An Accident on Saturday Afternoon
Oct 19th, 2008 by Alex
While my mother and I were driving south on the Capital Beltway (I-495) yesterday around 11:30, a tractor trailer rolled over into the median three miles north of Branch Avenue (MD-5). It happened right in front of our eyes. Traffic was light and the scene was very surreal. This isn’t something you see unfold in front of you unless you’re watching it on television or on the movie screen. We didn’t see what the cause was, but it was as if an invisible hand just pushed the truck into and over the guardrail, rotating the cab and the trailer 90 degrees so that the driver’s side was against the ground. The trailer didn’t jack-knife but a large cloud of dirt and dust erupted around the truck as it was driven into the dirt. There was no debris that I saw and the truck appeared to stop almost instantly. No other cars were visible in front or behind the truck but I slowed, pulled to the right shoulder, dialed 911, told my mother where we were and asked her to relay that information to the operator.
I got out of the car, crossed three lanes and made it into the median. I don’t remember there being a guard rail, nor jumping or climbing over it. It’s like it never happened. The second my feet hit the ground I knew I was hurt. My back was killing me, to the point where I couldn’t stand up straight. I knew I wouldn’t be much help, so I stayed back and out of the way.
The truck’s engine was still running, wheels still turning. The driver of a dump truck (now parked in the middle southbound lane) was trying to figure out how to get up to the passenger door. It was some 8-9 feet in the air. The underside of the cab was probably hot and the spinning tires made that an unlikely and dangerous route to climb. Similarly, the top of the cab was smooth with no handholds. The driver’s door was embedded in the ground. He shouted to a woman who had run up from the center of the median (adjacent to the top of the trailer) to get something to break the windshield with, gesturing with his hands as if he were holding a baseball bat or a crowbar.
The dump truck driver gave the windshield a kick. It shattered a bit. A second kick made a fist-sized hole in the glass. It was then that I saw the driver of the rig inside the cab. He was standing on the driver’s door, but trying to climb up to the passenger door. He gave up after a few quick attempts. Both men began to kick at the windshield from both sides, enlarging the hole. I didn’t see diesel fuel leaking, but the engine was still running so I got out of there. I walked hurriedly up the embankment and climbed over the guard rail, crossed the trickling traffic and got back in my car. I felt guilty for not staying, but I knew I wasn’t going to be much good. Part of me was concerned for my own life, fleeting visions of an explosion racing through my mind.
I took the phone back from my mother and filled the operator in, told her that the driver was conscious and actively trying to get out of the cab and that others were helping. I didn’t know if there was another person in the cab; not that I saw. I repeated and clarified our location and she told me that they had people on the way. She thanked me and I hung up.
Strangely, the call didn’t appear in my Recent Calls list. The elapsed time of the call was 2 minutes and 58 seconds.
Three minutes.
In an emergency, three minutes feels like an eternity. I was only out of my car for about 90 seconds and in that time I feel like everything was going in slow motion. Not sluggish, but hyper-aware of my surroundings and taking in a lot more detail than usual. I’ve heard that this happens, but it was my first experience with it. The vivid green of the grass in the median, the bright purple cab, the light brown jacket of the dump trunk driver, the frantic yelling and “oh my God” comments from those running up to help, the noise from the diesel engine, the tires still spinning under power, and the crack of the glass; all with a sense of urgency that’s difficult to describe.
After I got back in the car and started driving again, I started to hyperventilate. I had to take controlled deep breaths. Between not remembering the jump that threw my back out of alignment and the bodily reaction, I have no doubt that I was coming down off of a huge endorphin fight-or-flight rush. All of this and I wasn’t even the one in the accident. It was a powerful experience and one that I don’t wish to repeat if it can be avoided; then again, I don’t think these sorts of things can be avoided.
In retrospect, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. I don’t even know why I got out of the car. I put myself at risk. I wasn’t aiming to save the driver in some act of heroism, nor was I looking to be a first-hand rubbernecker. I wasn’t thinking. I just reacted.
I can only hope that someone would do the same for me if it came down to it.
I think I would have just freaked out. That must have been quite an adrenaline rush.
First of all, how’s your back doing?
Second of all, I can tell you from my experience that most people won’t stop to help (but they may at least get on the cell phone and call 911…..”I saw an accident…somewhere…I’m not sure exactly where but it was on the beltway near a big office building” or something along those lines). However, there are those who will stop, and sometimes you’ll get someone who knows what they’re doing enough to be helpful.
yellowjkt: Serious rush.
jbrown: My back is on a the slow road to healing, as I’m told most back injuries are. Every day seems to be a little better than the last. I was surprised at the number of people that stopped; to the driver’s credit the people that did stop decided to stop right where they were (effectively stopping traffic entirely), thus forcing everyone to stop. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but since I had the GPS and I knew exactly how far north we were of Route 5 I figured that’d be the best thing I could do under the circumstances. I take it most people don’t get out of the way once they’re there?
[...] me that “healing takes time.” I’ve found this to be the case, especially since I suffered a back injury recently. It’s all cliche, but you really don’t miss things until they’re gone. [...]
Glad to hear your back is on the mend. I’m about 1 month out from a similar injury, but I had a pinched nerve as a bonus. No rhyme or reason to the pain then. It sucked. I fully understand your narrative in your newest post having lived the same way for a bit. I also found that raising/lowering the toilet seat was a bigger job than I would have thought.
Having traffic stopped was probably a good thing (except for the responding Fire/Rescue units, of course). One of my jobs as a driver is to control traffic, mostly by parking the big red truck in the way, and protect my crew. However, I’m still amazed at the obliviousness of drivers, driving around the truck, around flares, over cones, and/or weaving their way through the scene. It might even be funny, if it didn’t endanger my crew.