I was walking on Fisher Avenue when I saw the flashing blue lights at the intersection with Baseline Road.
It was raining. I hastened not only because I was soaked but also because I was hoping to buy fresh bread and other groceries at the supermarket—shops had been closed for Easter Friday and the following day, Easter Sunday, was another bank holiday, so lineups were long and shelves empty. Aside from that, I was just following the usual Saturday routine. I had just cleaned the house from top to bottom for a couple of hours, cursing LEGO and discovering a world I hadn’t suspected under the couch, and after the grocery trip I’d go home, sort out the laundry and relax—I know, the minutiae eating my life are absolutely fascinating.
At the end of Fisher, I turned left on Baseline for the final 1.3-km-long stretch taking me straight to either Loblaws, Food Basic or Walmart. I glanced at the lone police car at the intersection—probably a driver caught speeding.
Immersed in a podcast, I kept on walking. It took me a couple of minutes to notice something wasn’t right—there was no traffic on Baseline Road, one of Ottawa’s major east-west arteries.
I paused the podcast, took my hood off and looked around. There. I saw more flashing blue lights straight ahead. Ah. So the first police car at Baseline and Fisher was blocking the traffic. Boy, I’m slow sometimes…
A hundred metres further up the road, yellow tape was up from the median to the Experimental Farm side. There were several first-responder vehicles parked along the road and a handful of officers under the rain. No paramedics—we weren’t at this stage of the accident anymore.
I slowed down once I realized the drama was probably over—I didn’t want to witness a possible gory scene.
Then I saw the wreck and I let out a gasp. The black car was flipped over on his roof and had somehow landed in the Experimental Farm.
It was very quiet after what must have been minutes of chaos and drama.
One of the officers was looking at the car, shaking his head.
“What the fuck…” I muttered.
A neighbour stepped out of the house and started taking pictures with his phone.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked.
“Nope. Just got there twenty minutes ago. But apparently, the car came from Merivale, up there… see the yellow markers?”
I squinted. “On the median?”
“Yep. So that means it must have crossed the median and one… two… three… yeah, three or maybe four poles, rolled over and it landed in the farm.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know!”
I resumed walking towards Merivale. I saw debris, a piece of bumper, the many markers left by the police, a yellow “bio-hazard” bag. No skid marks.
I paused again at the top of Baseline, looking down towards the scene of the accident. I still couldn’t believe how far the car had travelled from the moment it had crossed the median to where it had finally landed.
It was a small miracle it hadn’t hit other cars or crashed towards the houses on the other side of the road.
The news reported the two young men in the car had died at the hospital—speed was the likely cause of the accident.
As a pedestrian in Ottawa, I often walk by accident scenes but they are rarely that dramatic, although a few weeks ago, there was another fatal crash on Merivale Road, a few blocks from where we live.
Most of the time, they are just minor collisions, aka “fender benders.” This is a term I learned when I was working at Canada Post and as you can expect, it wasn’t directly linked to my work as an editor-in-chief. At 2701 Riverside Drive, the head office is a tall building overlooking Heron Road and Riverside. From the eighth floor, it felt like being in a control tower. One of the PR guys often stood behind the window and commented the traffic and the many accidents at this busy intersection. “Just a fender bender,” he’d assessed. “Not sure why a firetruck showed up…” “Oh, gee, that one is nasty,” he’d announced once in a while. And then, we would take turns to watch the firetrucks, paramedics, police cars and tow trucks because the drama was far enough to not feel too real.
It’s funny: despite awful winter driving conditions, I always see more accidents during the warmest months. Fancy convertible cars are back on the road, drivers feel too confident and speed, who knows. But it always strikes me as odd when I see crazy accidents on warm, dry days.
I’ve always found the idea of sitting in a metal box to get around slightly crazy. The odds of something going wrong seem high when you rely on a piece of machinery, your own abilities and other people’s skills to avoid collisions. Most of the time, we all arrive alive, which is a small miracle.
Like most of us, I’m a driver and passenger. I’m not that scared of car rides.
But drive safe. The alternative is deadly.
