An odd thing happened today. After a long day of snowboarding, Rob and I decided that on the way home, we should stop at a local burger joint (Zeke's) and fill up before continuing the drive. It was raining heavily and highway 2 was covered in snow and slush, but even as we moved into the left turn lane we were passed quickly by motorists eager to get home from the mountain.
Several seconds after turning into the parking lot, and a few hundred feet down the highway, two cars collided, resulting in at least one immediate fatality and several injuries.
There are a lot of what-ifs that play around in the head after any event like this, especially as we were only a few cars ahead or behind the vehicle in question (I'm not sure exactly). Rob is a great driver and we had maintained a safe speed the entire way down the mountain—would staying in front of the other drivers have kept this from happening? Or was the road the problem, and would we have met the same fate if we continued our course?
Ultimately, a tragic moment was shared by a small handful of people, and the aftermath for Rob and me was a fairly practical problem of finding an alternate route around a stretch of highway that took hours to clear. And although it's a little uncomfortable to consider, I think Zeke's burger joint did a ton of business that day as the traffic stretched back miles on highway 2. I guess the shockwaves sent by tragedy are as fickle as the tragedy itself, as it chooses its victims.
Note: the image above was taken on the one-lane road between Index and Reiter, as we detoured around the accident.
Crazy. K and I got caught in Amarillo last Saturday after a 80-car Pileup. I'm happy we decided to leave late that day. :o)
Holy hell. Reflecting on it, I'm a little surprised that huge pileups like that don't happen all that often. The parameters for highway travel (specifically, lots of speed) and the variables involved (drivers, condition of the road, mechanicals subject to failure, etc.) makes me surprised we collectively avoid large accidents for such long periods at a time.
Just yesterday on our way from Topeka to Kansas City so we could depart back to Seattle we were travelling behind someone who lost control and smacked right into the middle median. We barely made it around them (almost smacked our rear driver-side quarter panel) and then they were covering both lanes. I didn't see anything in the news about it so while it probably snarled traffic for quite a while, fortunately I doubt it turned into a huge pileup where lots of people got hurt. And, we made it back home. :)
Good to hear you made it back safely!
Thats really scary! Im so grateful your okay. I noticed the boy was driving a jeep.
Indeed, I'm happy about it, too.
True about the Jeep. Unfortunately, I suspect it's one of the least safe vehicles to be driving in a situation like that.