[Very Serious] I witnessed a serious road traffic accident!

[wossname]

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.

[EntityX]

I've witnessed a number of accidents in my life. One of the more memorable ones was back in the early 90s in Santa Monica, CA. A police car had its siren and lights on. It was going through a red light. The ambulance drivers have loads of experience going through red lights and you always see them slow way down and check to make sure it's ok to precede before going through a red light but this police officer was not at all bright the way he went through this red. Perhaps he was a rookie. I'm not sure what speed he was going but I would say it was more than 30 mph. A car that had the green didn't stop and they had a horrendous crash. I know there were many people that witnessed the accident and I didn't stick around to see how the police officer and the other person were. I doubt there was a fatality but never found out how the people in that accident came out.

[Torc]

I have come across two accidents, the first was two cars which collided, no one was physically injured, although the "participants" where somewhat shocked. One even lit a cigarette to calm down, not sensible when there is a possibility of a fuel leak.

The other was when a horse rider had been thrown.

In both cases my brother and I ended up directing traffic with two other people to keep it flowing so there would not be a long queue when the Emergency Services arrived.

Both these happened more than 10 years ago, before the proliferation of staged accidents spread.

It used to be that you would exchange Insurance details and maybe sketch a plan of the accident. Nowadays, I think it would help your insurance company greatly if you took plenty of photos and/or video to show the damage done to the cars and the drivers/passengers.

[dclamp]

I have never seen one in person, but we have a drinking/driving Unit from the Police Department that comes to our school and they show Traffic cams of accidents and some of them are terrible.

My friends mom was in a terrible accident a few years back. She was going straight through an intersection (she had the green) and a car was coming the opposite direction (toward her, on the opposite side of the street) and it turned left (pulling right in front of her). She didnt have enough time to break and smashed right into the guy.

She had several broken bones. If she would have been going a little faster she would have broken her back, killing her instantly.

[demotivater]

....

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Seen a very similar accident, boy racer span and knocked down an individual on the path.

Pulled out my cellphone and started feverishly mashing 999

What an epic oxymoron.

[wossname]

Why?

[homer13j]

I have never seen one in person, but we have a drinking/driving Unit from the Police Department that comes to our school and they show Traffic cams of accidents and some of them are terrible.

Go see the punk band Butthole Surfers next time they come to your town. Among other shocking videos you'll see unedited and very bloody Highway Patrol crash films from the '50s and '60s when there were no air bags and seat belts were never used - most cars didn't even have them.

The most recent crash I saw was a drunk idiot on a chopper (extended forks, "ape hanger" handlebars, etc.) lost his passenger then dumped his bike. The passenger was okay, but the rider's leg was obviously broken. Funny thing was nobody seemed to have any sympathy for the guy - cars were driving around him and his wrecked bike and continuing on their way.

[MartinLiss]

The only one I've seen (except for the minor one I was in) was when I was driving north on a highway during rush hour so I was going fairly slowly. I then watched as a car came down the curved entryway to the southbound lanes. He was going too fast to negotiate it and he hit/grazed the right-side retaining wall fairly heavily. It was actually pretty funny seeing him sort of standing in the driver's seat with his cheek pressed against the windshield.

[BadgerBadger]

Luckily I have never witnessed any major accidents, but I was very close to being to the first person on the scene to one a few weeks ago. I went to meet a friend and once I got back home about 5 hours later, I found out that a young boy between the age of 6 to 9 was hit by a car while on one of those "mini-moto" things, just about 20 metres from where I crossed that very road about 5 minutes earlier. Apparently he broke his spine, several ribs and an arm (if I remember correctly).
I remember walking past the scene where it happened a few days later and I could see the stains on the road from where he got hit. I think he's recovering now, which is good news.

That's a chilling story, woss. Hopefully all turned out well.

[wossname]

The only thing I've learned since is that it potentially wasn't accidental! The mystery continues.

[schoolbusdriver]

... 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.

Makes me wonder about the speed at impact.