Speed and a wet road, it seems. Even if here it seems justified, sometimes, I find that sending two or three firetrucks, cops, an ambulance is a little bit overkill.
Nope, it wasn’t raining when the accident happened earlier in the day. The road was dry. Speed seemed to have been the factor.
Ah quand même …
Terrifying 🙁 I wiped out on the highway a year and a half ago. Unreal how fast it happened, that nothing seemed to cause it and there was nothing that I could do.
Eeek, yes. I remember you writing about it, a terrifying experience :-/
Thankfully I haven’t been in an accident yet; the worst I have experienced was when our car started spinning slowly because we lost control of it, as we were exiting the ramp of a freeway in snowy weather. We were most probably a little too fast while turning, and the ground was slippery.
The fascinating thing about this is the mentality that some people have about being afraid to fly. Flying is still safer than driving, but unfortunately, most people do not understand statistics. :/
Rhaaaaaa, YES !
One of the problem about road safety messages is that majority of people do not experience the horrors of what can happen when doing the wrong thing : the majority of people who speed, drive drunk or distracted make it home safely. But they have statistically a higher risk of accident than someone who doesn’t do that. Because the risk of accident doesn’t jump to 100%, people have trouble apprehending these risks.
I know way too many people who drove home drunk and who made it just fine. Good for them, but of course this leads to the “meh, I’m a great driver, even when I’m a bit drunk” mentality :-/
in my case, I have a female friend called her Nie, who proudly tell us she breast feeding while driving. Unfortunately, there are some of my friends think that is cool and praised Nie as super woman. I commented “That’s stupid you put other people in danger” and others think I’m exaggerating as my friend always make it home safely. I stopped talking to them ever since. I don;t care…really…
Oh yes, the losing control happened to us a few years ago. Same scenario, freezing rain I think, Feng was careful but we turned and lost control. Ended up in a snow bank, no harm, he wasn’t going fast.
I can’t understand people who are afraid to fly. I mean, I do to a certain extent, yes, it’s strange I guess if you aren’t used to it. But it’s safe!
J’ai eu droit au cours de récupération de points quand j’étais en France (je conduisais très vite quand j’avais 18 ans), et le gars qui intervenait nous avait expliqué qu’il arrivait plus d’accidents par temps chaud, sec, sur une route droite parce que les gens se sentaient plus en confiance. Sinon l’un de mes premiers “fédé” (faits divers) comme journaliste, concernait un jeune qui roulait à 90 sur une route tortueuse bordée de platanes qui aurait dû être, selon un maire des environs, limitée à 50. Le moteur de la voiture avait fait plusieurs mètres après le choc…
Tiens, je ne connais pas “fédé” 🙂 Par contre ma pauvre, être envoyée sur ce genre de faits divers… j’espère que tu n’as rien vu. Je plains les “first responders”, y’ des scènes qu’on ne doit pas oublier.
Bravo aussi la façon dont tu admets avoir conduit vite à une période de ta vie 🙂 On fait tous des conneries. Ça t’a fait changer ta façon de conduire du coup? (Aucune ironie de ma part, juste de la curiosité!)
Encore, là, un point important : il y a une différence entre vitesse excessive et excès de vitesse. L’un et l’autre ne sont absolument pas synonymes. On peut faire l’un sans l’autre.
La route près de là où je bosse, un beau boulevard droit à chaussées séparées 2×3 voies, avec 2 carrefours à feux, sans aucune entrée/sortie quelqconque, est limitée à 60km/h sur ses environ 4 km. Il n’y a aucun danger à le passer à 80. La flicaille aime bien se mettre là pour faire du pognon.
À l’inverse, j’ai vu, au Texas, de petites routes (pour dire, pour croiser un autre camion, on doit ralentir et mordre un peu sur l’accotement pour éviter de taper les rétroviseurs) avec pour limites de vitesse 110km/h.
Assez vrai. J’ai souvent été en dessous de la limite sur certaines routes très sinueuses de campagne en France, alors que sur certaines grosses routes, la limite paraît basse sans raison.