I try not to rubberneck too much at car accidents (and never when I’m driving), but we passed this accident yesterday on our way home from Arkansas, and because traffic was so slow, I saw quite a bit.
This image shows what one of the cars looked like. What was amazing was that the entire front half of the SUV was sheered off and the engine was about 50 feet away from it. My husband was guessing that the occupants of the rolled over vehicle was badly injured or killed, but it was actually the other driver. We passed by just as they were cutting the Chevy truck victim out of the car. (I cars were in such bad shape I wasn’t even sure what they were when we saw them).
I know that car accidents are bad no matter when they happen, but I couldn’t help but feel that it was especially tragic to happen during the holiday weekend, especially if they were just returning home after spending time with family. I hope no Dopers were involved in this accident.
In the paper yesterday:
Pontiac cut in two after hitting guardrail at 90 mph,
front half with occupants goes airborne,
hits an 18 wheeler,
ejects driver.
The worst accident I ever saw was on CA Highway 17 on the way to Santa Cruz. A teenage boy had for some reason swerved into oncoming traffic. He had two girls sitting in the front seat of his convertible, neither were wearing seatbelts. They both died, thrown from the car. The driver of the oncoming car was also killed instantly, he probably didn’t even have time to react. The teenage boy was in a coma for a month. People who had actually seen the accident (I passed by a minute or two after it had happened) were hysterical on the side of the road. I saw a man crying, I think it was his coat over one of the bodies.
Why is it that the driver who causes the accident always seems to be the one person who survives? Maybe that’s one for Cecil.
DeadlyAccurate, it sticks with you for a while. Be thankful that the emergency response folks were there. It’s not a fun thing to deal with witnessing that kind of stuff just driving by, but it really sticks with you if you have to get up close and personal. I’m neither a Nurse, Nor a Carmen, but I’ve had the misfortion of being the first on the scene for three fatalities. Trauma aint pretty. Next time, resist the urge to look, you’ll thank yourself later.
And the driver ain’t always the one to survive. Trust NurseCarmen. And me.
They do call the (unbelted) front passenger seat the “Suicide Seat”, though.
I am very sorry you had to see a bad accident. However, you are so far from my daily experience that I don’t know where to start. Look, death happens, all the time. I once asked the chief Medical Examiner of New York City what he thought about the tragic and sudden death of the chief Medical Examiner of New Hampshire (blew a berry aneurysm in his brain). I mean, we all could have one of those cooking, right? He looked me in the eye and said, “Eat dessert first.”
Last year an 18 wheeler was driving through the small city I used work in. He went to make a right hand turn, the curb was one of the sloped ones, and he took it too tightly. There was an elderly gentleman with a walker standing at the curb who saw the truck coming, but couldn’t get out of the way in time. He was ground up under the tires is the only way I can describe it, it was pretty gruesome.
It really sucks having to see stuff like that, DeadlyAccurate. My inebriated self and 3 of my friends had the misfortune of coming upon a wreck on the side of a very desolate gravel road, as we were coming back from a party. By desolate, I mean it took us 30 minutes of driving to reach a paved road. There were 5 people in the car, three were on the ground some distance from their vehicle that rolled five times. We personally knew all the people involved, in fact had just talked to them not 20 minutes before. That’ll stick with me forever. Thankfully no one died.
Oh yeah, never ever ever EVER drink and drive. I had a DD. They did not.
Motoring along this summer, I was a bit back from a line of 4 cars going up a hill – the 4th car was small-to midsized, and decided to pass a truck, a panel truck, and one of those enormous metal dumptrucks what you see filled with gravel, etc. By the way, the passing line was on the other side…
I remember thinking, gosh, that’s ballsy.
Just as she got alongside the dumptruck at about 70 mph (I’m guessing, as the speed limit was 55), the driver of the dumptruck, who had no idea this wee car was on his left, made a left turn.
The front end of that wee car just disintergrated, and the wee car was spanged through the air as a pinball off a paddle – she hit the driver side of the truck so hard, he had to climb out; she bent his door shut.
