The story always begins with one drink. Frequently the story is limited to one drink. This was most often included in the sentence “officer, I only had one drink tonight!”
Sometimes it was true; sometimes it was untrue. In the cases where the line was untrue, sometimes no harm was done prior to the stopping. And on other, less frequent occasions, great harm resulted from the careless and reckless combination of consumption of alcohol and driving.
Late in the afternoon, Tim had been particularly bothered by the mismatching gender issues swirling through his now deteriorating mind. He had taken off from home in a huff, and took to the roadways for a two hour drive to nowhere.
After tiring of the drive, he stopped into a local bar, thinking that a couple of beers would remove the issue from his mind. Over three hours he consumed 4 beers while for the most part sitting alone at the bar.
Occasionally someone would settle in for a while in a stool nearby, and the new arrival might utter a few words, find Tim not really interested in socialising, and get up to move to another part of the bar.
Reaching a point where he felt it was time to go home, thinking he could drive unimpaired, Tim settled the tab, leaving his usual 20% tip, and headed for his car.
A quarter of a mile away, Officer Kathy Jergens was parked with lights and engine off. Her car was placed such that a curve and a cluster of trees kept it invisible until a car was almost upon her.
Her mirror light was on, and Kathy was just finishing a report on a car accident she had responded to earlier in the evening. Once completed, she would leave this location, and then drive around through various side roads and cul de sacs, her usual nightly rounds of the pocket neighbourhoods in town.
Kathy signed her name to the report, and then methodically placed the report on the passenger seat, followed by the pen in the pen holder on the side of her dashboard. This done, she started her car, but had to wait as a car passed by.
Once the car passed, she pulled out and headed in the same direction as the just passed vehicle. The two cars continued on the road for two miles, reaching a stop sign at a crossing intersection. The car in front of her never stopped at the sign, entering the intersection at approximately 35 mph, the speed of Kathy’s cruiser at the time of the violation.
Traffic on the crossing road had right of way, and precisely at the time the car ignored the stop sign, another car was crossing the intersection, headed from right to left as Kathy watched in horror. The car in front of Kathy slammed into the driver’s side of the vehicle, spinning it around at least 3 times before the struck car hit a telephone pole, cracking it a few feet above its base. The top of the pole swung downward, almost folding upon itself like some sort of wooden jackknife. The cross boards on the pole slammed into the car like a can opener, impaling the car door.
Inside the car, the initial impact deployed the side airbags, successfully providing protection for Susan Woodward, the vehicle’s operator. Susan remained uninjured as the car spun around thrice, finally slamming into the wooden utility pole.
Once the pole snapped and dropped the top downward straight at her car, Susan’s luck ran out. The crosspiece ripped through the door straight at Susan, slamming part of the door and its front end into Susan’s side, just below her breastbone.
In this moment, Susan’s seatbelt changed from ally to enemy, holding her in place so that the wooden invader could do its cruel work.
Kathy brought her cruiser into the intersection, jumped out, and ran toward the struck car, taking car to avoid the jumping and very much still live electrical cables. It was a risk, but she could not stand and watch when the passengers – and she did not know how many were in the car in this moment – might be seriously injured.
She ran to the passenger side and found the door unlocked. It opened with a bit of extra effort, and what Kathy saw sickened her. Susan was slumped forward, looking for all the world as if she were dead. Kathy checked a pulse and found one, and immediately radioed for an ambulance and assistance.
Injured people are not to be moved, but that car was a death trap with the live wires jumping all too nearby. Kathy looked at Susan’s left side, saw their was blood and likely broken bones, but decided she had to move the driver. The seatbelt released, and Kathy tried to delicately move the woman, to no avail. She needed a better stance in order to gain good purchase on the driver. She shifted her feet slightly, and tried again, this time less delicately. Susan moved, allowing Kathy to stand outside the car for the final effort. With a deep breath and every ounce of strength she had, Kathy pulled Susan free.
Kathy tried to be as gentle as possible, and soon had Susan lying on the side of the road. A voice behind her called out “can I help?” which caused Kathy to spin around. “No. I’ve got her away from the car, she should not have been moved, but that electricity is too dangerous. You should stand back, sir.” And then it hit Kathy, her mind brought back a replay of the original cause of the accident.
“Sir, are you the operator of the vehicle that struck this car?”
“Y-y-es” Tim replied, softly and with total shock evident in his voice.
“Sir, stand back about 20 feet, and do not move!” Kathy ordered.
Within minutes, another cruiser arrived, immediately followed by an ambulance. The EMT’s pounced on Susan with professional precision, checking for broken bones and open wounds, then moving to stabilise the seriously injured woman. Within minutes she was in the ambulance, on her way to the nearest hospital, ten minutes away.
With that done, Kathy filled in the other officer, with both moving toward Tim. Kathy began to ask Tim whether he saw the stop sign.
“No, I didn’t see it, I was looking at something reflecting on the other side of the road”
Hearing Tim speak immediately triggered the suspicions of the two officers. Kathy stayed with Tim as the other went to get the breathalyzer testing equipment.
Within moments Tim was under arrest and on his way to the police station, charged with dui, reckless operation, and a stop sign violation. There would likely be another charge, but that would depend on the condition of Susan Woodward.
