christmas driving

Its coming up to Christmas, and of course that means the usual extra driving (and perhaps drinking). Every year we all hear messages on the media of the road statistics. We become rather immune to it I fear.

I'd like to take this weeks late evening event as a reminder to all out there to take that extra care on the roads and please be here safe and sound well after the silly season is over.

The late evening started a little like a famous Christmas poem:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
....
When out on the road there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

There was little to be seen at first, just a car on its roof with nothing around. However as we live in the communications age there was no shortage of people calling 000 (no, its not what you think this is Australia and the emergency number is zero zero zero ... remember it and not hollywood).




... and soon enough the street lit up like a Christmas Tree ... naturally the Towies arrived first (in fact we got 6 there before the ambulance or police).

The accident was low speed and seemed to be caused by the car clipping the side of this little car ... you can see its cocked out a little from the road (perhaps you can also spot that the back right hand wheel is at a funny angle ... more in a tic)



and flipping onto its roof!

Hard to grasp how it may have done that, as at first there seems no reason for this to happen.

My theory is (and I haven't interviewed the driver) that when she observed the small black suzuki she swerved and braked at the same time. Combined with the downhill here it was enough to off balance the car and flip it.



(this image was taken after the person had been freed by the ambos and firemen)



There were of course other residents around, so having made sure the person was OK and was being attended to I just stood back and waited while rescue workers did stuff to get the driver out ... I thought I'd wander around and document a few things ...



You may have noticed the odd angle of the back wheel of the Suzuki in the above shot. In this image you can see that the impact to the Suzuki was quite minor, not even breaking a light, but you can see the rear wheel is kicked out better in this shot.



It must have been exactly what was hit by the other car

So with the driver off to hospital (she seemed ok and has returned home with just a sore neck) the car was left in the street like a stuck turtle waiting for the towies to have their turn at it.

So drive carefully this Christmas season, have a good time, but aim to be here and well into the new year.

:-)