10 seconds after leaving the office on the way home tonight I hear a loud thump some distance behind me. So I spin around and see a small car coming to a halt facing the wrong way in the street about 50 yards up the road.

****! I thought (as you do). I started running a second later toward the stricken vehicle. Pulled out my cellphone and started feverishly mashing 999 into it, only for the battery to cut out. **** again thought I.

Luckily several other people were doing the same as me, all sprinting in to help.

As we ran in I could hear a woman's voice screaming something like "Oh God oh God, she's been run over!". The already frightening thoughts running through my head suddenly got a lot worse.

There was a female lying on the pavement about 20 yards further up than the car's position, half a dozen people had already descended upon the spot to assist the person. I didn't approach the people because there was already a crowd building, no sense getting in the way.

I went back to the car and found it's engine still running. The front driverside wheel was bent up like a potato crisp, the whole wing was shredded. I'm guessing that it smashed into a wall which turned it back into the road, the broken wheel and suspension assembly bringing it to a halt next to the kerb. The driver's door was open but there was nobody in the car (thankfully). I pulled the door open further and pulled the keys out of the ignition, killing the engine.

The windshield had a 2" hole right through it near the top of the glass, and another large dent a few inches below it, the whole windshield was cracked like a spiderweb. The bonnet (hood for you American types) had dents also. These are the signs of a person's body impacting the car, details like this really stick in the mind, I can see it as I type this.

I could not have imagined that the victim could possibly have survived the impact. The screaming woman had been yelling down her phone to the 999 operator that the victim had been thrown in the air. That will haunt me for a long time.

I hung around next to the car for a bit, before I was joined by some of my work colleagues who had heard the chaos from back at the office.

This all happened within about 60 seconds.

After about 5 minutes the paramedic car arrived (which is bloody impressive during rush hour).

My heart was pounding, my legs wobbly and my throat dry as a bone. A couple more minutes passed as people got their acts together and stopped running around like headless chickens. I gave the keys to one of the Managers from where I work, she'd come out to help too and seemed to take charge of things pretty well.

There were many people there by now and the traffic was now at a complete standstill. This was a busy link road between probably the two big roads into the city.

All this time the man I assumed to be the driver was running around clearly panicked out of his mind, shouting incoherently and running in and out of the road. The screaming woman was hyperventilating violently.

Everything was happening very slowly and yet very quickly at the same time.

Not an event that I wish to have happen again, I can tell you.







So now I write this shortly after a (rather lovely) Police woman has left my house having taken my written statement of the incident.

Several large whiskey's later my pulse is returning to normal.

My day didn't seem so bad after all...

If the accident had happened 5 seconds later it would have been me lying on the pavement.