Came upon a bad auto accident today.

[aging_rocker]

Your friend is correct. Odd that the medics would tell him to stop CPR though...that is generally left to the ER staff to decide unless it was obviously not worth the effort...

They told him that the guy had already died while lying on the road. He was messed up really badly, but because he was young (17/18 I think) and physically fit, his heart just kept beating weakly for a while.

I think they did make brief 'attempts' at CPR when they arrived, but they realised almost instantly that the guy was done. He bled out on the road, from the kind of injuries you can't put a tourniquet on

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

Good on you @Stubee. I was the first on the scene to a horrible accident about a year ago. Even though everyone survived, I still felt the psychological after-effects for several months. Take care of yourself and don't hesitate to seek counseling if you need it.

 

[Skyhook]

My wife and he were sitting with his grandmother the other day and he was talking about quitting going to counseling and his grandma blurted out 'what kind of trauma have you had, you have had everything given to you, there is no reason for you to have had any trauma.'

Grandmas, ladies and gentlemen!

I'm reminded of this:

 

[boris bubbanov]

I driven a lot, and I saw so many fatalities and grievous injuries when I was younger.

I'm here to say, I think there's a lot less carnage per mile than there used to be. Once, I couldn't drive 600 miles without seeing something that was bad. Lately, maybe I've been lucky but I haven't seen a lot of the bad ones.

As for the physics here, my money is on the small car weighing 1/3 of the crazy large and gratuitous rig that hit it. This means, 9 times the decelerative forces on the occupants of the small car. So, two bits of advice: Don't rent these Mitsubishi Mirage G4 death traps and two, unless you're a spectacularly good driver, don't drive these huge truck and recreational trailer rigs around on extended road trips. These are killing machines and rightfully, you are to blame when you kill someone with one. Don't buy it, or just keep it parked 98% of the time.

 

[mad dog]

I've seen more than a few disturbing scenes like that. The visuals really stick with you. Very upsetting to see people in pain, in shock. One that still haunts me was many years ago. On the NYS Thruway, driving my mother somewhere. State police cruiser goes by on the left. I can see the car shaking, some kind of violent rumpus in the back. They're not far ahead when the rear passenger door on my side pops open, and this guy flies out. We're doing 65 or 70. I hit the breaks, somehow didn't hit this tumbling body.

A little too vivid, the violent smashing and bouncing as he cartwheeled down the road ahead of us. The cops had panic stopped as well. As we look on, this guy actually stands up, with the horrified cops screaming at him to stay down. His eyes were wild. He was drenched in blood, clothes shredded and a whole lot of skin gone.

I couldn't drive on. Too freaked by the sight. Never learned what happened to that man, doubtful he survived.

 

[Stubee]

Thanks for the comments. I really didn’t do much but stop and try because there were already several people around the seriously damaged little car. I’ve been more involved in helping injured in other accidents, including a pretty bad head on collision I was in—I don’t remember my good deeds—and I guess it was the obvious pain & inability to do more that shook me. Boris, this car was the smallest I’ve seen in some time, very short wheelbase etc. Not tiny like a Smart car but smaller than a modern Civic. No idea what it was as it was nearly unrecognizable.

I’ve been around death and suffering for years. I worked in our hospital Pathology & Histology lab as a high school co-op and that had me attending 50-odd autopsies. I didn’t just look on but was taught the cutting, sawing etc. I never got comfortable with the high speed oscillating saw I used to open the cranium and believe I sweated through every darned use. I did learn one thing pretty quickly though: when you’re dead, you are dead, a lifeless corpse.

I sat with my best friend daily for months as he died from a horrible cancer and watched the life slip away from a dearest family member, and so on. Most my age have experienced similar “events” and of course they leave one sad, grieving, praying etc but it’s different seeing multiple people suffering that you can’t help. I truthfully might have been less shaken if I’d been first on the scene, one who could do more, however limited? I don’t know. I appreciate the comments on handling this and while the scene came back strongly at first it’s fading a bit. I’m up in NW Ontario deer hunting and that is a balm for my soul anyway; I’ll be OK.

I’ve tried to find info on the accident online but thus far cannot. I did find that a fatal accident occurred on the Seney Stretch just a week earlier. A vehicle with a kayak attached to the roof was approaching a half ton when the kayak broke free. It smashed into the half ton’s driver side windshield, killing the driver but the passenger beside him, his wife, “was unharmed”…physically anyway.

Life is short, enjoy it.

 

[Guran]

Thanks for the comments. I really didn’t do much but stop and try because there were already several people around the seriously damaged little car. I’ve been more involved in helping injured in other accidents, including a pretty bad head on collision I was in—I don’t remember my good deeds—and I guess it was the obvious pain & inability to do more that shook me. Boris, this car was the smallest I’ve seen in some time, very short wheelbase etc. Not tiny like a Smart car but smaller than a modern Civic. No idea what it was as it was nearly unrecognizable.

I’ve been around death and suffering for years. I worked in our hospital Pathology & Histology lab as a high school co-op and that had me attending 50-odd autopsies. I didn’t just look on but was taught the cutting, sawing etc. I never got comfortable with the high speed oscillating saw I used to open the cranium and believe I sweated through every darned use. I did learn one thing pretty quickly though: when you’re dead, you are dead, a lifeless corpse.

I sat with my best friend daily for months as he died from a horrible cancer and watched the life slip away from a dearest family member, and so on. Most my age have experienced similar “events” and of course they leave one sad, grieving, praying etc but it’s different seeing multiple people suffering that you can’t help. I truthfully might have been less shaken if I’d been first on the scene, one who could do more, however limited? I don’t know. I appreciate the comments on handling this and while the scene came back strongly at first it’s fading a bit. I’m up in NW Ontario deer hunting and that is a balm for my soul anyway; I’ll be OK.

