I’ve been meaning to get something out about this for a while now.
A week or so ago Mona and I were driving to work with The Peanut strapped into what I call her “space monkey chair” in the back seat, and we had the chance to see something from start to finish that you don’t usually get to see.
We saw an accident.
Sure, drive long enough and you’re bound to see a few, and maybe even be an unwilling participant in one. That’s not what I mean.
We were driving along and I had just moved over to pass a delivery truck on the right. In front of that truck was another truck, kind of like a bread truck.
There was a car about 50’ in front of them and another 50’ in front of that one.
As I got near the bread truck I looked forward and could see what was about to happen.
The car in the lead was headed into an intersection where other cars were stopped for a red light. But the leader wasn’t stopping. I could see that he was going to need to brake very hard in the next two seconds or hit the guy at the back of the line.
And the second car didn’t seem to notice this. Nor did the bread truck. The guy in the other truck couldn’t see any of this obviously. And by now I’m sure you can see where this is headed.
Car number one braked hard. Car number 2 locked his breaks and the bread truck did as well. The guy in the second car may have seen the bread truck lock ‘em up, he had some space ahead and got off his brakes which kept him out of the wreck that was about to happen.
I think I must have slowed down watching this all because now we were just behind the bread truck.
I saw the second truck rear end the bread truck. He just didn’t have enough time to stop.
The bread truck started to swerve into my lane and I moved toward the curb, yelling “whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!”. Mona was silent watching out my window with one hand on her armrest and the other on the dashboard.
The bread truck missed us, or we missed him, and then for us it was over. We left the wreck and a lot of stopped traffic behind us.
The interesting part of the whole thing was that I could see when the first car was charging at the stopped traffic ahead that he was going to have a problem. The thing that got me was that the guy in car 2 missed it as did the guy in the bread truck.
If those two guys had been paying attention they could have easily slowed down and not caused the wreck.
It really took all 3 drivers not watching the road to cause this accident.
I still find it fascinating that I was in the right place to see the entire cause and effect chain of events. Normally you get that with the instant replay when you’re watching NASCAR.
Have you ever seen something kind of event like that unfold from start to finish?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
We were at a red light when the Evil Twin started to pull our van up and over to the left. I wondered what he was doing - then a large, heavy construction like vehicle kind of side-swiped the car next to us. Apparently, he swerved and we moved, so he didn't hit us. And we had two little boys in the 3rd row seats, a baby in her seat in the 2nd row. I cried for about a half hour after that. Those boys would have been injured or killed if we'd been hit. (one was our son, one was his best friend).
Your example is one reason I wonder: don't people follow the rule of "one car length for every 10 MPH behind the car ahead of you"? (i.e. if you're driving at 40 MPH, you should be at least 4 car lengths behind the car in front of you, so you can stop properly).
How big was the second car? Because I have trouble seeing over some vehicles to know what's going on in front of them. It's one reason I hate SUVs, my Focus is just too small to see what is causing them to hit their brakes (a lot of the time, it's nothing - morons).
I have a tendency to use all my mirrors and try to know where all the vehicles are around me, so I can avoid accidents that might be about to happen.
Sure, I have seen "accidents" unfold like that. It happens in my class every single semester. First it starts with the student turning in a topic memo for a proposal idea that is completely unworkable. Then they don't show up to class the day they are supposed to critique their drafts. Then comes the e-mail excuse that their Aunt Matilda fed them carrot cake with peanut butter frosting that caused them to have an allergic reaction. Then they don't turn in the final draft. Then they stop going to class. Then they fail the class. I can see it all coming but I can't prevent it.
Post a Comment