View Full Version : Who saw the police program on Wednesday night about car accidents down South
As title really. There was one story that really affected me, the one about the disqualified driver who killed his 17 year old girlfriend by driving so fast her body ended up across two seats.
Normally I would have sighed and got on with it, but this story had me thinking all day and is keeping me up thinking now. The driver got 5 years when the maximum is 14. He will likely be out inside 2 years.:'(
Its not anger I feel but its hard to explain how I feel about the stupidity and leniency of the sentence.
I didn't see it but I could the end of a piece on the local wireless yesterday about kids driving either having been drinking or taking drugs. Most who had had accidents were repentant except one girl who had driven after booze and drugs who told how she drove 500 yards before she was stopped by the Police and arrested. She lost her licence, got a big fine etc etc and then she was asked if it would stop her doing it again. Her reply "Naw of course not, it's just a bit of fun".
I *sighed*
I didn't see it either, but one big crash that affected me happened a while back; can't remember if it was lat year or the year before. I believe it was the day after England were either beaten by, or drew with, Northern Ireland in the footy. Left my house as usual to go to work and got to the A31 roundabout to find that the dual carriageway had been shut. After taking a small back route I knew and coming out onto the A31 at Ropley, I looked in my rear view mirror and the road had been shut going back the other way as well. By the time I was halfway to Winchester I hadn't seen another car on the road, and got to the roundabout the other side of Alresford to see that the road was closed going back from there too.
I later read that some guys had been watching the footy in a pub in Alresford, got in their car (a Peugeot I think), and decided to drive back to Alton. On the way back they must have gone onto the wrong side of the road and collided with a Focus coming the other way. Of the father and adult son in the Focus, the father died and the son escaped with scratches and internal injuries. The occupants of the other car came off far worse. They'd given a lift to two guys they befriended in the pub who were contracted to work on the Travelodge in Four Marks and were being dropped off on the way back to Alton. All five people in the car were killed, I imagine instantly. The picture I saw of the wrecked car consisted of a wheelbase and a boot lid. They must have been giving it some. The Focus was comparably, and remarkably, much better off.
There are still marks on the road where it happened to this day, so I think of it twice a day on my commute. No idea what came of it - presumably the driver was utterly pissed and most likely speeding through the empty village. I heard he was previously convicted on possession of cocaine, amongst other offenses, so it wouldn't surprise me. It's the passengers you have to feel for, but it's hard to have sympathy if they got in the car knowing what state he was in.
Anyway, it was one of the highest fatalities of an RTA in the South, and quite a shock when something like that happens so close to home.
Justsomebloke
31-08-2007, 10:46
Didn't see the show but my worst was a Spacewagon thing into the back of a flat bed truck.
The rear light assembly or where it used to be was touching the back of the drivers seat :(
Needless to say it wasn't pretty :( Fortunetly i was on the other side joining the motorway so only got a glimpse & didn't have to stop or get involved. I was on the road to Dartford & i saw that image the whole way & can still see it now. Cars are great until you have to stop them.
Blackstar
31-08-2007, 20:07
I saw it, it was quite shocking really. My parents have driven those roads many times on our holidays to Cornwall and Devon and know just how dangerous they are.
Again agreeing with Belmit, i can't understand why people can think getting into cars with drunk/disqualified drivers. That girl must surely have known what her boyfriend was like.
My own expeince with drink drivers happened when i was around 7. We were round at a family friends house and were getting ready to leave as it was quite late. We heard a massive bang and all rushed outside, my dad has said to me that his first thought was "i didn't park that far down the street". His Volvo had been hit from behind and had been pushed into my "aunts" car which in turn had pushed into my "uncles". You can imagine the force of inpact, the van that had hit my dad's was a frozen meat van. The guy who was driving it tried to drive away but the van was a write off as was the Volvo and my aunts car.
The man was so drunk he could barely speak when my dad pulled him out the drivers seat.
How can anyone think it is ok to drive like that? If we had been a few minutes earlier then mum would have been putting us into the car when it was hit. That thought really scares me.
Someone in work raised an interesting comment on it today. She said that if she was in a situation where her family was wiped out and she was the only survivor, it would be a worse deal for her than being dead.
Saw a nasty accident the other day where a car had gone into the back of a broken down coach, there wasn't much left of the car. I very much doubt they survived that.
She said that if she was in a situation where her family was wiped out and she was the only survivor, it would be a worse deal for her than being dead.
I'd agree with that, if you're dead you don't have a chance to think 'oh crap', if a number of people you love die in an accident that you're the sole survivor, you have to live with that. :(
I know you can't choose, but I can certainly relate to that.
I haven't had any experience of drink drivers I'm pleased to say, well I've seen people drive late at night in a way that makes me suspicious, but no accidents for me or my family. But I still can't stand people who think it's ok, I just don't understand the logic and don't see how it's ever worth the risk.
There's a few local accidents that stuck in my mind but they were all caused by foolhardiness. A roundabout a few miles away from here (Little one by 3Ms and the gym for locals) regularly has teddys and flowers by it because a girl about 15-16 died there along with her boyfriend who was driving. I don't know the full circumstances but I remember it because I was in college at the time and a few people knew of the deceased.
The other two were while I was learning so they stuck in my mind mainly from my driving instructor's warnings.
Road accidents do on the whole play on my mind a lot more than is healthy though. But then again maybe that's a good thing in a twisted way, keeps me safer? Who knows.
It's actually only the occupants of the car they hit I feel for. Don't get me wrong, I'd never wish such a horrid end on anyone, but I feel far worse for the people in the car they hit than for them (even though I do appreciate the passengers might not have been responsible).
