Let Me Tell You a Story.
I don't like political grandstanding. I don't like using anyone's misfortune for any kind of advantage.
That being said, I have to write this. I think it is important enough that I get to bump the usual readership of the sites I own, and the server costs I pay for this one diatribe I am going to write.
I was involved in a major car accident 2 nights ago. It has made it to the papers and was on the news. It was that level of big. How big I will get into in a second. Out of the four people that were directly involved, two were (probably are still) in the hospital. One of which, from what I was able to gather at the scene, is not in good condition. Out of the 3 cars involved, two are complete write offs and the third needs significant repair.
And this could have been easily avoided. With nothing more than the tax dollars you and I are paying on every transaction. You know, those taxes that make our place to live hospitable and safe. Yeah. Those tax dollars.
Some back-story. Not a lot. I don't want this being a multi-page entry.
Had to pick up my car from my mechanic (oh, the irony) earlier in the day from getting some work done. I was picking it up at 6:00 pm. Seeing that it was snowing outside, and that I normally had a 35 minute drive to my mechanic, I ducked out of work at 4:30 so I would make it on time. Even at that time of the afternoon, the roads were horrible and I made it to my mechanic about 20 minutes late. So a 35 minute drive took almost 2 hours. That started at 4:30 in the afternoon. Another important bit.
Fast forward to Friday evening.
It's around 9:00 pm and I'm driving down the street, with a friend of mine following behind me on the way from dinner to go watch a movie at my house. The roads are treacherous. I mean horrible. Like a skating rink. That, 0 degree Celsius when water is just starting to freeze on the roads, but you can't see it because it is wet and you can't tell the water from ice, horrible. The temperature will become important in a little bit. Everyone is giving at least 40 feet (if not more) distance between cars, just so if you slide as you are stopping, you will only bump the car ahead of you and have to get a paint touch up rather than kill each other.
As a matter of fact, at one intersection before the "accident", I watched a civic slide into the back of a pickup with a snow blade on the front. Thought to myself, "well, that sucks." Heh. Yeah.
Cruise through the light and slowly driving down the road. The road I'm on happens to be a 70 Km/h road, but I'm doing a healthy 45 (ish) along with the dozen or so cars behind me. We know the score. Slow and steady wins the race.
As I get to the bottom of the hill, I notice a silver Grand Am on the oncoming traffic side of the road starting to fishtail. Damn. This don't look good. Then it keeps coming....Hits the centre divider and starts spinning sideways....Takes air off of the divider and is promptly sailing directly at the front of my car about 5 inches off of the road.
Pause for a break here.
I have learned from the police that when I started to notice I was about to be in an accident, I had 1/10th of a second to decide what to do. Turns out you can do a few things in that time.
1) I'm going to try and turn my car into the divider between the lanes to hopefully help with the brakes I'm currently stomping on to try and stop me. 1/10th of a second isn't enough time for that turns out.
2) I've never seen the side of a car coming at me, let alone at the speed that it is travelling. It is NOT a good thing to see.
3) I'm done. This is it. It's all over for this dude.
Ok, play button now.
And it hits the front of my car. Everything in my car is flying from the back seat to the front. Both front airbags are going off and I'm spinning. I remember seeing the hood of my car buckling up and feeling things spinning.
Then I've stopped. Feels like something is wrong with my nose, and why do my eyes burn? Oh no. Is everyone ok?
So I jump out of my car (I don't have to put my car in park because the impact did that for me) and run to see if everyone is ok. I hear my car draining all fluids out the bottom of it all over the road, and notice a CD on top of some part of the frame where my bumper should be. How did that get out here? And my car is also a few inches shorter in the front than what it used to be. My friend who was following me is shaken up, but seems to be ok, so I run over to the Grand Am. Things are clearly not ok over there. The driver is conscious and saying she can't move or feel anything. The passenger doesn't look to be conscious, but I think he is breathing. I've watched enough movies to know you don't move anyone after a car accident.
