This is not a picture of the actual car involved in this story, but gives a very good idea of its condition
This is an obvious statement, but I will make it anyway: Life, giving animation and thoughts and actions, is a very wonderful but fragile thing. On second we can have it, the next it could be gone.
What makes me think that is an incident that happened on December 29, 2011.
A Morrocan man was driving his family along the A-35 in the direction towards Valencia in the early hours of the day. In the people carrier there were nine people, all of one family. As they were passing Moixent something happened that has changed the man's life in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. Evidently he allowed himself to become distracted and what followed next has us all shaking our heads in disbelief.
Before I explain, let's refer to the rules for driving:
Rule number one: There is an attitude for our living rooms and an attitude for when we are driving our cars. They should never be confused or mixed.
Rules two to ten: Be sober and concentrate!
Back to the story:
The time was about 6am when the people carrier was following a road train consisting of the truck that was hauling two containers. The driver of the people carrier became distracted just at the time that he put his foot down to overtake the vehicle ahead, but instead of moving clearly to the other lane he drove straight into the rear left end of the container. In doing so the van made no impression on the trailer, but the trailer acted like a buzz saw slicing through the van, instantly killing the man's wife, aged 35, and sitting behind her another woman, aged 39 was actually thrown out of the car and killed. Everyone else in the car was injured, and the car itself became hooked onto the trailer and dragged for half a kilometre.
My wife and I passed the site at about 11am, travelling in the opposite direction. The truck with its trailers was still there. The driver was getting out of the cab, presumably having retrieved something for the police. There was a massive police presence, and lying next to the van were two bodies covered by drop sheets. There were no ambulances in situ at that time, presumably all the injured had been transported to hospital. That was all that we could see before having passed on by.
My impression was that the driver of the truck with trailers had stopped to give assistance, and that the ambulance had not yet arrived. However, the crash had happened about four hours previously and the scene was still in progress of being sorted out. It is always upsetting to pass a site where there has been a crash and to see bodies spread out on the ground.
The rest of the people in the carhad to be cut free in an operation that took 50minutes. Included in the injured was a 13-year old boy whose injuries were the worst and had to have an operation to correct a broken leg, among other problems. The person who suffered the least injuries was the driver.
The driver will have a lot of explaining to do, and he will have a tough time convincing the authorities that he didn't deliberately drive into the road train. As I've stated, it's a very sad note to end the year on.
Copyright (c) 2012 Eugene Carmichael
