Nothing like a head on crash to liven up your night…and make you late coming home

No, not me…but I’m still not putting this under a cut. If you don’t care, skip to the bottom…

Val and I were driving home from work tonight, and we’d been following this F150 truck for about 5 miles…from Tower at Pena, up Tower, west on 120th, North on Buckley, then back east on 136th to get on I-76 and on home… The truck got a ways ahead of me on Buckley, so he was about 300 yards ahead of me… I saw his taillights, and another car’s headlights coming across the overpass beyond him…and suddenly the lights all went out at the same time.
I focussed on the vehicles just as I heard the CRUNCH – yes, that’s what confirmed it was a crash. I saw the tail end of the car coming back down out of the air, and the tail end of the truck sliding to the right a bit from the impact…
I pulled up to the accident…it was funny…as I was driving up to the wreck, Val kept telling me to stop, it was a crash…it’s a crash, honey…stop…HONEY, it’s a CRASH…stop! I pulled up to about 45′ away. I know I was in “action” mode already, because as I was pulling up, I distinctly remember looking at her and saying “Yes, it is, call 911….I was telling her to call 911, and she was still telling me it was a CRASH…stoooooooppppp…I said, “Call 911” one more time, and she said something about me backing the car up to not be so close (I pulled up so my headlights were pointed strategically at the wreck…) and as I had one foot alread out of the car, I snapped at her… I said “Shut up.”
That’s something I *NEVER* *EVER* say to *ANYONE*. I consider it (and always have considered it) to be a bigger insult than “Fuck You.”

It’s weird how when the time comes, some people just do the right things…I took CPR and First Aid 2 years ago, and also in Bootcamp for the Marines. The training just kicked in.
I went up to the truck and, well, I didn’t *quite* do That Marine Thing (“HEY, ARE YOU OK? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? *YOU*, GO GET HELP!”), but I definitely took charge…
I asked the driver of the truck (asian male, mid 20’s to early 30’s, awake and alert and coherent seeming) if he was allright, and if he could move all his arms, legs, fingers and toes. Yes, he could.
On to the other car – as I was going around the passenger side of the car, I was looking for passengers front and rear I saw that the airbag was deployed through what was left of the windshield, then I approached another pickup that had stopped and had his window down… I didn’t ask, I *TOLD* the man to call 911. Now.
I went around the back of the second car, saw some skidmarks ON the yellow line (moving toward the “right” side of the road – guess who was at fault…) and saw an arm limp and hanging out of the driver’s window, and lots and lots of red hair…but also…something…that said “not dead” – maybe it was *slight* motion from breathing…but she was definitely out cold, but the thought *never* crossed my mind that she might be dead…for whatever reason – something subconcious was there that told me…I *KNEW* she was A) Alive. B) Not in grave danger…
I got on the phone and called 911 myself (making a total of *5* people calling…Me, Val, the guy in the truck, and the two people that pulled in behind me…)

I described the visible injuries to the car’s driver, and then walked around to the driver of the truck and got a better idea of his injuries (there was a little blood around his upper lip, but that was it.)

…Back to the car to check on the woman, and another woman/witness was with her, keeping a guy from moving her around. (the phone guy from the other truck…Val later said that he said he knew the woman…but when someone asked him to move his truck because it might be the cause of a secondary accident based on where he parked it, he got in and left…)
Got off the phone with the dispatcher, and kept doing what I could to tend to the scene in the 3-5 minutes it took the PD and FD to get there. The hardest part was identifying our location to the Dispatcher…other people apparently were giving them the idea that we were *on* I-76 where 136th Ave goes *over* it… We actually were (surprisingly) right where the red truck is in the Google Maps picture…