I’ve tried to find info on the accident online but thus far cannot. I did find that a fatal accident occurred on the Seney Stretch just a week earlier. A vehicle with a kayak attached to the roof was approaching a half ton when the kayak broke free. It smashed into the half ton’s driver side windshield, killing the driver but the passenger beside him, his wife, “was unharmed”…physically anyway.

Life is short, enjoy it.

A few weeks back I posted a thread about a sudden heart arrest that I got just barely involved with. It was the same; several, apparently competent, people already at work. I called the emergency number, but another call from the same scene was already in progress. I stood by, in case I could do something and I positioned myself so that I steered people passing by somewhat further from the rescue operation. It was all I could do.

You did what you could do. That's great! We wish we could have done more, but we couldn't. We did what we could.

 

[ahiddentableau]

It sure puts life in perspective. We spend so much of our lives caught up in trivialities, then something like this happens and we get coldly reminded of what is really important.

Life is such a fragile thing.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

Ugh - that Seney stretch.

From there to Munising .

My son has to drive it Friday.

The first time we took him to NMU for a look-see We drove back from there in a mildly heavy snow squall on that stretch in a brand new Subaru four-wheel-drive with snows on it.

Brutal.

Rumble strips in the middle aren’t there ? So you know where the road is ?

The Lake Effect is worse there than in Marquette by far

 

[ChicknPickn]

Was a crime/emergency news reporter for a few years. Thought it was "exciting" to look around the scenes. Sometimes before officials arrived.

Don't. You can't unsee it. Not worth it.

 

[teleman1]

I took a health class in college, spent the eve in an ER,(I thought that would be more mellow than an ambulance); NOT!
I was in the room with a fatal overdose, (they tried so hard). Guy came in for stitches on his head. Doc calls me over to watch and I decline. Bit I asked him and he was the only doctor on staff, what do yo do when someone comes in and their insides are outside. He told me, it is hard sometimes, but then, I realize, I am the only person here who can do this and I suck up. Eventually they get numb I guess.

Problem with some accidents are people stopping, not knowing what they are doing, and want to take control. Once at a bar, a guy fell from the 2nd level to the ground. No one seemed to notice, but I saw him out on his back on the floor. I jumped to the bar and told the bar guy to call 911. Then, a dude asked what happened, he was an a first responder having a beer. I led him to the guy and said do your stuff. I had his leg elevated and I walked always bouncers were on the scene. A few minutes later, I saw the guy and asked why he wasn't helping. He told me the bouncer told him to UK off!

 

[getbent]

Folks couldn't afford things like trauma in your nephew's grandma's day. My grandpa was worn out from just plain hard work by the age of 56 and died. Most of his brothers died off from the same malady at close to the same age. Daylight was when my grandpa's day started, it ended at sundown. He probably was about my age when he died in miles he'd traveled. Life is harder for some, and easier for others, and some of us are just plain lucky!

I have sympathy (and empathy) for both the grandson and the grandma. I know that what you wrote above is true... and I know that the things that I experienced in childhood and young adulthood can shape how we see the world. I have seen how different people deal (or don't deal) with what they faced.

For me, it is always to try to draw it all in rather than just react. The grandma is right in the sense that the grandson wasn't born in a milking shed and didn't grow up grinding on a dairy farm with an alcoholic father and a dark and forbidding mother (god only knows what their lives were like.) But, clearly, the things that motivated her to fly and go to school and become a teacher, then go into business and then stake it all on an idea, pour all of her assets into the idea and then just before the 2000 tech bubble exploded, she and the uncle sold the business for 1000 its worth (to the guys who sold AOL for a crazy amount) and, boom, she's loaded!

I can see the disconnect when she looks at a grandson who has not known any fears of 'getting along'. Always a place to sleep, food to eat etc... and yet, he cannot seem to figure it out. I call it the curse of wealth. What do you do when you don't really have to do anything?

It would have been my wish that in the moment that I mentioned if the grandmother had just been a tiny bit empathetic instead of defensive.

She and I talked about this sense and she mentioned that she regretted the response, but I didn't say 'well, yeah' instead I just kind of showed compassion for the situation, hers AND his.

It is interesting the aunt's children have all done just fine in the world (they grew up middle class, the wealth came later) but the grandchildren all have pretty significant issues and disorders. Kind of 'be careful what you wish for'.

We are good to our kids, but I am a firm believer in living a normal, middle class life, whatever wealth is growing in the background. My kids are self sufficient now and flourishing, once their kids are flourishing, we can do a few things for lots of people that may actually help.

A bigger boat seems like an actual deterrent in many cases.

 

[saltyseadog]

In 1976 while living in Denmark we were on our way out to visit my girlfriends mother when a big motor bike passed us at way above the limit. About a mile or so up the road we heard a huge bang and moments later a crash helmet flew past us. We could hear sirens already and my gf didn't want to stop as her 3yr old daughter was with us. We found out later that the helmet hadn't been empty so pretty glad we didn't stop.

 

[Ronhar]

Thank you for doing what you could. My wife was a nurse, both our dads were firemen and in emergency services. daughter-in-law is a respiratory therapist. My brother-in-law and oldest son are firefighters and first responders. I have the upmost respect for them and all their co-workers, many I know personally. Even though my wife and I were foster parents for medically fragile babies for 20 years I don’t think I could do their job. I have had some bad things happen with the children(one died from medical complications in our custody) I could never do their job. My son has received several bravery awards. He cannot have children but loves children and is a super soft hearted guy. He told me about having to carry a suffocated baby from a house fire. It’s hard to see a grown man’s tears but he goes on because that’s who he is. He’s my hero.