I have my own two cents to add to recent accident discussion based on a very personal experience - yesterday! I was involved in a head on collision that happened so fast that I still can’t comprehend what happened. All I know is that an oncoming car crossed the double yellow line and hit me. Totaled my car and his. I have a broken nose (airbag!), bruised collar bone/shoulder (seatbelt), bump/bruise on the forehead, and the worst is my legs where they slammed the dash board as it came towards me, and other various cuts and bruises on my arms and legs. Stiff and sore from head to toe.
It happened in a split second. The other driver was unconscious and his car was in much worse shape than mine. He was taken to a local trauma center. I didn’t lose consciousness, but there is definitely a short span of 30 seconds to a minute that I couldn’t tell you what happened between impact and when I managed to kick to door open and get out. I remember the noise, the smell, the sounds, the people around me moving and the general frenetic activity but from an odd detached perspective.
The CHP officers and fire/paramedics who arrived were calm and professional and very helpful. (4 CHPs, a Sheriff, two firetrucks, paramedic and two ambulances). They wanted me to take an ambulance to the hospital but I wanted to wait until someone I knew could come and get my bike and all my training gear and stuff out of my car. I didn’t want my tri bike going to some tow yard impound lot never to be seen again (good call in retrospect).
So now today I think I can say that I am not hurt worse because I was driving a Nissan xTerra and it absorbed the crash very well, although my husband is still wondering how I managed to get out under my own power with relatively minor injuries. The other car’s front end was pretty much disintegrated.
Granted, this is not near as serious as last weekend’s accident which killed the two cyclists, although the force of impact was certainly much greater but we were both afforded the protection of the vehicles. My point is that it happens in a split second, frequently we don’t know the reason, and so many things are happening in the aftermath that it’s hard to sort out what is real and what is from some kind of shock-dream state. I don’t know why that guy crossed the line, if he lost consciousness, was fooling around in his car for something, etc. I don’t remember everything said because there was just too much shock and too much going on.
I read some of these posts about hanging that young officer out to dry and it makes me sick. We weren’t there, we don’t know what happened and I bet that there were people who were there who don’t all have a good perspective either. I suspect that everything amounts to legal “hearsay” at this point, and anyone who was material to the incident isn’t talking about it in public for some very good reasons. It would be really nice to see a little less inflammatory rhetoric until we know what happened. Reading it on sfgate, in the Chronicle, or SJMN just isn’t going to cut it in terms of truth and reliability (I live in this area too…a little wary of journalistic integrity from some of these sources). It’s going to be weeks and months before this is sorted out and I think in respect for the families and friends on both sides we should be respectful, not spiteful, and not conduct a public, online “trial”.
