Posted on 06/30/2004 9:11:55 AM PDT by 11th Earl of Mar
Florida Woman Dies After Swerving Car To Avoid Turtle
POSTED: 10:03 am EDT June 30, 2004
INDIANTOWN, Fla. -- A 20-year-old woman who veered her car to avoid a turtle flipped the vehicle several times and died Tuesday, Florida Highway Patrol officials said.
Rachel Marie Martin of Sebring was traveling southeast on State Road 710 between Indiantown and Okeechobee in western Martin County when she suddenly turned away from a turtle crossing the roadway, according to an FHP report. The car overturned and landed in the middle of the road.
A passenger, 19-year-old Julie Christine Evans of Tampa, was treated and released from a local hospital. Martin's 1999 Oldsmobile SUV was totaled.
Authorities said Martin was wearing her seat belt and that alcohol was not involved in the crash.
Nothing personal, but that sounds anal. 8^>
Also, traction didn't seem to be the problem in this case. Maybe if there had been less traction, she would have slid instead of rolled.
"If it shows up in the headlights, I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and hope for the best...heheh."
I do try to avoid animals. Especially dogs.
On a bike however, you don't have much choice. You guess which way the animal is less likely go...and hope.
"In a Yugoooooooo~~~~....~~~~~~....~"
I hope others learn from her sad example.
My wife used to tell a story about a fond memory from her childhood where her mom made turtle soup...
"She boiled a pan of water and dropped the turtle in live. And that was the best soup we ever had."
So once when I saw a turtle crossing the road, I decided to call her bluff. I brought the turtle home and asked her to cook it.
After three minutes of "GET THAT THING OUT OF MY HOUSE" I finally released it back into nature.
She has never told the soup story again.
>>No she's not. She just made a bad judgement call. Before I read this story, it wouldn't have occured to me that swerving to avoid an animal would cause my car to turn over.<<
Unless it was built before 1959, or it is a Checker, it probably won't - it's a car. Now you can do some fancy maneuvering to get a car to flip, but it is pretty difficult without hitting a curb or other "tire stopping" obstruction.
"Yeah, I felt a little guilty but there's really nothing you can do. "
I know what you mean. Even though I personally feel cats are a waste of valuable oxygen, I wouldn't intentionally run one over unless there simply was no choice. Such as you experienced.
I hit a dog last summer on a quad. Broke the dog's hip. I paid for the vet bills, even though the dog ran out into the middle of the paved country road I was riding on, and wasn't registered.
Lot's a times people with greater safety skills & other awareness are criticized by stupid people.
" I've hit two dogs, a puppy, a cat, one possum and countless squirrels.
I try to avoid the deer and humans"
Now that is what I call defensive driving.
Perhaps Tom Lehrer could put that to music?
"Gamera is really neat,
Gamera is full of meat,
We're all eating Ga-Mur-Ah!"
Hillary Clinton: "One of my husband's favorite old Southern sayings... is that if you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn't get there by accident," Mrs. Clinton said.----------------------------------------------------------------------
"And I just look at the landscape around here and I see lots of big old turtles sitting on lots of fenceposts. I think we need to find out how those old turtles got on those fenceposts," she added.
If Republicans
had only put a few more
turtles up on posts,
then this poor woman
may never have had to swerve
and end her poor life . . .
I feel no guilt whatsoever when I hit an animal. They are "meat on the hoof/paw." That said, I DO feel for the owner when I hit a beloved pet. You humans have such a knack for emotionally attaching yourselves to "things."
To amplify, SUVs are as a class notoriously unstable when handled as a regular passenger car due to their higher center of gravity.
I have seen SUVs on their side in the middle of downtown urban and suburban (flat) surface streets. They simply hit a curb at 20-30 mph and over they go. Or some such similar situation, which would be almost unimaginable had the car been anything but a SUV.
First, driving SUVs is not like driving ordinary passenger cars, due to the higher center of gravity. One must drive more carefully, and probably in general, it is safer to drive more slowly. The tradeoff is paved road handling versus offroad handling. People who buy SUVs and expect it to handle like passenger cars are a danger to themselves and to anyone who is near them wherever they drive.