So, the PD snagged me, and I spent 15-20 minutes filling out a complete NOVEL about the accident (this is the somewhat abridged version – the witness report was just about as long, but concentrated on only the moments before and after the accident itself.), while LifeFlight came and got the woman and whisked her away… I chatted with the officer a bit, and offered an opinion that I didn’t want to put in the witness statement, because it was just that..an opinion – there is a bar just over the overpass and up the road a bit…(I love Google Earth…I knew it was VERY close by…and I was right – under 1000 yards driving distance…). The officer went and checked with the Paramedics as they put her on the chopper, and came back with the verdict that they were sure there was “alcohol on board”…

That’s one thing that cracks me up…
She hadn’t “been drinking”…There wasn’t “alcohol involved”…She wasn’t “impaired”…there was “Alcohol onboard”….her….BODY… Like it’s an airplane or a ship… “Why yes, the Purser confirms that we have Alcohol onboard…”

…and that was my drive home…

Random observations and memories – no particular order…
The fact that the wreck popped the passenger headlight out of the car (intact, mostly), and tossed it a good 20′ past the BACK of the F-150 (30-40′ overall?)
The Jaws Of Life are cool to watch.
Firemen do NOT like you creeping your car around the edge of the accident scene…even when the police officer tells you to… “WE’VE GOT GEAR AND CAR JUNK ALL OVER! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU COMPROMISING THE SAFETY OF MY FIREMEN” – we both got a giggle out of that…the officer even said “Ooh, I forgot they don’t like that…I don’t really understand why..it’s not like I’m not standing right here next to you…” Alllrighty then…I’ll go around the OTHER side, as directed.
The way the “friend” took off as soon as I told the woman/witness that PD and FD would be here within 5 minutes or so…(Hmmm…wonder where he knew her from? Three guesses, first two don’t count.)
The safety of modern cars. The F150 was bent (you could see the frame was bowed “sag-wise”) and the front end was seriously damaged, but he was wearing his belt, and had no airbag deployment (it might have been that old…) but he was (for all intents and purposes) unharmed. The Corsica was *DESTROYED*, and the occupant was not wearing her seatbelt, but she *LIVED*.
Local PD’s and the State Patrol love to fight over whose accident it is (or *isn’t*, sometimes) if it’s anywhere that’s even within sight of any on or offramp…and that’s been the case in *every* state I’ve lived in.
At first (until I got up to the accident, and saw that it was well away from the onramp) thought that the Corsica had turned into the F-150 at the Onramp…
Val missed American Idol because of the accident. She also didn’t see any bit of the accident…
The FD guys had to dig up dirt on the side of the road to cope with all the oil. They ran out of oilsoaker. That would be *three* 5 gallon pickle buckets worth… When they were done, it looked like all the dirt that had ever been caked on the bottom of the F-150 over the decades just fell off at once in the impact…
Feeling a bit…helpless? Because I couldn’t offer any useful information to the Paramedics when they arrived…(oh, I don’t know…perhaps the fact that the woman was unconcious for, oh…*5 minutes* might have been useful to them? But they were in crisis mode, too, and were concentrating on what’s HERE not what WAS here.)
Cops in Colorado are nice.
Firemen in Colorado are not.
The woman/witness was giving here name and birthdate to the officer, and she shared my birthday…+3 years. I *would* say that’s it’a 0.27% chance for that to happen randomly in any given population of people, but I know LOTS more people born on the 26th than I know born on the 27th…I think I can still count the number of people I know born on the 27th on my fingers.
The fact that I *considered* passing the F-150 on Tower Road – I’m glad I didn’t.
Wondering if the head on collision would have been a one-car vs. Light pole if I’d actually passed the F-150… If there’s one characteristic I have while driving, it’s alertness and defensiveness. That’s one of the reasons I autocross – *when* the day comes that you need it (and there always will be one of those days at some point in your future) you just don’t…know if you’re driving your car at the limit of what it’s capable of while trying to get out of whatever situation you’ve inadvertantly gotten into, unless you’ve CROSSED that limit at least once. And trust me, from my experience, you’ll get *SCARED* and chicken out LONG before you are actually working your car anywhere near what it’s capable of.