Totaled a Dodge Colt in HS. Guy ran a stop sign and took off the front of it. 2nd one was a 72 Dodge Challenger. Heading home and fell asleep. Rolled it 3 1/2 times and wrapped 125' of 6' chain link fence around it 3 times. Snapped a phone pole in 3 pcs and it ripped the right front 1/4 panel and tire off. Skid marks started 385' from where the car came to rest. Cops estimated I was traveling in excess of 110mph. I crawled out of the window by forcing myself between A post and the fence. All I had was a scratch on my hand. Friends driving by picked me up and carried me home, 4 blocks away. Since I've been on.the FD, 14+ yrs,I have worked over 100 extrications and have bagged about 20 people, including a friend and another friends 16 yr old son. But we've helped save many many more lives. Wear your seat belt. Don't text and drive. Be aware and cautious of every vehicle you see. And please move over for emergency vehicles. If you can't move over don't slow down. Maintain your speed and we will go around you when it's safe.
Totaled my 1st car in the rain coming back from class at LSU one night. Hydroplaned into a parked car in front of the LSU Lab School on Dalrymple. A few minor fender benders...mostly others at fault. Got rear ended as a passenger a few years ago going to work on I-10. My neck is till messed up. Worst wreck I witnessed...well didn't see it just came across it right after it happened. I was on I-49 coming back from seeing my daughter and grandson. A car had lost control and flipped upside down on the median between the service road and the interstate. I saw several people trying to lift the car off of someone so I jammed the brakes and ran to help. As I approached the car I saw something in the middle of the service road. A little girl of about 3 had been thrown about 25 feet from the car. My heart sank because I thought she was dead. I ran to her and she was trying to get up. I told her to stay still because I didn't know how badly she had been hurt. She was crying and saying it was hot meaning the road. So I gently picked her up and held her until help got there. A lady had stopped just after I got there and stopped traffic. Seemed like a sat there forever until paramedics arrived. I was amazed that the only obvious injury was to her chin from some significant road rash. She seemed fine otherwise. After about an hour or so I left but stopped about a mile down the road to collect myself. I guess the adrenaline wore off and the thought of what could have been hit. I have to say this family was very lucky. The little boy under the car was fine and other than a few scrapes and bruises the mom and other son were OK as well. But jeez...I can't understand why a mother wouldn't buckle a toddler up in a car seat. http://www.katc.com/news/update-child-ejected-in-carencro-crash-non-life-threatening-injuries/
I was driving home from Baton Rouge to Lafayette (work commute I did for about 3 1/2 years) back in the mid 90s. It was the day before Good Friday and I was on the I-12 split merging with I-10. Last thing I remember was noticing how bad the traffic was (worse than usual) and then I found myself waking up in the middle of the median between I-12 and I-10 in my Toyota pickup. There was a crack in the windshield (where my head struck it I am pretty sure). The horror came when I saw the accident report. I struck the back of a car who struck the back of a car who struck the back of yet another car and then I veered across the median unconscious and struck a vehicle coming the other way on I-10 and then rolled back down into the median backwards I suppose. Amazingly all I needed was a tetanus shot for the gash on my head.
I was in a wreck that was my fault after the last LSU / Bama game in Baton Rouge. It was my fault. Alcohol was involved. I blew a 0.09 (the limit is 0.08) The other people weren't wearing their seat belts and I almost killed a 4 year old girl. I plead guilty to negligent injury and was sentenced to 5 years hard labor at Angola - suspended sentence. I'm now under home incarceration for 3 years as part of a plea deal. I lost a tremendous amount. What happened to me could have happened to each one of you. Please think about this next time you leave an LSU tailgate.
That is a sobering story -- no pun intended. I'm guessing no one was hurt since you didn't mention it. Are you allowed to go to work as part of the plea bargain?
@red55 A state trooper once told me the most common injury they see in crashes is broken arms from the drivers bracing themselves from impact. In fact, if you watch NASCAR, you'll notice from in-car cameras that the drivers are being taught now to take their hands off the wheel when they're out of control and know they're about to have impact. I've been in 3 or 4 in my lifetime. None serious, no injuries and only one was my fault. The "that really sucks" part of the one I caused was it came less than 24 hours after I had bought the car, brand new.
At the risk of hijacking the thread....I've videoed many crashes working for a TV station, the worst being the one on Hwy 90 near Centerville last month. That's the one where the family from Patterson was killed when they crossed the median and hit the Lafayette High School baseball team bus. (NTSB ruled tire failure as the cause last week....it was a 10-year old tire, so I doubt that the lawsuit that is surely coming will be successful)
Oh yea, the people in the other car survived....the ankle bracelet, in my case, is a curfew. I have to be home by 10:00 pm and can't leave till 5:00 am. To make things easy, I made my office at the cafe into a "dorm room". My PO visits every so often and I'm subject to random drug testing, etc. My felony conviction is expungable as well...so I'm lucky. My avatar is a picture of me with Chad Jones. He came in to the cafe after I opened up and we were talking mostly about our car accidents.
Steve, this is horrible. It's definitely something I think about now when I drive. I used to drive on a few drinks, but not any more. I tend to do my drinking at home or when someone else is driving. It's so scary. I've been in two major accidents. The first one was when I was in college at LSU, and my date pulled out in front of a car; it took the front end off his car, but we weren't injured (except for a cut on his head.) The second one was my first year in Dallas. My now-husband pulled out in front of a car in downtown Dallas, taking the front end off of my car (and totaling it). My parents were in the backseat, but no one was injured. Car accidents really scare me. I guess it's because one of my earliest memories is of watching my dad go through the pain of losing two of his football players who were on their way to catch the bus to an away game in 1973. They were driving too fast over an overpass next to a school bus. When they started downhill, a slow-moving sugarcane truck was in the lane in front of them, and they had nowhere to go, so they ran up under the cane truck, which cut their car (and their bodies in half). After that, my dad never let his players leave school on game day. They always stayed at school and had a pregame meal together, and as the years went by and technology came on the scene, they'd usually rent a movie to watch. An accident I saw that left an impression on me was when I was in 7th grade. We were driving in Baton Rouge, and a group of teenagers had run into someone's yard and then hit their house. A boy sat on the lawn wearing a once white t-shirt that was covered in blood. Scared me half to death. Last year, on my way back to Dallas from Spring Break with my two daugthers, I was passing an 18-wheeler on I 49 south of Alexandria as we both got to the top of an overpass. He did NOT see my car (it was a Lexus sedan) and started into my lane (for absolutely NO reason--no one was in front of him or entering the Interstate.) I don't know if he was asleep at the wheel or what, but I had to lay on the horn three times before he moved back, and this was with my gunning it to try to outrun him. If he'd continued over, my daughters and I would likely have been killed--getting pushed off the overpass by an 18-wheeler. My babies were sleeping in the backseat and didn't realize it happened, but I was white-knuckled and upset for the rest of the 5-hour drive. And I went and bought an Expedition--to hopefully be better visible.
I haven't driven drunk since 1979. I was at a Christmas party in Tigerland and left it at about 3:00 AM. I was so drunk that it scared me and I drove to my house north of campus at 10 miles an hour. That was as fast as I could go and keep it in my lane. I figured that I could only hit a tree so hard at that speed. Fortunately there were few cars out and no cops. One look at me peering over my steering wheel driving at bicycle speed and they would have pulled my ass over in a heartbeat. The experience made me more aware of how much I was drinking. I've spent the night on several couches and in my truck a few times, but I've never driven drunk again.
