Thursday, June 23, 2005

Driving home from work...

there was an accident tonight on the 78. It's funny how you can almost tell what happened just by looking at the scene.

Westbound 78: One police car lights flashing. A green sedan, hood smacked up pretty badly. Hysterical woman being calmed by the cops.

Eastbound 78: Two firetrucks (probably from the station off the last exit) and one police car lights flashing. A Motorcycle, riderless, leans against the concrete t-rail. 50 feet up a pickup truck up against the t-rail. A man in a t-shirt leans over the t-rail with his face in his hands.

One mile down the road, look up in the sky: A lifeflight helicopter lands at the hospital just off the freeway.

What I see in my mind’s eye: Pickup truck clips motorcycle. Motorcycle rider flies over median into oncoming traffic. Westbound woman slams into flying rider and then into median. Hysteria ensues. Police and fire trucks arrive, stop traffic. Helicopter arrives. Lands in Eastbound lane to pick up rider. Helicopter takes off. Me and 900 other drivers crawl by and try to shake off the chill of knowing what happened even though we weren’t there.

Damn. Drive carefully people, Please!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It always humbles me to see something like that. Things like that make me drive less like a maniac for a little while, but then I'm back up to my old tricks.

TX Princess Steph

shayne said...

I have two fears in the world: the scorpion and the car wreck.

One of my cousins was killed in a car wreck about almost 14 years ago. He was more like a brother and was the person I was closest to at the time. I still freak out when the phone rings in the middle of the night.

Any time I drive by an accident, I have to call my wife and make sure she's ok, even if I know she's sitting at home or at work or something.

What can be SO bloody important that people have to be so rushed and/or so careless? People just have no idea how dangerous driving is. We do it so often that we take it for granted.

Dex2177 said...

I have a question: Do front airbags, not the side ones in the newer cars but the front ones, do they do anything to save people who were wearing their seatbelts anyway or are these just an attempt to save the dumbasses who don't wear seatbelts and make short people sit in the back seat?

Dex2177 said...

(Motorcycles are known in emergency rooms, as you probably all know, as donor-cycles)

Girl With An Alibi said...

My philosophy (which I try to live by while driving) is "better late than never." I try to remind myself of that when I catch myself doing stupid maneuvers on the freeway.

I've heard the donor-cycle thing before too.

A friend of mine once told me about story she read of a motorcycle rider who went head first into a tree. The police thought he had been decapitated somehow because all they found was his body. It turned out, that he hit the tree so hard it pushed his head down into his chest cavity. I don't know if it's just an urban legend though but the possibility of THAT is reason enough not ride a motorcycle.