I assumed sympathy for the people in the other car went without saying, so I didn't! You're absolutely right though.
You all know my opinion on drunk drivers....
Yep - on the business end of a shotgun until the Police turn up. I remember that one. :)
Every year at the college I worked for we held a "student choice day" organised by the Students Union, where various extra curricular stuff was arranged taking place in various rooms, discussing stuff or with guest speakers and the like. The day was always a bit of a headache for me due to A/V requirements that we often didn't have enough equipment for but I usually managed to get things planned out relatively smoothly. I would usually take along the more complicated stuff and get it set up wherever and stick around to make sure it worked fine.
I can't remember the exact subject for the talk but one of our students stood up at the front and told us all of the day her boyfriend died in her arms. Though she didn't cry, and her voice never wavered, you could see the hurt in her eyes and there was hardly a dry eye in the audience when she'd finished. I'll try and remember the precise details..
They'd been at a local pub, the Witch. Very nice pub in fact, quite popular, and had had a couple of drinks with friends. She had had soft drinks as she was driving. It was closing time and they'd headed out from the pub, and he'd walked her the brief distance to her car, walked back to the road and crossed. There is a bit of a blind corner near the pub. At 30mph, the legal limit, there is just over twice the braking distance from the moment you come in sight of the road. As she watched him cross the road, she saw a car doing 70mph hit him. Given the distance from the end of the nearest junction the guy was probably still accelerating hard at the point he'd come around the corner. Your average small car could never have manage to hit 70mph in that distance. The car carried on going, but as it was pub closing time there were so many witnesses multiple people had the presence of mind to note the number plate.
The girl ran from her car and went over to her boyfriend, hysterical, but there was little that could be done, he was alive but not for long.
Thankfully in this case justice was (relatively) done, and the driver was put behind bars for DUI and manslaughter, for the full length term, along with a life disqualification from driving. Sadly for this girl, what does that amount to compared to having watched her boyfriend being hit and dying?
Wow Paul, that's a rather emotive story, I felt myself affected by that. :(
There's no excuse for drink driving. It's something I abhor. In fact I fell out with a friend over it, to the point that we had a fight, and I've never seen him since. I've lost 2 friends to drink drivers, and one is now in a wheel chair drooling and having to eat processed food for the rest of his life. I've been hit by car who didn't stop, I'm *convinced* he was either drunk or on something. Luckily for me I was relatively ok, I was discharged after 24hrs.
If you take the life of someone, or god forbid several people owing to your own responsibility you don't deserve to drive ever again, you deserve to be made to feel like the **** you are, you need to be put face to face with the family you have robbed life from and confront the people that actually *hate* you - and be forced to live with it for the rest of your life.
It's disgusting. Heck I'm happy to raise the drinking age to 21 if it helps... but I fear people in this country (no offence) are too tied to their drink to worry about the consequences :/
That's awful Garp. I went all cold reading that.
I'm always extra careful when I'm driving my kids about. I was taking them up to Leeds a few months ago and driving through North Wales, where some of the roads are slightly wider than usual, when some total idiot decided to overtake me as we were approaching a roundabout on a single stretch. I was slowing anyway to come to the roundabout as he shot level with me and he obviously didn't know I had kids aboard (not that that should have made a difference) as the look of shock on his face when he saw them was very obvious.
Bloody idiot.
Everytime someone mentions drink driving I always remember the only time in my life I have every been drunk and driven. It was a friends sister's wedding and I had enough so that I was slightly slurring my words. I decided that it was time I went home so jumped in my car with my friend in the passenger seat, who was a lot drunker than I was and headed home. When I woke up the next day I almost soiled myself when I realised what I had done and have never done it since. When I look back I hate to think what could have happened. Luckily I had managed to get home without causing an accident. What still gets me to this day is that a few people there knew I was drunk and was about to drive home and no one challenged me, not even my so called friend.
I fully expect people to show distaste towards me and tbh I deserve everything I get.
RO551, showing regret and learning from a mistake is what it's all about.
It's if you were one of the morons that thought, "Oh, I did fine, I'll do it again...." that I would be hunting your butt down.
Lesson learned, mate. Just don't do it again. ;)
Yep - on the business end of a shotgun until the Police turn up. I remember that one. :)
No, that had nothing to do with alcohol. My severe dislike of DUI stems from losing my fiance' at age 18 to one and as an EMT having to scrape her off the road myself.
That one incident changed my life in every aspect.
Treefrog
27-09-2007, 04:21
No, that had nothing to do with alcohol. My severe dislike of DUI stems from losing my fiance' at age 18 to one and as an EMT having to scrape her off the road myself.
That one incident changed my life in every aspect.
Yes, I remember you posting that. It's one of those things that hits you too hard to forget it - and that's just as a reader of it.
Garp's post above is the same.
I think Mark meant that guy who chased you home in the middle of winter after dazzling you on purpose. But I can imagine DUIs doing that sort of thing anyway. And it was a .303 not a shotty wasn't it?
OK - didn't know about that, and I'm always willing to be corrected. Some things I remember, some I don't.
And it was a .303 not a shotty wasn't it?
You sir, have the memory of a steel trap. You are correct.
Working in custody, I reckon about 15-20% of the "clients" we get in are for driving under the influence.
The ones I hate with a passion are the ones who start trapping off about "Why aren't you out catching real criminals/I havent done anything wrong". Apart from strapping yourself into 900 kilos of steel and driving it while you can hardly stand up? Mind you you did well, not killing anyone this time.
Of course, I manage to retain my professional image. (And I don't spit in their tea)
You show considerably more restraint than I ever could. They'd need several bouts of cosmetic surgery and quite a few plaster casts if I got a hold of them in the alley behind the station......
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