I call the police and they are there in the quickest response time I have ever seen. Now, mind you my head is kinda messed up, so not the best judge of time, but I'd say less than 5 minutes and they are there. There is a towing guy talking to the driver of the grand am trying to keep her calm. Where the hell did he come from? And then I have a bunch of paramedics and cops asking me if I'm ok. By some twist of fate, turns out that I actually am...
Fast forward a few hours.
They've gotten both of the people out of the grand am out and are at the hospital by now. Had to use the jaws of life to get the passenger out. The passenger seat in the Grand Am is only about 4 inches wide. It hit with that much force. Without a doubt, that car is done. I'm hoping that both of them are ok. She was conscious so that's good, but he never came around, at least from what I seen.
My car is totalled. I have to collect my stuff out of it because it's going to the compound yard, because it may have been involved in an accident where a fatality was involved. I open the trunk of my car to get my crap out, and the force of the hit was so hard, it twisted the floor of my trunk. There is a piece of plastic side wall from the inside of my car that has gone through, yes through, my carbon fiber subwoofer. I find as much of my stuff as I can think to gather and leave the scene.
And this could all have been prevented with 2$ worth of roadsalt.
Yes. From 4:30 pm when I left the office, until 9:00 pm that night, they never spread down salt. 4 and a half hours, and this was one of the busiest streets where I live.
$2 worth of road salt. I want to say that again, because, if a 21 year old girl can never walk again, $2 could have prevented that. If a 21 year old guy dies...yes, dies...it could have been prevented with $2 worth of road salt.
You see, road salt works awesome at that temperature. Melts ice snappy quick and cars have complete control again. Yeah, the roadsalt that comes out of the snow trucks that we pay for with our taxes.
$2.
I don't like political grandstanding. I don't like using anyone's misfortune for any kind of advantage.
That being said, I have to write this. I think it is important enough that I get to bump the usual readership of the sites I own, and the server costs I pay for this one diatribe I am going to write.
I was involved in a major car accident 2 nights ago. It has made it to the papers and was on the news. It was that level of big. How big I will get into in a second. Out of the four people that were directly involved, two were (probably are still) in the hospital. One of which, from what I was able to gather at the scene, is not in good condition. Out of the 3 cars involved, two are complete write offs and the third needs significant repair.
And this could have been easily avoided. With nothing more than the tax dollars you and I are paying on every transaction. You know, those taxes that make our place to live hospitable and safe. Yeah. Those tax dollars.
Some back-story. Not a lot. I don't want this being a multi-page entry.
Had to pick up my car from my mechanic (oh, the irony) earlier in the day from getting some work done. I was picking it up at 6:00 pm. Seeing that it was snowing outside, and that I normally had a 35 minute drive to my mechanic, I ducked out of work at 4:30 so I would make it on time. Even at that time of the afternoon, the roads were horrible and I made it to my mechanic about 20 minutes late. So a 35 minute drive took almost 2 hours. That started at 4:30 in the afternoon. Another important bit.
Fast forward to Friday evening.
It's around 9:00 pm and I'm driving down the street, with a friend of mine following behind me on the way from dinner to go watch a movie at my house. The roads are treacherous. I mean horrible. Like a skating rink. That, 0 degree Celsius when water is just starting to freeze on the roads, but you can't see it because it is wet and you can't tell the water from ice, horrible. The temperature will become important in a little bit. Everyone is giving at least 40 feet (if not more) distance between cars, just so if you slide as you are stopping, you will only bump the car ahead of you and have to get a paint touch up rather than kill each other.
As a matter of fact, at one intersection before the "accident", I watched a civic slide into the back of a pickup with a snow blade on the front. Thought to myself, "well, that sucks." Heh. Yeah.
Cruise through the light and slowly driving down the road. The road I'm on happens to be a 70 Km/h road, but I'm doing a healthy 45 (ish) along with the dozen or so cars behind me. We know the score. Slow and steady wins the race.
