Two Accidents

Yesterday I came across an old photo album with two shots of me with a little blonde boy, Danny. I'm a teenager, he's about six. We're holding my kittens and a lop-eared rabbit.

Today, while looking up something else, I came across a comment I'd posted to one of Jim MacDonald's posts on Making Light. He's a paramedic in a rural area.

There's been an update to both my post and that photo, so I thought it was worth re-posting here, especially in light of my "car fire" thread:

Two accidents happened in July 2004.

I flipped my car off the freeway at about 65 mph, rolled it once or maybe twice. It was stopped by a clump of trees before it could continue in the direction it was heading, which would have landed it on top of an on-ramp.

The CHP officer who saw the wreck took several minutes to process what I was telling him, which was that I had been the driver. He couldn't believe I was standing on the shoulder with no visible injuries given the state of the car and the mechanism of the crash.

It turned out that I had cracked a vertebra and had chronic back pain for several years and possibly forever, though it's gotten a lot better recently. Still, I'm OK most of the time, my mobility isn't impaired, and I'm not, you know, dead. I had an airbag but it didn't go off. I was wearing my seatbelt, of course.

Later that month Danny, the 20-year-old son of some family friends was riding his bicycle when he got hit by a car at, apparently, a fairly slow speed. He was knocked down, broke his ankle but had no other injuries... except from where he hit his head on the curb. He can't walk. He can't talk. He can't eat solid food. He can't write. He's been making great progress in terms of answering questions by pointing to words on a page, though.

He lived like that for three years, but a few months ago he died. A lot of things can go wrong with the human body when it's almost completely paralyzed.

He was not wearing a helmet. I still cringe when I see helmetless bike riders.

I used to see lots of accidents when I lived in India, at a time when no car I ever encountered had a working seatbelt. At that time it had the world's highest rate of fatalities per motor vehicle accident. As a result of my time living there, I can tell you first-hand that one of the things that can happen if you get "thrown clear" is that your head and body may be thrown clear separately.

Obviously, occasionally cars catch fire. Even more occasionally, people die because their car burned and they were too badly injured or trapped by crushed metal to escape in time.

But the reason those cases always hit the papers is because they're so rare. When people get thrown from their cars and killed, or hit their heads and die three years later, it's so common that unless they're a celebrity, it's not news.

If you drive, buckle your seatbelt.

If you ride a motorcycle or bicycle, wear a helmet.

Danny would have turned 24 this year. I think I'll color-copy the snapshots I have of him and give the originals to his parents.

Two Accidents

Yesterday I came across an old photo album with two shots of me with a little blonde boy, Danny. I'm a teenager, he's about six. We're holding my kittens and a lop-eared rabbit.

Today, while looking up something else, I came across a comment I'd posted to one of Jim MacDonald's posts on Making Light. He's a paramedic in a rural area.

There's been an update to both my post and that photo, so I thought it was worth re-posting here, especially in light of my "car fire" thread:

Two accidents happened in July 2004.

I flipped my car off the freeway at about 65 mph, rolled it once or maybe twice. It was stopped by a clump of trees before it could continue in the direction it was heading, which would have landed it on top of an on-ramp.

The CHP officer who saw the wreck took several minutes to process what I was telling him, which was that I had been the driver. He couldn't believe I was standing on the shoulder with no visible injuries given the state of the car and the mechanism of the crash.

It turned out that I had cracked a vertebra and had chronic back pain for several years and possibly forever, though it's gotten a lot better recently. Still, I'm OK most of the time, my mobility isn't impaired, and I'm not, you know, dead. I had an airbag but it didn't go off. I was wearing my seatbelt, of course.

Later that month Danny, the 20-year-old son of some family friends was riding his bicycle when he got hit by a car at, apparently, a fairly slow speed. He was knocked down, broke his ankle but had no other injuries... except from where he hit his head on the curb. He can't walk. He can't talk. He can't eat solid food. He can't write. He's been making great progress in terms of answering questions by pointing to words on a page, though.

He lived like that for three years, but a few months ago he died. A lot of things can go wrong with the human body when it's almost completely paralyzed.

He was not wearing a helmet. I still cringe when I see helmetless bike riders.

I used to see lots of accidents when I lived in India, at a time when no car I ever encountered had a working seatbelt. At that time it had the world's highest rate of fatalities per motor vehicle accident. As a result of my time living there, I can tell you first-hand that one of the things that can happen if you get "thrown clear" is that your head and body may be thrown clear separately.

Obviously, occasionally cars catch fire. Even more occasionally, people die because their car burned and they were too badly injured or trapped by crushed metal to escape in time.

But the reason those cases always hit the papers is because they're so rare. When people get thrown from their cars and killed, or hit their heads and die three years later, it's so common that unless they're a celebrity, it's not news.

If you drive, buckle your seatbelt.

If you ride a motorcycle or bicycle, wear a helmet.

Danny would have turned 24 this year. I think I'll color-copy the snapshots I have of him and give the originals to his parents.