When her car came to rest, she fell out of it talking on a mobile telephone, hysterically screaming and crying and trying to hug people – the driver of the dumptruck had dashed over to see if she was all right, and once he realised she was, gosh, did he shout at her…out of fear, delayed reaction, etc…
I lived near railroad tracks as a youth. It seemed at least once each summer a train would come to a screeching hault. I’d jump on my dirt bike and ride down to the RxR crossing and 50% of the tome I would find a mangled car with injured people climbing out. Never saw any bodies though. Thank God. Only in the last couple years did the RxR put up crossing gates. My guess is there must have been at least 10 bad accidents at that crossing.
Those same railroad tracks now are used to haul MOLTEN IRON in insulated “torpedo cars” between two of the steel mill processing plants in the area.
2000 degree molten iron…sounds like a good idea to have that rolling through town!!!
Back in the mid 1970’s when I was but a wee lad, my mom and my older brother and I were driving up to Bainbridge to see my mom’s older brother. We were on 95 North of Baltimore, right around the Maryland House rest stop. It was a really shitty day for driving, very heavy cloud cover, sleet and freezing rain. Just nasty.
So we see up ahead that there has been an accident and as we creep up to it this is what we see:
An old VW Bug had smashed into the back of an 18 wheeler.
Everything from the front bumper of the VW back to the rear seat had been compressed flat into a space of about 8 inches.
Not pretty.
This past Thanksgiving I was driving on the Baltimore Beltway on the way to my uncles when I witnessed the following accident happen:
A pickup truck with a bunch of ladders on the sides and top was following a Ford Taurus. The Taurus put on its brakes and the truck slammed on its brakes. Seems that the ladder on top of the truck wasn’t tied down so it flew off the top of the truck and through the rear window of the Taurus.
Final score: 1 person DOA at the scene. 1 person airlifted to the Shock Trauma center. 1 person arrested. (The driver of the truck.)
I remember when I was a child, we were driving through upstate NY with a caravan of my dads entire family. It was winter and snowing pretty bad. I was asleep in the backseat of the minivan, and I remember waking up to the feel of the car pulling over. I sit up, rub my eyes and look out the window, and there’s a tractor trailer on it’s side, and four or five cars in various states of crushed. There was a person laying face down in the road. I freaked out and hid back under my blankets. Turns out it happened right in front of my parents, we just missed being car #6. Our family wagon train happened to contain a nurse, a fireman, and former army medic (who, granted, hadn’t used his training in decades, but you don’t forget combat), and I remember watching them tend to people while waiting for the cops to show up. Several people came to sit in our van to keep warm. It looked so surreal, with the flares and the snow and people crying. It’s a very strange memory.
There was one that to this day will still give me nightmares.
Stopped at an intersection of a high speed east / west cross road. There is a turning lane and a vehicle heading east creeps out a bit too far and hits the brakes. A west bound vehicle with 4 people in it heading into a setting sun never saw the turning creeper. They clipped it head on at what was probably 50-55 mhp. Vehicle goes airborn, flips in mid air and lands on its side and rolls. All windows shatter and the hood is crushed to a point there is only inches are open, doors are now also crushed shut. The car behind the airborne one cannot stop in time and hits the now up side down vehicle bursting the gas tank and igniting the spilled fuel. Those who managed to survive the initial impact were burned. No one could get close enough to help and many of us frantically tried. Sometimes I can still hear their screams… That was the worst.
My cousin and her husband (and their kid) were coming home from a Christmas celebration when a trucker slammed into them. My cousin was thrown from the car and her leg was torn off. She and her husband died and their son had a broken back, but lived. I didn’t see it, but I’ll never forget it.
I used to do a lot of work for the local fire brigade, and I saw some pretty gruesome pictures. Really not what you want to see when you’re teaching them how to use a scanner.
And I’d just like to publicly thank Proton for saving my life when it came to the crunch - I was shunted into oncoming traffic.
