Connection and the Accident on 80

 Connection and the Accident on 80

Sometimes you can know someone for a long time but never have much of a feeling for them and then there are other occasions where for whatever reason you quickly feel a bond. Sometimes it's more of a kindred spirit type of thing other times I don't know what it is. Sometimes it's due to a shared experience. If that experience is very intense that bond can even be instant.

When I was young I loved to drive and I used to drive a lot. I live in California but I grew up on the East coast and all my side of the family still lives there. There was a time where I drove across the country and back at least once a year. In the 70's I put over 30,000 miles a year on my cars, all me. It wasn't until the 80s when I had higher paying jobs that I started taking planes to travel back East. For all this driving I've only had a few accidents. The worst one occurred in the early 90s on Highway 80.

One a late night in January of 1994 I was returning from San Jose after seeing a Sharks hockey game with my brother-in-law Mike. I was living in Rocklin at the time, had just dropped Mike off in Carmichael, and I was less than ten miles from home. It had been a long drive, something like 140 miles, and I had already driven that distance earlier getting to the game. I was finally almost all the way back home. For a change, I was not in the left lane, which was where I usually drove in those days. I was tired so I was driving a little slower, probably doing at most 60, as 55 was the speed limit. Suddenly I saw a vehicle from behind coming up fast in the lane to the left of me and it started to move to the right entering my lane. The vehicle was moving very fast and was quickly bearing down on me. It was getting way too close. I hit the gas hard in an attempt to get out of the way but it was not enough. The vehicle's headlights buried themselves in the back of my car as the vehicle rammed the rear of my car spinning me 90 degrees to my left. I was now going somewhat north of 65 mph. I attempted to get control of the car but it was too late. My car was crossing the two lanes to my left and heading out of control right at the guardrail. It then crossed the shoulder and slammed into the guardrail. A highway lane is 12 feet wide and the distance from the edge of the highway to the guardrail was another 12 to 15 more. So doing the math I probably had to travel something less than 40 feet before I hit it. With a speed of over 65 mph I would be covering over 100 feet per second. It was going to be less than a second before I hit the guardrail.

I've read about situations where people in high stress situations have time slow down, like everything is happening in slow motion and that was what I experienced. At the time it seemed like it took more like fifteen or twenty seconds once I saw that guardrail coming at me. I realized I'd lost control of the car and there was nothing I could do to avoid slamming into the guardrail. I was thinking “This is way too fast and I will probably die.” and “Yikes!, I'm going to get clobbered by a car in one of the lanes I am crossing.” But I cleared both lanes. I then thought about Kris and remembered I forgot to tell her that I had put something or other in a place where she might have trouble finding it. Another couple of other random thoughts ran through my mind about what she might need to know or find since I'm about to be dead. Then I remember thinking “She's probably already asleep and now she will be getting a call waking her up to this.” Then, “Thank goodness I already dropped Mike off” and lastly “I wonder what happened to the other car?” All those thoughts in less than a second, but then it was a very long second. The longest I remember experiencing anyway.

“Bam!” I hit the guardrail head on, hard!. Dazed, my first thought was “Am I alive?” I started feeling myself and it seemed I was. I saw smoke coming from under the hood of the car and thought “OMG it's on fire, it's going to burst into flames”, like in the movies. I opened the door to get out but couldn't because of my seat belt (no airbags). I clumsily undid the seat belt and jumped out. I was OK and I was alive!

There was someone on the other side of the guardrail. He had stopped and gotten out of his car. He asked me if I was OK. I said “I guess so”. He then asked if I was injured and if anything hurt. I then realized I was experiencing pain in both my knee and my neck. He came over and had me lie down and covered me with a blanket. It was then that I saw the other vehicle. It was further up, in the middle of the highway, upside down. The guy helping me said he was in training to be a emergency care person. Another couple of people stopped. One of them had a cell phone and asked me if I wanted to call someone, maybe my wife. I replied “Yes”, but the guy helping me emphatically said “NO!”. He turned to me and said “You don't want to call your wife when you're laying in a gutter by the side of the highway. An ambulance is coming, call her from the hospital.” While waiting there the driver from the other vehicle found me and asked how I was doing. She sat with me and gave her version of the accident. Evidently her car had rolled over twice before stopping upside down. She asked me what I thought happened. I told her what took place from my viewpoint. We talked for a probably less that two minutes, very friendly. She seemed genuinely concerned about me and surprisingly, she appeared to be just fine.

