Posted on 02/19/2017 3:34:17 PM PST by BenLurkin
FAYETTE COUNTY, Ala. (WIAT) — A father and son are dead after a head-on collision with each other in Fayette County. It happened just after 4 a.m. Saturday.
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Neither were using a seat belt when the crash happened.
Troopers are still investigating but a preliminary investigation reveals alcohol was a factor in the accident.
(Excerpt) Read more at wiat.com ...
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Had you ever dated the daughter?
Otherwise, you’re talking state lottery odds.
A friend of mine is a fire-fighter. He seems normal enough and jokes, etc. He is the chief now, and is working on programs to deal with their physical and mental health.
“Yeah - we all seem like a bunch of clowns in the station house. But I know with me, wherever I go I am always thinking back to “this is where the girl died on her bike, there is where the mom and kid died in the car wreck, that house was the guy with the heart attack. Although the old people with heart attacks isn’t that traumatic - there’s worse ways to die.”
I did..things that happen every day (and night) in ERs nationwide.And fatal car accidents at 1AM (and 4AM) are among the saddest..and most unnecessary.
Very true.Of all the major decisions I've made in my life I think the smartest one was "no alcohol,no drugs".
I was a nurse in ER and I imposed that rule on my kids. Want to party? Find somewheres to be by midnight and stay the night.
They repeat this saying to me now. lol
So often this is true.
“our first responders “
Friend of mine’s car got hit by a big rig, that never even bothered to stop. Photo of his car showed the only recognizable feature of a motor vehicle was the wheels.
When the first responders showed up, he got pretty cheesed off, because they were taking their sweet time. He managed to get out a good curse word or two, the responder nearest said “Holy BLEEP, he’s still alive !”. They got him to the ER but quick, today he walks with a slight limp, but he walks.
I was spotty about wearing seatbelts until I was about 23, and doing a clinical rotation.
I saw a pretty young girl with the shape of a “Y” across her entire face, the edges of the puffy red tissue on either side held together by startlingly black stitches...it looked like Frankenstein stitches.
When I asked what happened, she said she was doing about 15 mph and ran into a pole while she wasn’t paying attention.
I must have been staring, because I think she read it on my face, and said “Funny. I thought somehow I could protect myself while going that slow, but it happened so fast...” as her voice trailed off and she looked away.
I wore my seatbelt religiously after that. I’ve seen far worse injuries than that, but I was unused to it then, and she was such an attractive young girl with such a horrible wound to her face.
I have no idea how First Responders can do that, be first there.
Sigh. It is so true. And I can’t help but think, “There but for the grace of God...”
Yup,because..particularly at that hour...it's not enough that *you* are sober and not falling asleep.
I worked with a guy who had a head on collision in front of his high school. He was playing chicken with a classmate. They weren’t going fast but there was enough damage that antifreeze poured out the front of the cars after the collision. The bad part is it happened right before the lunch bell sounded and everybody poured out of the high school to look.
The daughter was a raving lunatic. The CHP officer started carping on me about why I called him instead of filling out an accident report. When she started screaming at him, he understood. The father was equally as bad. They declined to pay for the damage on the first one saying Mom had cancer. I guess I missed that law about if a loved one has an illness you may run wild crashing into things. Their insurance company so disliked them that they walked me through how I could have their licences and registrations suspended and eventually revoked, as they were falsely claiming they had insurance.
I did my share of dangerous driving, and I am not proud of it. But I learned from it after surviving my late teens and early twenties, and consider myself lucky enough to have done that.
I remember getting up at 3 PM to go to work the night shift when my squadron was back at Cecil Field, working all night, leaving at 0700 in the morning driving non-stop from Jacksonville to Boston in my MG arriving around 0600 at my parents house, then immediately going out to find my friends. Spent all day with them, and went on a date with a sweet girl that night, driving 50 miles to Hampton Beach in NH. So, doing the math, that is about 60 hours straight.
I wasn’t doing drugs or alcohol. I was just fueled by my desire to see my friends and have a good time away from the Navy.
On the ride home at around 02:00, as she slept in the passenger seat, heading southbound on 495, I awoke to my head banging against the fabric roof of the MG. I had left the roadway and was plowing though the grass. It was a flat, grassy median. No embankment. No ditches. No trees. Or oncoming cars. Just bumpy grass. I steered back onto the highway, and have never driven like that again. I can still do a 16 hour drive, but I don’t ever get to the point where I am not acutely aware of my state of being. Back then, I was just diddly bopping down the highway, the next instant I was awake being jounced up and down. No warning whatsoever. No nodding off, no drooping of the eyes or crossing of vision trying to stay awake. I must have made an instantaneous transition from being awake to being soundly asleep.
I was lucky. I learned from that. I had a chance to think “I could have killed that sweet girl. Or some other driver. Or ME. And to this day, nearly 40 years later, there isn’t a time I drive a car on a long journey or at night with an accompanying passenger, and NOT feel the burden and responsibility of holding that person’s life in my very hands.
I was lucky. A lot of people aren’t. They have their one shot, and instead of rolling into flat grass, they head on a car, rocket off an embankment into a rock face or pile into a tree. They never got to learn, and I did. I won’t waste that.
And I had to learn that lesson with alcohol, I didn’t have the common sense as a young person to just accept it. I was lucky to do so.
I live in the same town & know the parents/grandparents very well. This tragedy has been a huge shock to the town.
I don’t know all the details but I’m not going to speculate because this is too close to home.
The Parents/Grandparents decorate the town park every Christmas & are involved with prisoner rehabilitation. They are very well regarded.
Please pray for the family.
Good story. Feel your pain and all that. Lotta jerk out there.
I would have thought they might have known each other were coming but it was at 4 in the morning. Surely they knew the oncoming car was their kin.
Thanks for sharing that, and yes, you were lucky. Someone in my family wasn’t so lucky, the person next to them in the car didn’t survive, and it haunts and creates difficult consequences to this day, many years later.
Not sure what happened in the case here, but it is tragic, and I can only hope those left behind can find some solace. Maybe it’s easier to say “Darwin Award” or “win stupid prizes” but sometimes it’s just really, really sad.
I don’t know about the father but teens often drive crazy and have other thoughts. Saddened about this and prayers for those affected.
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