Speed Kills by AllenGray

Speed kills, it’s a simple message, yet it’s still not sinking through. In the early hours of this morning, the pager sounded, with the alert tone. The message was the same standard message, Car accident – Possible person trapped, location, nearest cross road. We soon discovered that the scene of this accident was only one kilometer away from the station at the most, and that it would be one of the more horrific accidents that most of us have seen.

The car must have been doing well in excess of 150km an hour when he lost control. The driver was correcting his course to avoid an oncomming car and caught the grass verge by some houses. The car he avoided would be the first to call the accident in to 000. We could see where he had hit the first pole, and as we made our way up to the where the car had finally impacted into the second power pole, we counted at least three places where the car had dug in as it rolled. It had hit the second pole with enough force to wrap the car around the pole and place the pole on a lean. The front wheel was another few hundred meters down the road by the next power pole. Power was lost to the surrounding homes. The powerlines on the first pole were arcing out due to damage from the force of the impact. One person had been thrown clear of the car as it rolled, breaking his ankle in the process. He was the lucky one. The car had hit the pole bottom first, which saved the lives of two others, had it hit roof first, well, enough said. The driver was dead. Two others were in the remains of the car, screaming. The sounds of their screaming could be heard by one of our brigade members, who lives about halfway between our station and the accident site. Car parts had been scattered across a wide area, we even found the radio out of the dash board over twenty meters away on the other side of the road. It’s amazing how many parts there is in a car, you never really notice untill you see them scattered all over the road. Two air ambulances were needed. The living paitents were cut out of the car, then the deceased. The LPG tank in the car was flared off to prevent the risk of explosion. There was a party at a house down the road, and they all quickly arrived on scene to gawk at the carnage, the police had to move them on. The road would be closed well into the day.

We were there when the car was removed from it’s final resting point, for fear of a spark igniting fuel leaking from the petrol tank. We had to wait for the power company to arrive on scene with heavy equipment to brace the pole before the tow truck could pull the car free. While we were waiting, the police escorted family members down to the scene, to see where their loved one had died. It’s a scene that we’ve seen far too many times, and as usual, there was a media camera there trying to get the shot, but I saw an officer make his way over to the camerman and have a quiet word, while standing, I noticed, directly in front of his view.

Speed kills, we’ve all seen the ads on tv, the bill boards, the posters, yet accidents like this still occur. The worst part, is that all in the car were in their teens still, not one was aged over twenty. If you’re parents of teenager who drive, show them this journal, talk to them, beat it into their heads. It’s not just themselves that they affect, it’s the people responding to the accident who have to treat their mangled bodies (injuries sustained in car accidents are never pretty, mangled is the best way to describe it) and cut them free, the people who witness the accident and their families. I will admit that when I was younger, on ocassion I would speed, it’s something that every young teenager does in a car at some point, but with little thought to the risks. Then at 18 I joined both the SES and the local Fire Brigade, I soon learned to hate speed. I still speed today, but like most people, it’s only 5 – 10kmh over the limit, and usually when I’m not paying attention, but I don’t go out of my way to push the car so hard and so fast that if I were to lose it, that there would be no hope, I’ve seen the results of people who do far too often enough now. I’ve never understood people who do speed excessively, everytime they pass me in the car, I always seem to catch up to them down the road while doing the speed limit. When they pass me all I see is an accident scene in my minds eye, and thinking of the response required. Occupational hazard of being a volunteer who’s been to too many accident scenes I suppose. If you’re a parent, hug your kids today, if you’re a speeder, think about this, slow down, or you’ll end up meeting someone like me and my fellow Fire and SES Volunteers, in a situation that we’d both rather avoid, as you’re being cut, hopefully alive, out of your car. Just a thought.