An Extremely Important Cautionary Tale!

You are looking at the beginning of a guard rail over a bridge that became a railroad rail.


I have to ask you to use your imagination. During the week I came upon a most unusual accident scene. Unfortunately, I was not able to stop and take a foto because it had just happened and there were so many people in the area, I just had to keep going.

Apparently a car was travelling in the direction shown in the picture, but the driver evidently took his or her eyes off the road and drifted over to the right. The front right wheel became entangled in the rail and that acted as a guide driving the car along it and upwards. At some point the car spun around 360 degrees, pointing the car in the direction from which it had come.

The back wheels went over the rail, as well as the front left wheel, leaving only the front right wheel still firmly entangled with the rail while the rest of the car was hanging over the abyss. Fortunately, it was the gradual beginning of a 15 metre drop. However, I imagine if you were in the car it would have felt a lot different.

As an accident scene it presented an incredible sight. I think there were still people in the car as I passed as there seemed to be considerable activity around it. I have no idea whether anyone was injured, but it's a safe bet that those involved would have been extremely shocked.

There are numerous places where guardrails are tapered down into the ground as this one is. In many cases I have seen them turned at the end to avoid them becoming some kind of skid. That's a  lot safer than the blunt end that could impale a motorcyclist.

How does it happen that a car can drift off to the right or left to such a degree that it gets into such trouble? If this was a case of children in the back seat that  attracted the attention of the driver who turned his head to the extreme right, that action would have pulled the car to the right, and the rest is now history. Many years ago, I came upon a car along a straight road that had flipped onto its roof. The driver had no idea how it happened. One minute he was talking to his girlfriend in the passenger seat, and the next the car was on its roof.

The moral of the story is that when driving we really do need to keep our eyes on the road ahead. We only get to move our eyes and head within a very small arc to the right or left.

The penalty for ignoring this rule of the road can be very severe indeed, including head-on collisions and death!

Copyright (c) 2014  Eugene Carmichael