A college student was speeding and is dead

So true, faithgirl! Sometimes we rush around for the silliest things. Fortunately, a lot of us grow out of that as we get older. Unfortunately, some people never get the chance to do that.
I guess I lucked out in a way since I got in an accident when I was sixteen. My friends and I had gone to a fair and we suddenly realized that it was getting late and the driver had promised to be home at a certain time. He was the only one with a car and we didn't want that privilege lost! We drove the speed limit, but right towards the end, he realized he'd be about five minutes late and his parents were really strict.
We were almost to where I was staying and he started speeding and we didn't really care. However, it was a dark country road, made of gravel, with no street lights. He didn't realize that the road didn't continue, you suddenly had to turn right or left and an unfamiliar driver wouldn't know that until he saw the stop sign.
He saw the stop sign, but was speeding too fast to stop in time and braked hard. That's bad on a gravel road! The car went into a skid right past the stop sign, jumped over a ditch, and slammed into a telephone pole.

Knocked me unconscious, dunno about anyone else. When I woke up we were all calling for each other, everyone said they were fine (we were in shock) and we got up and walked to my place, where I was staying with my aunt and uncle. The impact of the crash was loud enough that they had heard it and were standing at the door watching for the car to come back and hoping it wasn't us.

Lesson learned. I've driven like an old lady ever since, never forgetting how it isn't worth it to rush when you're in a vehicle, or how much pain we were in once the shock started wearing off, which it started to do just before the ambulance got there. Until then, we were all sitting on the ground looking at each other and talking while we waited, thinking they were silly to call an ambulance, but slowly realizing how bad it was as we looked at each other and as pain started being felt.

The driver had broken bones, broken gums, I ended up with a concussion and burns on my legs. (I'd been sitting directly behind him) The other two were relatively unharmed, just shaken. When the police saw the car, they couldn't believe we actually got out of it and walked, they said we should have all been dead. The front was crunched through the windshield and the trunk was crunched through the back window as since we'd gone airborne and the impact of the front of the car hitting threw the car backwards and back into the really deep ditch, where is landed on its trunk and smooshed.

BTW, I've never gotten in a Chevette again!

Never, ever speed. NOTHING is worth it. Even if it's a medical emergency, stop and call an ambulance, don't speed, especially while panicked. If you MUST start on the way to the hospital before they get there, drive normal and let them know your route so they meet you and have a police escort. I've needed an escort twice and they did it both times, once when I called and another time when I was in labor and new to the area and flagged a police car down to show me the way. He drove ahead with lights on so we could go through red lights and drive a bit over the speed limit.

NOTHING is worth speeding too enough that it would have been worth it to risk your life.

Just don't. EVER.

 

How very sad. How hideous for the poor parents of this kid.....we all do dumb things at times and have the great good fortune not to be killed in doing them.

It reminds me of another place long ago when as a nursing student in the nurses quarters of the hospital, a distraught mate told me the youngest fella in our circle of friends had wrapped himself around a telephone pole after celebrating his 18th birthday.........it's the shock that is the worst I think.

 

Amen to that! He was the first of my adult exposure to death in a circle of friends rather than an aged grandparent. Something that happens to us all....:1_grouphug:

 

Stalin was quoted as saying something like "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths are history."