whole process of getting the guy out of Car #2 – the firemen had the same problem as I did with the car shifting, so they had to secure it by rope before they could even reach the door. It was all very surreal, like an episode of Emergency! unfolding before my eyes. One thing that surprised me was how the rescue personnel kept yelling at the second driver, even though he was knocked out cold. I didn’t know that rescue workers yelled at unconscious people.
Me & driver #1 helped out, though there wasn’t much for us to do. We did help lift the injured driver into the ambulance. At which point, one of the EMT’s said, “Hey, wait a second. Where’s the other driver?”
I pointed to the guy and said, “That’s him.”
The EMT took one look in the guy’s eyes and said, “Whoa, hold on everyone. We may have a second injury here.” (Oops.)
At that point, one of the cops took me aside and took my statement (I didn’t really see much except the aftermath), the ambulances left and the tow trucks arrived, and I went home. A few days later, I found out that driver #2 had died at the hospital.
Driver #1 was okay, though.
Anyway, that’s my one big accident story. (Perhaps later I’ll talk about the car that flipped over on the freeway and caught fire, but there wasn’t much to do about that one…)