Sometimes, accidents are just that - unforseeable. Usually they are predictable and avoidable - with experience. (Drink and drugs can also play a part)

I see RTAs quite often when driving a bus - after a while you get blase about them. Some are more amusing than anything else, such as the rubbernecker running into the back of someone rubbernecking yet another RTA. All I had to do was weave through the wreckage.

Another time I was following a dray up a hill, when half-a-dozen or so kegs and barrels fell off and rolled towards me. Unfortunately the driver noticed and recovered them.

The worst I've seen was a few seconds after it had actually happened. A car had taken a sliproad off a motorway at high speed and run into the back of an artic stopped at traffic lights. The only part of the car behind the trailer's crash bar was the boot. Everything above bonnet height was squashed flat. The car was wedged so tightly under the trailer, I couldn't see anything at all of the car occupants.

iT'S 3o 4 A r3aAs0n.

Always leave youself an "out".

When in doubt, don't.

If you're late, slow down. You're now getting paid double time.

The vehicle in front might have faulty brake lights.

Beware of CFCs (Cash For Crashes)

Only a fool breaks the two second rule. (If you're driving a bus or HGV it's a four second rule - and even longer when fully loaded)

The most common word in insurance claims is " suddenly "

etc, etc, etc...

[MartinLiss]

I forgot one. Quite a few years ago my ex-wife and I were driving our RV in the winter through the hills of southern Pennsylvania when on our CB radio (I did say "quite a few years ago") we heard someone say "start breaking now there's a bad accident just up ahead". Well I put on the breaks but because of snow and "black ice" on the road I skidded down the road for perhaps 200 yards and finally stopped about 20 yards away from an accident where a semi and several cars had mixed it up. A couple of cars were off the highway down a small embankment but the worst was one car on fire under the semi's trailer. If it wasn't for that CB warning I might have been involved.

[penagate]

No stories of my own, just one from the news:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574...97-421,00.html

The mind boggles, sometimes.

[Davadvice]

Sitting in a café at 15 years of age. A guy about 30-35 is sitting near us having something to eat and drink. A friend of mine, a young “lady” says something cheeky to the guy. The guy replies quick as you like with a witty response. The 5 of us begin to laugh at the young lady. We are sat for about 30 minutes before a friend states that he has to go down the house, I say “I’ll come with you”

We walk down the road approximately 200 yards do what we do.(don’t actually remember) when we are walking up the road, a long inclining right hand bend with 2 small islands in the middle of the road to assist people crossing from the high rise flats on the right hand side. We start to talk about the guy in the café we concluded that he may have taken grievance with what our friend has said and seek out retribution laughing nervously “ha ha don’t be daft”. We pass a church on the left hand side, where there is a side street joining the main drag and across the other side is a boundary wall for the shopping centre where the café is located. As we stand at the corner checking the traffic prior to crossing, a loud revving engine is heard as we look over our right hand shoulders we see a car heading straight at us. I was in the inside and grabbed my mate. As we moved down the side street the car hit the (Rounded) corner of the wall and rolled over on to its roof between the wall and a lamp post.

We ran away up the side street and returned some time later after calling the police. When we arrived back at the scene the guy was fished out of the car, our other mates where all standing around. We informed the cops of what we had seen. It transpired that the guy was just a drunk driver and not the guy from the café. No one was hurt. Although I needed a change to my under attire.

[Davadvice]

At the tender age of 17 me and friend where our cruising in his old Ford Fiesta Xr2. we see 2 young attractive (well mine was)ladies. We progress to talk to them and we offer them a lift. We go for a run up through Loch Lomond. We then decide it’s time to drop the girls of and progress to their area just outside Glasgow. As we arrived near their house my mate says “this F*****g idiot is right up my ass” I try and look back from the front seat and get forced to the seat. My mate then Stops the car. As I shout “get a F*****g move on” 2 guys decide to try and gain entry. The doors are locked so the decide to kick the windows. My window smashes all over the back of my head and back. As I look up to my mates side there is a lunatic standing trying to stab him with a knife. They eventually bail out and the cops arrive.

