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I just witnessed an auto accident.

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  • #1

    I just witnessed an auto accident.

    It was 7:10 PM at a nearby intersection. A shilloute was crossing the street from the opposing lane and the car in front of me of me kept going. I thought one of the two would stop, but at 30 MPH there was little chance of a miss. It was that dark time when you may not have to turn the lights on. The driver just slammed into him and he bounced to the ground. The car kept going but eventually slowed.

    I concentrated on not freaking out and got a call out to 911. It took them 24 minutes to get there! I was on my way home from the grocery store. Now I'm freaking out. I don't that person's gonna make it.

    The cat spread its wings and flew high into the air, hovering to keep pace with them as they moved cautiously toward the city. Then, as they climbed over the rubble of what had once been a gateway and began to make their way through piles of weed-grown masonry, the cat flew to the squat building with the yellow dome upon its roof. It flew twice around the dome and then came back to settle on Jhary's shoulder. - The King of the Swords
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  • #2
    Berry that's a terrible thing to witness, though I'm glad you were able to help in someway. I'm not a counsellor but I'd say you should make sure you can talk about your experiences with someone else if you'd find it helpful. I can understand you freaking out afterwards - I once saw a cat get run over by a Transit van many years ago and I found I couldn't drive down the road it happened in for more than a year because of the associations.

    For what it's worth, apparently if you're hit by a car travelling at 30mph you do have an 80% chance of surviving the impact, although at 40mph that drops to 20%.
    [image moved]
    _"For an eternity Allard was alone in an icy limbo where all the colours were bright and sharp and comfortless.
    _For another eternity Allard swam through seas without end, all green and cool and deep, where distorted creatures drifted, sometimes attacking him.
    _And then, at last, he had reached the real world – the world he had created, where he was God and could create or destroy whatever he wished.
    _He was supremely powerful. He told planets to destroy themselves, and they did. He created suns. Beautiful women flocked to be his. Of all men, he was the mightiest. Of all gods, he was the greatest."

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    • #3
      I hope you've managed to calm down a bit, Berry. Terrible thing to have to witness. :(

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      • #4
        Pretty horrendous thing to witness. A friend of mine was standing next to a guy on a tube platform when he jumped in front of the train. She was walking around in a daze for a couple of hours afterwards: noone else there thought to ask if she was OK. Look after yourself!
        \"...an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail representative of Omnipotence in a place that is not home.\" James Branch Cabell

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        • #5
          Thanks guys. I'm pretty sure that driver was on a cell phone at the time.
          The cat spread its wings and flew high into the air, hovering to keep pace with them as they moved cautiously toward the city. Then, as they climbed over the rubble of what had once been a gateway and began to make their way through piles of weed-grown masonry, the cat flew to the squat building with the yellow dome upon its roof. It flew twice around the dome and then came back to settle on Jhary's shoulder. - The King of the Swords

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          • #6
            Cell phones... :x
            But yes, that's a terrible thing to have to see. Will you be called upon as an official "witness"? I don't really know how these things work.
            "That which does not kill us, makes us stranger." - Trevor Goodchild

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            • #7
              That is horrible. Hit and run drivers are unfortunately getting to be more common. There is no respect for people on foot. :x

              "With a deep, not-unhappy sigh, Elric prepared to do battle with an army." (Red Pearls)
              - Michael Moorcock

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              • #8
                ...or on bikes.

                Thoughts with you, Berry, and the victim, of course.

