The car fire discussion also got me thinking about an accident that happened in my town (Madison, Wisconsin) back in the 1980s.
There was a horrible, fatal car wreck when I was in high school. It was my freshman or sophomore year, or maybe the summer between the two, and the students involved were four older boys. They were driving around town (mildly drunk, although IIRC they wouldn't have been over the legal limit for adults at the time, so under .10) and crashed their car, which burst into flames, and all four died in the fire.
The things that are weird about this, thinking back:
1. It happened on this slightly sharp curve on a residential street. Apparently they were speeding, but the speed limit along there is 25, and Madison city streets tend to be short and curvy and not well-suited to building up any sort of speed so it seems unlikely to me that they could have been going more than 40 mph.
2. I'm not sure if any were wearing seat belts, but two of them were in the back seat. Why couldn't they get out of the car in time?
3. Cars DO NOT ACTUALLY EXPLODE VERY OFTEN. This is shockingly rare and a really weird stroke of horrifying bad luck. WTF?
4. The neighbors came running out but were completely unable to do anything. I guess I'm a little surprised that no one had (or was able to make adequate use of) a fire extinguisher, garden house, ax, etc. given that the news stories said they could hear the boys screaming. I don't judge untrained people who don't go running in to pull people from burning cars; radiant heat is shocking to experience when you're not prepared for it, it feels incredibly dangerous even at a distance. But there were enough people that I guess at this point, thinking back, I'm kind of surprised that no one was able to help them. I hope the bystanders got counseling afterward because that must have been an incredibly traumatic thing to witness.
5. So much of what I remember is really weird retrospectively that I wonder if I am remembering this completely inaccurately, and in fact the boys died in a highway crash after being thrown through broken glass or who even knows. I wonder if my yearbooks mention the names so I could look it up...
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Date: 2014-02-23 05:45 pm (UTC)There was a horrible, fatal car wreck when I was in high school. It was my freshman or sophomore year, or maybe the summer between the two, and the students involved were four older boys. They were driving around town (mildly drunk, although IIRC they wouldn't have been over the legal limit for adults at the time, so under .10) and crashed their car, which burst into flames, and all four died in the fire.
The things that are weird about this, thinking back:
1. It happened on this slightly sharp curve on a residential street. Apparently they were speeding, but the speed limit along there is 25, and Madison city streets tend to be short and curvy and not well-suited to building up any sort of speed so it seems unlikely to me that they could have been going more than 40 mph.
2. I'm not sure if any were wearing seat belts, but two of them were in the back seat. Why couldn't they get out of the car in time?
3. Cars DO NOT ACTUALLY EXPLODE VERY OFTEN. This is shockingly rare and a really weird stroke of horrifying bad luck. WTF?
4. The neighbors came running out but were completely unable to do anything. I guess I'm a little surprised that no one had (or was able to make adequate use of) a fire extinguisher, garden house, ax, etc. given that the news stories said they could hear the boys screaming. I don't judge untrained people who don't go running in to pull people from burning cars; radiant heat is shocking to experience when you're not prepared for it, it feels incredibly dangerous even at a distance. But there were enough people that I guess at this point, thinking back, I'm kind of surprised that no one was able to help them. I hope the bystanders got counseling afterward because that must have been an incredibly traumatic thing to witness.
5. So much of what I remember is really weird retrospectively that I wonder if I am remembering this completely inaccurately, and in fact the boys died in a highway crash after being thrown through broken glass or who even knows. I wonder if my yearbooks mention the names so I could look it up...