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The first reaction when the guy ahead of you's taillights come on is to touch your own breaks and slow down. Of course, the second I did that, the wheels locked (the ABS started thwapping at my foot) and the slide began. For a real second it looked like we would slide right into the back of the tow truck ahead of us. It was the kind with the elevated rear deck, which sure looked liked it would come right through our windshield. Thankfully I had left room between us, although the icy conditions were far worse than I had estimated. Thankfully he was a good driver and was also trying to slow down carefully. Thankfully I have very good reactions on slippery roads. And thank God for inspiring someone to invent anti-lock brakes. Pump brakes to keep control. Car still sliding, slowing down insufficiently. Glance for escape routes to avoid collision. Concrete half-wall close on left, sleep snowy bank to right -- too steep. Will need sharp turn to go up on it -- likely would start to slide sideways. Concrete wall has thick snowdrift. Edge car into drift, use snow to add traction. Try not to scrape car paint unless necessary. Success. Tires gripping, slowing. Now there's time to understand what happened. Ahead of the tow truck, we can see smoke. As the tow truck edges forward we see a car slammed headlong into a light standard. The tow truck pulls around her and moves to park. We see another car ahead stopped, its driver coming back to look. "Anyone hurt?" Lisa calls. "I think so," the guy calls back. Lisa dials 9-1-1. I pull around, park in front of the mess and hurry back to see what I can do to help. My brain is trying to recall all the years of first-aid training I've had. Thankfully she's not hurt too badly. She was wearing her seatbelt and now her chest hurts. She may have done something to her ankle. I give her my name, ask for hers and I do my best to keep her calm. There's no blood and she's coherent, but we keep her from getting out of the car just in case. The car is totaled. Seems the guy ahead of her began to fishtail, and she was trying to avoid him. I think she hit the brakes and slid right off the road into the light standard. Fire trucks and ambulance arrive in minutes. We get the fishtailing guy's information -- although the cars fetched up nearly touching, they didn't apparently collide, but just in case -- and give her ours. More capable hands than ours are now on the scene and we're in the way, so we leave. I didn't feel cold until we got back in the car and started driving. As happy as I am that we weren't in an accident, I'm happier that the young lady wasn't hurt. I'm happy we were there, even so, as we could hear her screams of shock when we were pulling in and the other people on the scene were pretty useless. Fishtailing guy had a look on his face like he was trying to find a way to avoid this being his fault (it wasn't, legally speaking) and the tow-truck driver was more interested in getting permission to tow the vehicle away. The bitter winter conditions here in Calgary (right now its -25 degrees Celsius outside with a wind-chill down to -40) have made the above a common story for the last few weeks. Hundreds of collisions and fender-benders a day, some serious. I haven't heard of any fatalities, but it wouldn't surprise me. We're fine, just little cubes of ice. Against the backdrop of larger calamities in the world, our little ice age is nothing. Still, I look at the weather report five times a day, hoping to see some relief on the horizon. Last thing we want to do is move in sub-zero temperatures. Can you imagine starting to slide in a full U-Haul? Shudder. |
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