I was driving down 83 yesterday morning when I heard a crash and saw a car go spinning across all three lanes of traffic, about a hundred yards ahead of me. Cars swerved out of the way, and by the time I reached the point at which the accident happened, the (amazingly) one and only car involved was on the side of the highway. In one instant I noticed: that no one else had stopped, that flashing in my brain was everything I ever read or heard about highway safety and stranger danger, and that I was going to pull over anyway.
As I got out of my car, a man got out of the car that I had just seen spinning across the highway. I ran over to him, and over the rush of passing traffic, asked him if he was ok. Physically, he was fine, although he seemed to be… I don’t know how to describe it, but he was exactly like some one who had just been through that. He told me that he was adjusting the radio when suddenly the concrete median was right in front of him and and he lost control of the car. We looked around the car, and at first it didn’t look so bad, but after the fifth or sixth time I asked him if I could do anything for him, the tires on the passenger side were starting to deflate. In a daze, he said he was going to call his wife, and got back in the car to drive it off at the next exit, just a few hundred yards away.
Maybe there was more that I could have done or maybe I was just in the way. But at least I stopped, I guess. There wasn’t really anything relevant I could bring, other than a phone, which he indicated he had anyway. All I did was stand there for a minute or two, make sure he was ok, then get back in my car.
While I was standing there, I learned that elevated highways bounce a lot when traffic passes, which is creepy.
