This is a longish post, so here is:
The Short Version
We are both doing much better. I still feel like an elephant stomped on my chest, and like I’ve been slammed in the face with a tree branch, but other than that, it’s all good. (“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”) For the first day or so I had a lot of trouble retrieving memories of the previous two days. Every once in a while, the headache is still thermonuclear.
Camille is MUCH better. In fact, you’d have no idea anything happened at all. To my surprise, I discovered that her head broke the windshield, so now I can make jokes about her hard headedness. Obviously, I’ll be watching her cognitive functions very carefully.
Many, many things came together by simple blind luck and the repetition of good habits to allow us to walk away from that crash. And we are very, very grateful to be here and able to continue to enjoy the love and care from all of you.
Now, for the Longer Version:
Forensics and Mental Chronometry
I slept very late Sunday, and awoke at 11:30 to see Camille standing over me, akimbo and annoyed, “C’mon! It’s almost noon!” She wanted to go car shopping, so I dragged my groggy self through the shower and off we went… Fortunately I was able to get a couple of hour’s rest later in the day. Everything that requires use of my arms if tough to do – putting on a shirt, shampooing my hair… I did not know that my neck hurt so much until I put on another seat belt – in my vehicle – and the shoulder harness really hurt me. Jeez Louise…
OK, maybe I’m just whining now. But make no mistake, I am grateful to still be here.
Monday, Camille went to work like always, and she called the Sheriff for the accident report (available in a few days), and the Hospital for medical records release. Meanwhile, I went to retrieve all of our personals from the Camry, and was shocked to see the windshield starred on her side – I thought her head must have hit the windshield, and we did not notice in the dark and rain on Saturday night. This explains her complaint of a bad headache in the ER. We all figured (the doc, too) that it was a normal by product of a whiplash injury, but it turns out she has a solid reason for a headache. She says it is going away steadily, and that she was aware of the pain being in her forehead that night.
An aside – you never realize how much crap you have in your vehicle until you wreck it. Everything that was squirreled away, or fell between the seats, gets blasted out into the open. ESPECIALLY if you roll it! Then, everything is on the roof! Wotta mess!!!
While I was there, I saw the Jetta sitting nearby, and just before I left the impound area, the other driver (an 18 year old) showed up with his mom to clear out their car. Contrary to what I thought I heard while strapped to a back board in the aid car, he says he was driving, so I will be waiting to see the police accident report to figure out whether I misunderstood what was happening, or if there is some legerdemain going on. In either case, it is moot. Their insurance carrier has already conceded full liability.
Next, I went back to the crash site and took some measurements and photos. The pavement is only 20 feet wide, (one lane each way) with no shoulders, and ditches on both sides that are about 4 feet deep.
If there had been a shoulder, I could have dramatically lessened the impact with an evasion, but people in the NW don’t seem to mind primitive, poorly developed infrastructure. Many of the roads here are poorly lit, poorly labeled, and have no shoulders or guardrails.
Daytime image of 236th Avenue NE with crash photo superimposed.
In chatting with local residents, I was told that the State Patrol write 18 tickets per hour when they set up on this road, for speeding as much as 92 mph, and DUIs; that it now has an average traffic load of 300 vehicles per hour, and that litter and drunk driving collisions are rife – all of this as a result of opening the Angel of the Winds Casino down the street.
So it turns out this is a very unsafe road, and that the Casino has made people here pretty unhappy. Upon that, insult to injury – the Governor granted a tax break, so all of the repairs and improvements that were made, and will continue to be made, are at taxpayer expense with no offset from the tribe.
236th Avenue NE is straight and relatively flat, with nothing impeding the view for at least a mile. Saturday night, it was dusk and raining lightly. I was driving a white car, and passed under two functioning street lamps as I approached the intersection. I saw a car waiting to turn (the turn signal was on), and I was approximately 54 feet away from the intersection when the other driver initiated the left turn into my lane. At 35 miles per hour, our velocity was 51.33 feet per second, and with a “choice” reaction time of about 390 milliseconds, we traveled about 20 feet while my visual cortex processed the images sweeping across my retinas. Headlights. Turning into my path. Not good.
Psychologists have named three basic kinds of reaction time experiments: simple reaction time, recognition reaction time, and choice reaction time experiments. Visual reactions are the slowest, Auditory are faster, and tactile are nearly instantaneous. I was presented with a visual “choice” problem that was “no-win” – almost a paradox, actually, as it had no obvious solution, nor would there have been a solution in memory, had there been time for me to search. I’ve never been faced with that particular Hobson’s choice before.
Interestingly, when we are presented with a problematic stimulus, we often freeze and waste long seconds searching the cerebral cortex for a memory of a similar situation on which to base a decision. That is why we freeze. We are searching in our memories for an answer. In my case, events unfolded too quickly for that luxury. (In post crash tests, my simple reaction time averaged 214.5 ms.)
