Saturday, June 20, 2009

collisions again

Speaking of collisions (and I was speaking of collisions, if you've been reading), tis the season again. I made the mistake of saying something about it being quiet lately for calls on the highway. This time of year, the kids get out of school, the weather gets warmer, and people start travelling, which means that the number of crashes on our lonely stretch of highway increases. But it hadn't yet, and I opened my mouth and said so. Bang. We were paged to a tractor trailer in the ditch. Later that day we were paged again . . . tractor trailer in the ditch again. The location they gave sounded suspiciously the same as the previous one. It does happen you know. People call in the same crash numerous times. You'd think they would slow down enough to see the police tape wrapped around the vehicle, flapping it's message, "we've already taken care of this one you bonehead, put the cell phone away!" But they don't and we get called out twice (or three times) to the same call.

Back to my story. The dispatcher assured us that the cops were at the scene, and that this was indeed another crash. We responded. Sure enough, it was in the same location as the first call . . . but on the opposite side of the highway. Another tractor trailer in the ditch. Must have been an unlucky piece of road.

Yesterday, we had another rollover, which caused my crew to heap more reproaches on me for saying the "q" and "l" words in the same sentence ("quiet" and "lately"). These folks were lucky by my estimation, even though they wrecked a really nice car. They crossed the centreline, hit the ditch, rolled their vehicle and stopped about two feet short of a hydro pole. Then they climbed out a side window. Call it luck, or angels, or Fate, it doesn't matter, I'm sure they were thankful to be in the ditch and not in the grill of a transport. For my opinion on luck, click here. If you are a faithful reader, you may have seen the article already.

The following video shows crash tests for a Smart Car, and another similar model. Not something you want to try at home, but interesting to watch.


I think the moral of the story is, don't drive 70 mph into brick walls. The end result will never be good.

Another moral of the story is, wear your seatbelt. I heard someone as recently as yesterday suggest that people often survive without them, while others in the same car are injured or killed. I can't argue because I don't know everything, but I can say I've seen lives saved because of them, and lives lost without them. Here is another video if you need convincing:


Enjoy the summer and buckle up! Every time :-)

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