I was with a friend and his son once, we were first on the scene of an accident where a drunk driver had been on the wrong side of the road and driven head first into a four wheel drive carrying a family; mum, dad, two young girls, grandma. The Grandma and two young girls hadn't been wearing seatbelts, you could see three places in the windscreen where mum and dad who were in the front and one of the girls who had been in the back had flown through the car and smacked their heads on the glass. Mum died of her brain injuries, Grandmas arm was almost severed, she'd somehow gone under one of the front seats and into the frame work, I can't even begin to understand the physics of how that happened, when the paramedics went to take off her cardigan her arm from the shoulder pretty well came with it. One of the young girls was relatively unscathed, the other had a broken arm and eye injuries, she was tiny, maybe six, dad was trapped in the car, had to be cut out, Jaws of Life, he was worried about who would take care of their pets at home, he couldn't even look at his wife, just too much, I guess, shock and denial. The driver on his own in the other car had a great big knot of skin hanging down his forehead that was flapping around but he didn't seem to notice, and his legs were pretty well gone from the knees down where the front of the car, engine, etc, had impacted in on him, bone, blood, meat, you could smell the alcohol on him, he was still conscious, he didn't even know he'd hit another car. The father in the four wheel drive said to me that the last thing he'd done before impact was turn to his wife and say, "I'm on the right side of the road aren't I?". When I said to the drunk driver, talking to him in an effort to keep him conscious, that they were just getting the guy out of the other car and then would come for him, he said, 'what car?', he didn't even know he'd hit another car, let alone a four wheel drive with a family in it. This happened maybe twenty years ago, I don't begin to know how paramedics, police and firies face this day after day. I think about this to some degree pretty much everytime I drive my car, it's the reason I don't tailgate, I don't drink drive, I do the speed limit, no more, no less unless conditions dictate, I don't hoon, I drive a Corolla and I drive like your Nana, I'm as boring as f@#$! on the road and I like it that way. People are going to survive to go home to their loved ones because of the way I choose to drive. I can still remember being in the shower after this and washing their blood off me. I still feel even after all this time traumatised by this event. Drink driving, just don't, life's too precious and gone in an instant. I wouldn't insure your mate either, just too risky, like giving him permission to go out kill someone and get his car fixed, like that's the main concern.
Sandfoot
> 9 months ago, 11 Apr 2017
