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Tragedy In Kentucky
2 weeks ago
Reminder to not ever be complacent when driving.
My family in Kentucky almost suffered a tragedy this past Friday, August twenty-second.
My stepdad Leonard and his best friend Daniel do work with the volunteer fire department. They were responding together to a call with Daniel driving the fire truck. I say "fire truck", but it wasn't actually a fire truck, its a pickup truck with a utility bed on it.
Somewhere north of Raywick on Route 526 Daniel went off the road, over corrected, and ended up sideways and rolling the truck in a disastrous crash that separated the cab from the utility bed. Daniel wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and normally Leonard would say he would have done the same, but for some reason this time he was strapped in, and it saved his fucking life.
Daniel was ejected from the truck, Leonard stayed in the truck.
Daniel had broken ankles, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken jaw, and a brain bleed.
Leonard had to be extracted from the truck and has a cut from his glasses on his head, broken ribs, some spine fractures, and a collapsed lung.
Daniel perished from his injuries two days later.
My stepdad is still in the hospital and last I heard the collapsed lung has been corrected through a chest tube, but the broken ribs and everything else will take time.
Don't ever be complacent in your surroundings on the road. Don't neglect to wear your seat belt either, which shocks me that I need to even say this. It would seem Daniel just got complacent, thinking it was just going to be another routine call along the country roads, racing along, and it cost him. You're not indestructible stepping into a car.
Had my stepdad decided to be the same way this journal would be on an entirely different subject and he'd be gone too or in worse shape than how he ended up. As it is, he's in good spirits, conscious, but has no real memory of the events leading up to the accident. He does know that his friend didn't make it though, which...I don't know how someone handles that sort of trauma after just being with them two days prior.
--Mozdoc
My family in Kentucky almost suffered a tragedy this past Friday, August twenty-second.
My stepdad Leonard and his best friend Daniel do work with the volunteer fire department. They were responding together to a call with Daniel driving the fire truck. I say "fire truck", but it wasn't actually a fire truck, its a pickup truck with a utility bed on it.
Somewhere north of Raywick on Route 526 Daniel went off the road, over corrected, and ended up sideways and rolling the truck in a disastrous crash that separated the cab from the utility bed. Daniel wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and normally Leonard would say he would have done the same, but for some reason this time he was strapped in, and it saved his fucking life.
Daniel was ejected from the truck, Leonard stayed in the truck.
Daniel had broken ankles, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken jaw, and a brain bleed.
Leonard had to be extracted from the truck and has a cut from his glasses on his head, broken ribs, some spine fractures, and a collapsed lung.
Daniel perished from his injuries two days later.
My stepdad is still in the hospital and last I heard the collapsed lung has been corrected through a chest tube, but the broken ribs and everything else will take time.
Don't ever be complacent in your surroundings on the road. Don't neglect to wear your seat belt either, which shocks me that I need to even say this. It would seem Daniel just got complacent, thinking it was just going to be another routine call along the country roads, racing along, and it cost him. You're not indestructible stepping into a car.
Had my stepdad decided to be the same way this journal would be on an entirely different subject and he'd be gone too or in worse shape than how he ended up. As it is, he's in good spirits, conscious, but has no real memory of the events leading up to the accident. He does know that his friend didn't make it though, which...I don't know how someone handles that sort of trauma after just being with them two days prior.
--Mozdoc
When I worked on wind turbines before, me and my boss Alfredo would drive around the turbine site and you can bet that in the work trucks we didn't buckle in; my way of thinking is that the speeds are low and roads are closed access. But this led to really unwise bad habits of also jumping into his truck and going off site into Tehachapi.
One stormy day coming back from town and descending the huge hill, a surprise hailstorm littered the road with ice pellets. The ass end of the truck came around and it backed into a hillside, launching the front of it upwards and spinning us around a few times before we ended up facing the wrong way on the shoulder of the road looking back up the hill. Because I'd neglected to buckle in I was thrown into the roof, and a follow up impact of a minor head on bump from the car following us meant the airbag never triggered because the car had no idea someone was occupying that place.
For all that I came out okay except for a really deeply bruised knuckle on my right hand.
I can even now cite times I get into trucks or my own car for short trips around the dust monitoring sites at a mine in the desert. Its in a sparsely populated desert area with a two lane road. You know you shouldn't do it, but you do, even with the perceived risk of low traffic on the road outside, and then once off onto dirt roads we're the only slow speed vehicle on flat ground so what could possibly go wrong in those circumstances?
In the case of the accident in Kentucky though, none of that applies. The rural, twisty, hilly roads warrant caution as everything is tree lined on the side with rain ditches, rivers, ponds, fences, bridges and the wildlife unpredictable to jump out in front of you; neglecting to just taking the two seconds to click in your belt is careless when someone else is depending on you to get there.
--Mozdoc