                Three years ago, I was the only 'medically-qualified' bod on a bus when a thirty-year-old lady crashed her car into the front of it on a dark, rain-lashed road in the Scottish Highlands. Her vehicle knocked off the bus's front wheel, bounced down the side and wiped out the vehicle behind: We pulled over (crashed, in fact) and I jumped off - the scene behind was Dantesque; two tortured wrecks interlocked, smoking in the lights of the lorry coming up behind us. A baby was screaming in the back seat of the girl's car: the family of four climbed out of the wreck of the car that had been behind us, largely unhurt. The baby was extracted, fortunately uninjured in its seat. We tried to find the driver of the car that hit us - we finally realised she was still in the impossibly small, crushed front seat of the remains of her car, and had to bring the lorry up with beams on full to see her. The engine had landed in her lap, and the steering wheel had crushed her chest. I tried to CPR her, but she was Cheyne-Stoke breathing, and her eyes indicated she was virtually brain dead already. When I tried to clear her airway, I had to pull away her loose teeth and handfuls of clotting blood - I could touch her fibrillating heart through her damaged ribs. I had to stop other people pulling her out of the wreck. The ambulance arrived twenty minutes later (it was in the middle of nowhere, near Glencoe) by which time she was definitely dead. I know that I could not have saved her, nor could anyone else: the trauma was just too extreme. Despite the horrendous-sounding injuries, she actually looked quite normal and very peaceful; only her pin-prick pupils were strange, externally. I still see her face in dreams, sometimes, and wonder what happened to the baby. The sad thing was that we (myself and the police)found a big packet of crisps wedged between her legs, and many scattered over the back seat where the baby had been. It's our guess that she was turning to feed a crisp to the baby, and negotiating a wet corner with no central barrier in the dark - only takes a fraction of a second.
                I don't recount this for prurience, obviously: merely as an illustration that violent injury and death are, after all, everyday parts of life: it used to be sabre-tooth cats; now it's motor cars. None of us know when our time is up, and it can be on a mundane trip home from your family (as it turned out in this case).
                Berry, it's a traumatic thing to see: hopefully the guy you saw will be OK, but you did all you could. This too is in life.

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                • #9
                  I know you didn't tell us that to make yourself look better, but I'm amazed that you did all that to try to save that person. I am always amazed by those able to look into wounds and gore, and live with what they've seen. Maybe talking with us about it will reduce the frequency of that specific dream.

                  I was calm when I made the call. Were you calm while trying to revive that woman?
                  The cat spread its wings and flew high into the air, hovering to keep pace with them as they moved cautiously toward the city. Then, as they climbed over the rubble of what had once been a gateway and began to make their way through piles of weed-grown masonry, the cat flew to the squat building with the yellow dome upon its roof. It flew twice around the dome and then came back to settle on Jhary's shoulder. - The King of the Swords

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                  • #10
                    Yes. But remember I do this for a living (animals and humans look the same on the inside, mostly!), so the 'blood' etc side, and the 'emergency' situation, is not really a novel experience for me! It's not always the case that non-medical types react as calmly and logically as you did, Berry: One of the policemen who attended the incident I described was very distressed (understandably) by what he saw, and couldn't function properly. It's likely that your coolness in that situation tonight may have saved the poor guy's life, or at least given him the best possible chance of survival: they don't call the first sixty minutes after a trauma 'The Golden Hour' for nothing! If you had cracked up and mucked up the call, he might have lain there a lot longer, undetected...

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                    • #11
                      Berry, me and my husband have been through more than our share of being first on accident scenes, for a variety of reasons. anyway. i know what you went through, and it's trauma to your own person. I'm sending out good vibes to you to help your nerves. you did what could do, which was to call for help. thank you.

                      Perdix: that is why i could never be an EMT, first responder, nurse-type person. i just can't handle the after-effects of suffering. :(

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                      • #12
                        I think it was her youth that got to me, and the fact that there is a child somewhere whose mum died 'in my hands' that night, and I couldn't do anything about it (as inevitable as that may have been).

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                        • #13
                          Berry, the guy was very lucky that you were there, aware, and functional, you did what you could do, and your part in this was a positive thing, he's had a better chance of making it through your efforts.
                          "A man is no man who cannot have a fried mackerel when he has set his mind on it; and more especially when he has money in his pocket to pay for it." - E.A. Poe's NICHOLAS DUNKS; OR, FRIED MACKEREL FOR DINNER

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                          • #14
                            Oddly enough, I saw a kid almost get hit by a car at almost exactly the same time that Berry posted his message. The kid ran across a five lane street against the light. He could touch the bumper of the car that almost hit him with his knee. I heard nothing but brakes and a horn.

                            For once, someone was paying attention to the road instead of their phone. :clap:

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                            • #15
                              What struck me was that the driver seemed oblivious to the pedestrian that seemed oblivious to the car. How could they ignore one another so thoroughly?

                              Thanks for putting that into perspective Darren.
                              The cat spread its wings and flew high into the air, hovering to keep pace with them as they moved cautiously toward the city. Then, as they climbed over the rubble of what had once been a gateway and began to make their way through piles of weed-grown masonry, the cat flew to the squat building with the yellow dome upon its roof. It flew twice around the dome and then came back to settle on Jhary's shoulder. - The King of the Swords

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