The function of martial arts, military, and police training is to shunt that time wasting memory search by encoding responses to likely situations in the limbic system – “reptile brain.” I remember watching a NOVA program where bags were put over soldier’s heads in training exercises, and when the bag was abruptly removed, the soldier had to make an instantaneous friend or foe decision based on whatever was in front of him. Sometimes it was an attacker, sometimes a tourist. It is done over and over until the soldier has incredibly accurate and rapid responses that promote the likelihood of his survival in urban combat, while minimizing “collateral damage.”
Kinetic Energy
It seems to me that a head-on crash is actually the best way to wreck in a Camry. The air bags worked wonderfully, and I am guessing that I would not have any damage to my teeth if the crash had not involved two separate decelerations. The initial impact (almost perfectly head-on, as the other car’s license plate is imprinted in reverse next to our plate on the front bumper) probably dissipated 75% of the kinetic energy, and the rest was absorbed when we went into the ditch.
Out of curiosity, I did the math. At 35 mph, with a gross vehicle weight of 3,130 lbs, there was 128,873.40 foot pounds of energy available for mass destruction. About 48 tons of that went into plastic deformation of both vehicles and linear displacement of the other car (I was correct – it was pushed about 32 feet back and rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise), and approximately 16 tons of force went into the mud. I have no idea how much was dissipated through the brakes, because I have no recollection of how hard I pressed, or if I even pressed at all. Because the pavement was wet, there are no skid marks from either vehicle.
The air bags deployed on initial impact, and were already deflating when we experienced the second sudden deceleration as we went into the ditch. That is when I hit the steering wheel, and Camille’s head broke the windshield. It took me a while to puzzle out that we actually had two impacts – one with the other car, then another when the ditch absorbed our leftover velocity.
Our bodies went through two separate g-force moments, the first of approximately 7.7 g’s, mostly dissipated into the airbags, and the second of about 2.6 g’s. Humans have withstood more than 46 g’s.
Many, many things came together by simple blind luck to allow us to walk away from that crash. I cannot praise Toyota enough for designing a car that protected us when we needed it the most.
No much room in here anymore!
Thanks to all of you, from Camille and I, for your thoughts, prayers, positive energy, and kind words.
Every day is a gift…
Comments:
Serena: I cannot bear to think about how much differently this scenario could have played out. I am SO glad you and Camille are here, alive, and doing better.
P.S. I KNEW it! You really are a Math geek at heart! 😀
Auntie “M”: Mike – I am so glad both of you are OK, headaches aside. I have a question – wasn’t anyone in the other car injured? You said an 18 year old guy came to get the car but you thought it was a 16 year old girl driving. Either way, how could they not be injured?????
Me: I really don’t know about the other people… We STILL have not received the police report, and the night it happened, I didn’t want to talk to them, because I could feel that I was simmering. I was angry that some motard had nearly killed us both, and totally destroyed Camille’s car, and if the other driver had said just one stupid thing to me, I was likely to lose control and deck him/her. So I stood aside and waited for the police to do their job.
Their passenger, a girl of 17 or so, had a bloody nose, and my guess is that she hit the backside of the front seat (she was probably sitting in the back.) I saw their car at the impound yard, and their dashboard air bags were also deployed, so like us, the technology probably saved them from serious injury, too.
All I can say with certainty is that everyone was walking around under their own power right after the accident, and only the girl from the Jetta had anything obviously wrong (nose bleed).
Auntie “M”: This is where we differ – I would have just gone over to their car and probably ended up in jail for foul language and whatever else I would do. I have absolutely NO patience with stupid drivers, especially kids. Ask Kenny how I talk about the “cowboys” on the road. When I let out one of my outbursts he just pretends we are on the way to Florida and says “Only 1300 miles to go.” Hope the soreness is going away.
Me: LOL! Well, I understand and agree… it’s just that out here, I’d be in jail. Don’t need that. Plus, my temper is still pretty hot, even after all these years. I really don’t want to kill anyone in a fit of rage, and I believe that is an actual possibility…
I’m feeling better, but Camille is having a crappy day – she’s had a kind of delayed reaction, and her left side is really hurting a lot today.
My dentist tells me we have to wait three weeks to see if my body heals the teeth or decides to kill them. In any event, I need 2 new crowns up front. In the meantime, it feels like someone is shoving a knife up into my sinuses. I’m thankful for Vicodin!
Dave: Glad to hear you both were able to walk away with minimal injuries. Send Camille our best wishes too. These are a few pix of Jeanne’s three year old Camry after she was T-boned by a woman who ran a red light. It occurred in late May last year. She was fortunate to walk away as well, but for some reason the airbags never deployed. She initially felt fine, but an MRI revealed two herniated discs in her neck for which she is still in physical therapy. Again, just glad to hear you’re alright. Life is fragile and one or both of you could have easily not walked away at all.
Peter: Someone once told me, “things…[like smashed-up cars]..are just things… and can be replaced”
But people are different. So the fact that you guys are alright is the important part.