The danger of being anywhere near moving traffic
This link gets updated daily, so the story will move down the page, so for later readers, here is the short summary:
Updated information indicates on September 10, 2013 at approximately 1:45 p.m., a 2001 Subaru Legacy four-door station wagon with three adult occupants was stopped on the inside median shoulder of Interstate 5 near milepost 218 after having a flat tire. The three occupants were outside or near the opening of the car's left side doors.
A 2014 Nissan Versa four-door driven by KIMBERLY M. PHILLIPS, age 30, from Phoenix, Arizona, was traveling southbound in the left lane when an unidentified pickup braked and began to slow quickly. PHILLIPS steered to the left, traveling onto the insider shoulder where it struck the parked Subaru and the male standing outside.
You can NEVER predict what is going to happen, you can blame the pickup who slowed all you want, the real cause will likely be found that the lady that hit the parked car was following too close, couldn't brake quick enough, ran off the road hitting a disabled car, of course if she was looking any further ahead than the end of her hood she would of also seen that the shoulder was occupied.
I try to keep watch on traffic ALL the time, even when not in a travel lane, in this case I am guessing the injured were standing very near the outside edge of the breakdown lane or further from the travel lane.
SHG
Another lesson to learn in this: Drive on that flat tire to safety!
Have been telling my student drivers that no car tire or wheel is worth your life. Get way (at least a car width) off the highway or just drive slow to the next exit. Not sure I am going to make it through 6 more driver eds. :'(
Craziness happens every day. We can never outguess the possibilities.
My mother suffered a massive stroke while driving on a highway. Five minutes earlier she had been chatting with a good friend in her driveway. There were absolutely no signs that she was in any kind of physical distress as she drove off. The stroke hit as she was nearing a curve in the road. She apparently was accelerating as she went straight ahead into the ditch before striking an earthen field entrance and flipping the car end over end. Anyone within 100 feet of the road centerline would have been in danger that morning.
In the mid-1960's, my sister drove over a bridge across the Kansas River in Topeka, Kansas to get to a laundromat a few blocks from the bridge. She was still hauling her baskets of laundry into the building when she saw on the television there that a report had come in that specific bridge had just collapsed into the river.
I was in downtown Manhattan in the summer of 1978 just a few days after a helicopter had broken into many pieces near a helipad atop one of the tall buildings a few blocks from the Waldorf-Astoria where I was staying. I believe several people were killed by high-velocity parts raining from the sky. Can't think of the name of the building, but, it was a well-known structure.
Very good advice. In fact you can drive for a long way on a flat before it starts to come apart or damage the rim.
If only you can get those students to listen.
This weekend we had a local 21 year old killed in a preventable car accident. A co-worker's son was in the passenger seat (survived with slight bruising).
Really hit home for me since I have a son that just got his license.
Could it possibly been in 1977? Sounds a lot like the helicopter crash on the roof of the Pan Am building (now the Met Life building)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetLife_Building#Helicopter_service
Yes, it was 1977, not 1978
And it was the Pan Am building. I just could not get than name to come out of the deep dark recesses of my memory banks.
From your link:
On May 16, 1977, about one minute after a Sikorsky S-61L landed and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the five 20-foot blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men, including film director Michael Findlay, were killed instantly and another man died later in a hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured.