They had stabbed my mate in the hand and I had some cuts on my neck (nothing serious) the car had been rammed 3 times.

I found out that the guy with the knife was murdered or died of an overdoes a few years later. What goes around comes around. I never shed a tear.

My driving style is dictated by the actions of those two individuals even today.

[Torc]

Only a fool breaks the two second rule. (If you're driving a bus or HGV it's a four second rule - and even longer when fully loaded)

I did not know that it was a four second rule for drivers of buses or HGV's

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell quite a few HGV driver's on the Motorways have not heard that, and some seem to operate on a one second rule.

[wossname]

Sitting in a café at 15 years of age. A guy about 30-35 is sitting near us having something to eat and drink. A friend of mine, a young “lady” says something cheeky to the guy. The guy replies quick as you like with a witty response. The 5 of us begin to laugh at the young lady. We are sat for about 30 minutes before a friend states that he has to go down the house, I say “I’ll come with you”

We walk down the road approximately 200 yards do what we do.(don’t actually remember) when we are walking up the road, a long inclining right hand bend with 2 small islands in the middle of the road to assist people crossing from the high rise flats on the right hand side. We start to talk about the guy in the café we concluded that he may have taken grievance with what our friend has said and seek out retribution laughing nervously “ha ha don’t be daft”. We pass a church on the left hand side, where there is a side street joining the main drag and across the other side is a boundary wall for the shopping centre where the café is located. As we stand at the corner checking the traffic prior to crossing, a loud revving engine is heard as we look over our right hand shoulders we see a car heading straight at us. I was in the inside and grabbed my mate. As we moved down the side street the car hit the (Rounded) corner of the wall and rolled over on to its roof between the wall and a lamp post.

We ran away up the side street and returned some time later after calling the police. When we arrived back at the scene the guy was fished out of the car, our other mates where all standing around. We informed the cops of what we had seen. It transpired that the guy was just a drunk driver and not the guy from the café. No one was hurt. Although I needed a change to my under attire.

Do you also write under the pseudonym 'Dan Brown'?

[Davadvice]

i'll take that as a complement. but no it's all true.

i have been in one accedent that i caused my self however i would not like to incriminate myself.

[chris128]

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,

Thats the spirit, steal the car before doing anything else

[FunkyDexter]

i'll take that as a complement.

You must be getting Dan Brown confused with someone else.

[wossname]

Thats the spirit, steal the car before doing anything else

It was a nice car. *shrug*

[Shaggy Hiker]

Sitting in a café .....

That quote, which I abbreviated considerably, is pretty nearly the old joke that ends with the punchline "Must not have been the same elephant."

I have seen a few minor accidents, and was the first responder to two, somewhat more serious, accidents. In the first one, a drunk sideswiped a car, then went head on into the next car, flipped over a couple times, and landed propped up on the back of a parked truck. His car caught on fire upon impact.

I reached the side of his car within seconds of the car coming to rest, and found a pool of blood about a foot across outside the drivers side window (which was only a foot or so from the ground, since the car was leaning up on the truck, and was almost resting on the drivers side door). Looking through the back window, I saw cans all over the car, but there was only the one occupant (which was what I was looking for). The guy was semi-conscious, and bleeding profusely from a gash on his head. Since he had a head injury, and was breathing, the best thing to do was not to move him unless he was in some other danger. The other danger was, of course, the fact that his car was on fire. Fortunately, a quick assesment showed that the fire was unlikely to spread, so I didn't bother trying to get to the guy, which would have been seriously difficult due to the propped position of the car. Unfortunately, I missed an opportunity that has haunted me to this day:

The guy was semi-conscious. It is quite possible that external inputs would have registered in his brain, though without any context. I regret that I didn't lean through the window, put my hand on his shoulder and say, "I am thy lord, and thou hath sinned.", or something to that effect. I could have implanted a memory that would have messed with him for the rest of his life. Better yet, he totally deserved it.