The police arrived and they immediately moved her away from me. One of them went with her and the other stayed and questioned me. They asked me how I was doing, if I had been drinking, and finally what happened. I had one beer at the game but that was now a good three hours ago or more. That cop then left and switched with the other cop and the other policeman asked me what happened and if I had been drinking. He left and then a third person came over and sat with me, also a cop, a woman this time. She asked how I was doing and of course the obligatory had I been drinking question. Finally the ambulance shows up. I was not all that sure I needed an ambulance but my knee did hurt, my neck was sore, and I did feel a bit unstable. Of course I didn't have a usable car at this point so I really had no way of getting home anyway. Everyone was insisting that I needed to go to the hospital. OK, fine. A guy from the ambulance came over. He put a neck brace on me and took a look at my knee. Evidently having been through the same training program as the police, he then asked me if I'd been drinking. How many times do I need to answer this same question? Don't these people talk to each other? Perhaps they should think about expanding or varying their inquires. How about “Do you have a license?”, “Do you have insurance?” “How fast were you driving?”, “Are you on any medication?”, or even “What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?”. I told him the same story I'd told the police and thought “Ya know, a beer was beginning to sound pretty darned good”. However, not wanting to trigger another round of drinking questions I kept that thought to myself.

We were just a few feet from the Placer County line, but we were still in Sacramento County. The ambulance guy told me that since we were still in Sacramento County they were obligated to take me to the downtown Davis Med Center. I started insisting that they take me to Sutter which, at least at the time, was very close to where we were and right off the highway. It was just off the next exit, the exit I had just been coming up to when I was hit. I could see the Sutter Hospital sign from where we were. Heck, I could probably walk to the hospital if they let me stand up. One thing about me, once I lock on to something I can be relentless. I didn't want Kris to have to drive all the way down to Sacramento so I kept strongly insisting and finally they gave in to me. At the hospital they wheeled me in on a stretcher to the ER. Someone came over and checked me out. My knee was swollen but in general I seemed to be OK. I called Kris and said: “ I've been in an accident. I am OK but the car is not drive-able so I need a ride. I am at Sutter on Sunrise and I am in the ER but again, I am completely OK.” I tried to emphasize the completely OK part but I was in the ER. How convincing could that be when the rest of the message is I was in an accident, the car is a wreck, and I am now in the ER of a hospital at 2 in the morning? Kris walked in. When she sees me her eyes get big and her mouth drops opens. I say “What?” She says “There's blood all over your face!” Evidently my head must have hit the windshield. And of course I was still in a bed in the ER and still had that dumb neck brace on that I couldn't get anyone to take off. My requests were denied because they all said they needed a Doctor's OK. I continued to assure Kris I was really OK and was just waiting for the doctor so I could get out of there. Kris got someone to clean up my head. The Doctor finally returned, took off the neck brace, and I was released.

The next day, Sunday, Kris and I went down to the yard where the car was to get what we could out of it. I drove because I wanted to get back in a car and drive right away to make sure I was going to be OK with driving. The car was bent up pretty good in the left front and in the right rear. The passenger area was not too bad though.

Monday morning I got up and went into work. My boss came over to chat with me after hearing about my accident. After a few sentences he looked at me and said “Dave, you need to go home right now. You are in shock and you are talking a mile a minute”. I started to object but he was insistent. He was right. I was still in shock and it took until Wednesday for me to return to my normal self.

For awhile afterwards I would relive the crash when sleeping and wake up suddenly as I hit the guardrail, but that eventually stopped. I still don't like cars getting up close behind me, and after that accident I leave more space between my car and the car in front of me. Overall, I didn't die and wasn't seriously injured. In fact my worst wound was the bruising on my chest from the seat belt. I was lucky and I give that Subaru high marks for safety.

Turned out the person who hit me had been drinking and was a somewhat known drunk driver, at least to the police and my insurance company. She had minimal insurance, but enough. The courts contacted me asking me if I wanted to file for additional damages. I found that a little odd. It felt like they were encouraging me to “pile-on”. We both had insurance. Drunk driving penalties are steep, she didn't need me to add to them. I was not significantly hurt and her insurance company paid for my car and my expenses.

Not long after that we saw her name on an Adopt-a-Highway sign up in the mountains (she has an unusual name). Evidently part of her punishment included highway cleanup. I only spoke with her for a couple of minutes and have not seen her since that night but there is some kind of bond that happened from being in that accident together. I will never forget her and I find myself thinking about her from time to time hoping she is doing OK.