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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1240029-Interstate-77
Rated: ASR · Short Story · Personal · #1240029
This is a story of a car accident I witnessed at 18 years old.
We had just filled up in Wytheville, Virginia on our way back home to North Carolina. I was driving my dark red Pontiac Grand AM. Since my father was with me, I wasn't listening to any music. When ever I did, I'd always manage to somehow find a station he couldn't bare to listen to. Which that always lead in to an argument and making want me to pull my hair out.
The sun was out clearly, but it wasn't too hot. I had the air conditioning on because my father doesn't think the outside air is cool enough. I was going about sixty-five miles per hour, which was the speed limit. The sun gleamed through the clouds and onto the newly placed Spring flowers in the median.
Dad started to drift off to sleep due to the long drive. The traffic was a little heavier than normal. I maintained my speed at sixty-five miles per hour, mostly because it would cause an argument between my father and me if I were to increase my speed at all.
Staring at the constant repeating of yellow and white lines started to make me a little sleepy. I looked over as a teal sports car zipped past me going about five miles per hour faster than me. The driver had gotten a good fifty feet ahead of me when I noticed he started turning in my lane really hard. It looked like one of his front tired had blown, or maybe some unknown force knocked the steering wheel in to the right direction.
The car cut across into my lane. I was thinking to myself, "What is this guy doing?" I didn't really realize till later that I had said this out loud, which awoken my dad. I barely started slowing down predicting that something bad was going to happen. The driver looked like he was trying to regain control of his car, but it slide in our south bound direction sideways. The front driver's side smacked into the guardrail. From the speed and angle in which he hit, the car was thrown up into the air. It cork-screwed around and around. All time seemed to slow down. I didn't freak out, just remained calm and continued to slowly press on my brakes. Dad and I could see the driver on the inside flopping around in his seat. I noticed CDs flying on the inside with him. When he came back down he had landed on his top with the rear end bouncing off the pavement. The trunk was attached to the back window and glass flew everywhere. After about the fourth time of bouncing off either the pavement or guardrail, the car luckily landed on it's blown out tires. The car some how managed to roll out into the median.
I pulled past the car, far enough away to keep my car safe, in case the sports car was to explode. I flipped on my hazard lights after I cut off my car. Dad was already getting out and heading over to check on the guy. I had parked on the right side of the highway, so I had to cross two lanes to get to the driver. I didn't think about seeing if any cars would be flying down the road at me. I was just too worried that he might being dying and I needed to help him. Now of course, me being eighteen years old, I might not have been able to save him from dying from a lot of things, but I wanted to help.
We reached the car and I saw the driver was a young man. He was probably nineteen years old, or maybe twenty. He had short blond hair, almost not visible. He was wear a preppy collared t-shirt that had three buttons going down to about the center of his chest. His blue jeans had the faded, but "in style" look. He looked around like he wasn't sure where he was. I noticed that he had blue eyes, not the awesome bright crystal blue eye, but still a pretty blue.
Dad was asking if he was okay. The guy replied at a normal response rate, so I figured that he wasn't suffering from any brain injury. I noticed the steering wheel was down and pressing into his legs. I pointed it out to dad, who tried to pull the steering wheel up with all his strength. I told him to stop and just to pull the mechanism that locks the steering wheel in place back. The boy reacted quickly and put the steering wheel up to the maximum and then hopped out of his car. The entire left side of his head was a bright reddish pink. It wasn't quite as noticeable inside the car, but really stood out in the sunlight.
People started crowding around really fast, either to help or at least just look at the guy. These ladies who said that he passed them going seventy-five, came up to help and to bitch. They were nurses. For some reason, everyone started thinking that he was thrown out of the vehicle. I was wanting to tell them to he had his seat belt on the whole time and got out of the car himself. But I figured that the only people it really mattered to tell would be the police. I moved my car to the left-side of the road into the median, because I knew the police would want to talk to my dad and me while having traffic come around the clear lane.
When the police got there, they did the most discriminating thing to me that I still deal with today. When the officer saw my father and me, he appraoched my father with questions. My dad started saying how it looked like he was heading north bound and came across the median. The wrecked into the guardrail. I jumped in and pointed out that he's be rolling towards us if that happened. Even though I made this very intelligent observation, the state trooper still continued directing the questions towards my father. I thought it was very bad judgment on the officers part. After he questioned us, we headed on our way back home. The whole ride home all we could talk about was about the car accident.
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