I have lived within 150 feet of the curve on Lacey road in Bamber for 27 years now. Not a year goes by without at least one accident on the curve. Countless times I've ran out there to see if I could give assistance. The one last year was awful...a motorcylce broadsided an SUV and the man died.
Last nite, at about 4:30 AM, I'm in my easy chair half-asleep nursing a chest cold. I heard this strange noise. It was fairly loud. First thing I think is that it was an accident, but I dismiss it because it was an unatural sound. Sounded like a flatbed truck with metal in the back hitting speed bumps at 40 MPH. Mind you, I'm in that nether world between sleep and drowse. By the way, accidents on this curve never sound like a car crash in the movies. In some of them all you hear is a big "whoosh" from the branches and small trees being parted as the vehicle enters the woods.
Then I hear sirens, so I run out there and saw the most horrific accident I have ever seen. The driver sheared a telephone pole right off at the ground. The car was cut in half and the back half is 50 feet up the road (in the middle of the road) and the front half 100 feet further wedged into the woods on its side. Clothes and personal items littered the road for 200 feet. He must have been traveling well over 60 mph when he hit the pole.
Problem. We could not find a body. There were at least a dozen of us with flashlights looking in the woods, up in the trees...everywhere. No body. The air bags did deploy.
Turns out, it seems the driver crawled out, and was picked up and taken to the hospital by another car with four people in it. There is an eyewitness to that (a guy who lives across the road ran out and saw it), but the intitial police officer on the scene dismissed it. I would have too after seeing the accident. That can't be all there is, but we'll see. This morning everything is still in place at 9 AM and the cops are taking full accounting of everything the way they do when there is a death.
Last nite, at about 4:30 AM, I'm in my easy chair half-asleep nursing a chest cold. I heard this strange noise. It was fairly loud. First thing I think is that it was an accident, but I dismiss it because it was an unatural sound. Sounded like a flatbed truck with metal in the back hitting speed bumps at 40 MPH. Mind you, I'm in that nether world between sleep and drowse. By the way, accidents on this curve never sound like a car crash in the movies. In some of them all you hear is a big "whoosh" from the branches and small trees being parted as the vehicle enters the woods.
Then I hear sirens, so I run out there and saw the most horrific accident I have ever seen. The driver sheared a telephone pole right off at the ground. The car was cut in half and the back half is 50 feet up the road (in the middle of the road) and the front half 100 feet further wedged into the woods on its side. Clothes and personal items littered the road for 200 feet. He must have been traveling well over 60 mph when he hit the pole.
Problem. We could not find a body. There were at least a dozen of us with flashlights looking in the woods, up in the trees...everywhere. No body. The air bags did deploy.
Turns out, it seems the driver crawled out, and was picked up and taken to the hospital by another car with four people in it. There is an eyewitness to that (a guy who lives across the road ran out and saw it), but the intitial police officer on the scene dismissed it. I would have too after seeing the accident. That can't be all there is, but we'll see. This morning everything is still in place at 9 AM and the cops are taking full accounting of everything the way they do when there is a death.