The rest of the accident was pure entertainment. I looked for a way to extinguish the fire, and the only thing I could find was a tub of dirt with peas growing in it. A lady was standing by the tub pulling her hair out....litterally! And here I had been thinking that was just a figure of speech. I asked her if I could use the dirt, and she agreed, so I took the tub of dirt, aimed at the fire....and missed. That was so absurd that I sat on the mangled bumper and laughed. The dirt hadn't totally missed, though, and the fire had been reduced to one single flame shooting straight up, and not likely to spread.

Another person tried slamming the hood, which would have been a truly odd idea even if the hood hadn't been folded up like a paper fan. The next person tried smothering the fire with a cardboard six-pack holder. A dry, cardboard, box, effectively. That undid what little good I had done with the dirt, so I stopped laughing at that point.

The next person came up with a fire extinguisher, and dramatically told us all to "Stand back!!" He then pointed the extinguisher at the fire, pressed the button three or four times, then called the extinguisher a name which would certainly not get passed the censor, handed me the extinguisher, and vanished. I read the instructions, tried the extinguisher, and found that it did nothing. Check your extinguishers yearly, folks, they don't work well if they are left sitting for years.

The police, fire, and EMTs were all there soon after that, and I gave the police my name and number, while wondering what to do with the fire extinguisher. As I was giving my name, the guy who had brought the extinguisher showed up and asked for it back, which solved that problem.

There were two consequences of the accident: The first was that I showed up to school the next semester and found a note to call the police because I had been subpoenead. Having forgotten about the accident by that time, this notice put me into a bit of a panic as I tried to remember what I had done or seen in the last few months. The other result was that I learned how faulty our minds are. I started this narrative describing how the guy had side swiped one car and gone head on into the next. Though I watched this sequence, to this day I can't remember the second car. I see the guys big sedan hit an empty space and flip up into the air, spinning and tumbling down the road. After the police arrived, and I moved away from the accident, I saw the second car, with a crowd around it, and my first thought was, "Holy @#$#!! There was a second accident while we were all at this first one." My mind had erased the second car, and it is still gone from what is otherwise a pretty complete memory. Of course, by erasing the second car, I didn't have to decide which car to move towards. Kind of interesting....and long winded.

[wossname]

Shaggy, yeah I know what you mean, there's a whole lot of information missing for me too, stuff that I must have filtered out as irrelevant at the time.

I hope that if I ever see this kind of thing again I'll have a bit more experience and will pay more attention to the details.

Anyway here's the local newspaper story about the incident I saw... http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/ne...l/article.html

[visualAd]

She making a good recovery; that's good to see. What's the betting that religion is involved somewhere in this??

[wossname]

I'm not betting that at all. Islam is a peace-loving faith and is very tolerant and all that.

[visualAd]

I'm not betting that at all. Islam is a peace-loving faith and is very tolerant and all that.

Religion is not the problem, its just peoples interpretation of it.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Cool, she was a model and a citizen. A model citizen, perhaps.

[mendhak]

I've noticed that everyone in Derbyshire is quite pixelated and that they like having several nicknames. The two are probably related, considering the amount of aliasing they use.

[chris128]

Groan

[wossname]

I'm against multiple identities and pixellation, anti-aliased you might say.

[InvisibleDuncan]

Why?

Presumably because cellphone is American and 999 is British. It's certainly not an oxymoron, though - just a culture crossover.

I'm surprised he didn't complain that although you translated "bonnet" into "hood" for the Americans, you didn't translate "windshield" back into "windscreen" for us Brits...

[chris128]

I didnt realise windshield was an american term, I'm sure I've heard a lot of people say it here in blighty

[InvisibleDuncan]

Honest, Guv:

windshield

• noun N. Amer. a windscreen

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/windshield?view=uk

windscreen

• noun Brit. a glass screen at the front of a motor vehicle.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/windscreen?view=uk

Lots of Brits use American words without realising - it's because they pick them all up from the TV.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Isn't that the "tele" over there?

[InvisibleDuncan]

That would be "telly", but yes - that was deliberate.