As I get to the bottom of the hill, I notice a silver Grand Am on the oncoming traffic side of the road starting to fishtail. Damn. This don't look good. Then it keeps coming....Hits the centre divider and starts spinning sideways....Takes air off of the divider and is promptly sailing directly at the front of my car about 5 inches off of the road.
Pause for a break here.
I have learned from the police that when I started to notice I was about to be in an accident, I had 1/10th of a second to decide what to do. Turns out you can do a few things in that time.
1) I'm going to try and turn my car into the divider between the lanes to hopefully help with the brakes I'm currently stomping on to try and stop me. 1/10th of a second isn't enough time for that turns out.
2) I've never seen the side of a car coming at me, let alone at the speed that it is travelling. It is NOT a good thing to see.
3) I'm done. This is it. It's all over for this dude.
Ok, play button now.
And it hits the front of my car. Everything in my car is flying from the back seat to the front. Both front airbags are going off and I'm spinning. I remember seeing the hood of my car buckling up and feeling things spinning.
Then I've stopped. Feels like something is wrong with my nose, and why do my eyes burn? Oh no. Is everyone ok?
So I jump out of my car (I don't have to put my car in park because the impact did that for me) and run to see if everyone is ok. I hear my car draining all fluids out the bottom of it all over the road, and notice a CD on top of some part of the frame where my bumper should be. How did that get out here? And my car is also a few inches shorter in the front than what it used to be. My friend who was following me is shaken up, but seems to be ok, so I run over to the Grand Am. Things are clearly not ok over there. The driver is conscious and saying she can't move or feel anything. The passenger doesn't look to be conscious, but I think he is breathing. I've watched enough movies to know you don't move anyone after a car accident.
I call the police and they are there in the quickest response time I have ever seen. Now, mind you my head is kinda messed up, so not the best judge of time, but I'd say less than 5 minutes and they are there. There is a towing guy talking to the driver of the grand am trying to keep her calm. Where the hell did he come from? And then I have a bunch of paramedics and cops asking me if I'm ok. By some twist of fate, turns out that I actually am...
Fast forward a few hours.
They've gotten both of the people out of the grand am out and are at the hospital by now. Had to use the jaws of life to get the passenger out. The passenger seat in the Grand Am is only about 4 inches wide. It hit with that much force. Without a doubt, that car is done. I'm hoping that both of them are ok. She was conscious so that's good, but he never came around, at least from what I seen.
My car is totalled. I have to collect my stuff out of it because it's going to the compound yard, because it may have been involved in an accident where a fatality was involved. I open the trunk of my car to get my crap out, and the force of the hit was so hard, it twisted the floor of my trunk. There is a piece of plastic side wall from the inside of my car that has gone through, yes through, my carbon fiber subwoofer. I find as much of my stuff as I can think to gather and leave the scene.
And this could all have been prevented with 2$ worth of roadsalt.
Yes. From 4:30 pm when I left the office, until 9:00 pm that night, they never spread down salt. 4 and a half hours, and this was one of the busiest streets where I live.
$2 worth of road salt. I want to say that again, because, if a 21 year old girl can never walk again, $2 could have prevented that. If a 21 year old guy dies...yes, dies...it could have been prevented with $2 worth of road salt.
You see, road salt works awesome at that temperature. Melts ice snappy quick and cars have complete control again. Yeah, the roadsalt that comes out of the snow trucks that we pay for with our taxes.
$2.
posted by Reverend Moloquin at 3:44 AM
2 Comments:
dude thats harsh. glad you're ok. hope the other two recover.
i was driving home(kitchener) from work(vaughn) that night. was doing 10 at points on the 401 and 70 at best in others. but only from milton on. around TO was fine!
saw a truck on hwy 8 by sportsworld go into a ditch just narrowly missing a row of cars in the lane beside him (which he cut through on his way to the ditch)
was a nasty nasty night. i was wondering why there was no salt down anywhere. was brutal!
My friend - I'm just glad you're ok.
I completely agree with the message. We clearly know where our tax-dollars aren't going.
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