Second, always wear the seatbelt when one is in a SUV. This is because riding inside a SUV is significantly more dangerous than riding in a passenger car, especially if the driver is driving it like a passenger car and is unfamiliar with special SUV driving precautions.
Third, I read that the driver was wearing her seatbelt when the SUV flipped. So I would tend to take exception to the notion that the driver is a Darwin Award nominee. I tend to think that the seat belt and other safety equipment, such as front and side airbags, should have kept her safe, even if the SUV rolled. I wonder why she died despite the passenger safety equipment. I think this should be a concern for SUV owners, and particularly Oldsmobile SUV owners.
If forced to guess from the description alone, I would guess that the cause of death was severe head trauma, e.g. from hitting the side of the door, since the seat belt was on, the description didn't state the driver was ejected, and the airbag might be expected to have prevented a fatal injury from the front... just uninformed speculation though...
Crossin' the highway late last night,
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right,
He didn't see the station wagon, car,
The skunk got squashed and there you are!
(Chorus)
You got yer
Dead skunk in the middle of the road,
Dead skunk in the middle of the road,
Dead skunk in the middle of the road,
Stinkin' to high heaven!
Take a whiff on me that ain't no rose!
Roll up yer window and hold yer nose,
You don't have to look and you don't have to see,
'Cause you can feel it in your olfactory,
(Repeat Chorus)
Yeah you got yer dead cat and you got yer dead dog,
On a moonlight night you got yer dead toad frog
Got yer dead rabbit and yer dead raccoon,
The blood and the guts they're gonna make you swoon!
You got yer dead skunk, in the middle,
Dead skunk in the middle of the road.
Dead skunk in the middle of the road,
Stinkin' to high heaven.
C'mon stink!
(Fiddle break)
You got it,
It's dead, it's in the middle,
Dead skunk in the middle!
Dead skunk in the middle of the road,
Stinkin' to high heaven!
All over the road, technicolor man!
Oh, you got pollution.
It's dead, it's in the middle,
And it's stinkin' to high, high heaven!
(Fiddle fadeout)
Loudon Wainwright III -- Dead Skunk
Correct. Then again, I've seen race cars flip as they slide sideways down the track. Their bad sideways aerodynamics causes them to catch air and flip the other way.
Which is one of the reasons I keep it below 150 when driving across Montana. 8^>
I've actually seen lots of cars spin out but only witnessed one flip - And it was an suv. I was shocked at the time becaouse I had seen the same situation cause cars to merely spin out. It's one of the reasons I will not own an SUV. 'Course, I live in Seattle where we get almost no snow, and I don't ski, so my motivation is low anyway.
...What the heck was I supposed to do? If I'd gone back to try to help the cat, I could have been hit myself and likely bitten if I'd tried to pick it up....
Maybe backed up, and then run over it again to put it out of it's misery?
seriously- the best thing we can teach our kids about defensive driving is that if it is a choice between your safety or the animal, sorry, but the animal becomes a pavement pelt. At least in cases where the animal is smaller than the car.
>>>No she's not. She just made a bad judgement call. Before I read this story, it wouldn't have occured to me that swerving to avoid an animal would cause my car to turn over.
First, she was in an SUV, not a passenger car. I've personally seen a large (Excursion-sized) SUV rolled by a fairly light tap on the left-rear corner by a Q45. SUVs will roll.
Second, and a corrolary to the first - ignorance of the laws of physics will not insulate you from the consequences of ignorance of the laws of physics.
Yup. Things happen fast, and her split-second decision turned out to be the wrong one. Sad.
Back when we were remodeling our house, I had to consciously think about not reaching for things that I dropped off the ladder. Just let 'em go, and survive to work another day.
Good point.
Man, where do you ride? The zoo?
In over 100,000 miles on motorcycles, I've never hit anything other than bugs. Long ago, in my riding class, the rule of thumb was "If you couldn't eat it in one sitting, don't hit it."
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