yesterday at the main intersection between the freeway down from the hills behind us and three other major roads. It is a nasty intersection at the best of times but it is made worse by lorry/truck drivers speeding and people quite simply failing to obey the traffic lights.
This accident was, apparently, caused by a very large sewage vehicle speeding and failing to take the corner into another road. That vehicle ended on its side - having first hit three stationary vehicles. One person is dead and three more are in a critical condition. They had no hope of getting out of the way.
I know more than I want to know about this because there was a diversion on the route I needed to take. No vehicles could go up the road to the intersection in question although it was about two kilometres away.
As I reached the diversion and wondered whether I could go the long way round the policeman on duty asked me where I needed to go.
I showed him the packet with the doctor's name on the outside and said,
"He's flying out in the morning."
He nodded, "Go ahead but stay on the footpath. There could be an ambulance through any minute now."
I would anyway. It is a very busy road at all times.
I delivered the requisite papers into the letter box and came back just as yet another ambulance screamed past.
I hate the noise their sirens make. They leave me shaking. It must have shown. I thanked the policeman.
He nodded again and stopped the traffic so that I could cross again.
I went on my way.
The accident had occurred almost two hours before I got to the diversion. The diversion was still in place some hours later.
I do not doubt there were people who were irritated by the diversion and made impatient by it.
But I came home wondering what had happened and thinking that the lives of many other people had just been turned upside down. They started out the day one way and ended it another - because someone they did not know was going too fast.
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Business (aka The Red Queen) is for ever demanding "increased productivity" - in the case of 'professional' drivers (buses, taxis, trucks, etc) that means driving faster when the roads are not congested to meet a more demanding schedule. It is of course a heresy of the first water to question this increasing drumbeat that governs our lives. And deaths.
We live less than a mile from the fire station and the sirens go constantly. Whenever I hear the sirens, I say a prayer for the people driving these vehicles and those within who are rushing to help a total stranger or strangers. And then my prayer continues on to the people who are waiting to be helped. Does it help? I don't know, but I hope so.
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