Collateral Trauma
I should blog about this at length, but I'm beat. Briefly: in slow traffic on the Cross Bronx, reached the bottleneck and it turned out to be a van stalled in the right lane. I was in the center lane, and there was a tractor trailer (minus the tailer) perhaps one car length ahead of me.
Then, some bright spark in the right lane decides to cut around the van. Not get in the middle land, mind you - just fit in between the truck and the van. He doesn't. Instead, the truck pins his car against the van and drags it along...
...just as the van owner comes around the front of the van, carrying a gas can...
...gets plowed over by the car, flips over and lands head-down on the pavement.
Meanwhile, the truck manages to stop, but the car has now (through some odd law of physics) completely jackknifed in front of the truck, and there they stop, t-boned.
I pull up ahead of the van and run out to offer what help I can. The guy is in seriously fucked up shape, clearly in a lot of pain, blood streaming down from his eye. The truck passenger is trying to help him. I break out the cell phone and call 911. Meanwhile, other, smarter people are setting up flares. First, an off duty EMT turns up. then the EMS, and a small army of (frankly, the rudest ever) firemen. I wait for the police to take my statement - after, of course, the ambulances head off.
The dick in the car? Just fine, thank you.
D.
Then, some bright spark in the right lane decides to cut around the van. Not get in the middle land, mind you - just fit in between the truck and the van. He doesn't. Instead, the truck pins his car against the van and drags it along...
...just as the van owner comes around the front of the van, carrying a gas can...
...gets plowed over by the car, flips over and lands head-down on the pavement.
Meanwhile, the truck manages to stop, but the car has now (through some odd law of physics) completely jackknifed in front of the truck, and there they stop, t-boned.
I pull up ahead of the van and run out to offer what help I can. The guy is in seriously fucked up shape, clearly in a lot of pain, blood streaming down from his eye. The truck passenger is trying to help him. I break out the cell phone and call 911. Meanwhile, other, smarter people are setting up flares. First, an off duty EMT turns up. then the EMS, and a small army of (frankly, the rudest ever) firemen. I wait for the police to take my statement - after, of course, the ambulances head off.
The dick in the car? Just fine, thank you.
D.
posted by Dave Kopperman | 12:59 AM
4 Comments:
that's just incredible.
I don't really know what to say, but it is something that you will never forget.
Oh, you can rest assured that I will be resting uneasily about it.
I'm still genuinely pissed at (one, really) the firemen there. Talk about adding asshole to injury...
Wow... sorry you had to witness that. Glad you're ok.
Man, I hope it doesn't look as though I feel that witnessing the accident is at all the same as being the one accidented upon, as it were. But there's no denying that it's hard to watch another human being be so badly hurt in front of your eyes, and not really be empowered in any way to help.
Obviously, the setting couldn't have been much worse. A tunnel on a winter's night on the Cross Bronx Expressway is no place you want to be.
I wish I knew a way to find out if the man was alright. He was conscious when they took him from the scene, which I took to be a good sign.
Post a Comment
<< Home