getting out in an emergency
This is an anecdotal experience I had dealing with an emergency I came upon while driving. Although the situation described is not aviation in origin it does give some insight into human nature when confronted with a life or death situation.
Several years ago I was driving down a 2-lane highway at 65 MPH. Came up onto a farm pickup truck pulling an empty dual axle car hauler trailer. We were driving down the back side of a fairly lengthy hill at highway speed. At the bottom of the hill there was a creak bed the road crossed over and then the road began to rise again to travel up the opposite side of the rising terrain where this creak passed. As the farmer's pickup came to the bottom of this hill the back drivers side tire of the trailer blew out. This caused the trailer to start swerving uncontrollably left and right. In turn the momentum of this weight began to pull the pickup left into the oncoming lane where a car was barreling toward the farmer.
I had a front row seat for this incident the entire time. I watched the whole thing unfold in front of my windshield, from the beginning blow out of the tire; to the pickup swerving over into the oncoming lane of traffic; the last minute jerk of the pickup and trailer as the farmer desperately worked to steer the pickup back into his lane and avoid the oncoming car; to the miraculous semi recover just in time to get the pickup out of the on coming lane of traffic. I watched as that passing car just barely missed the tail of the trailer by a foot or less. I can just imagine what the person(s) in that car were going through as that transpired.
All of that led up to the worst part of this event. With all of this violent lateral movement going on at somewhere around 60 MPH or so, there was no way this guy was going to regain control of this pickup and trailer. In fact, he did not. Once he narrowly missed the oncoming car his drastic steering caused the pickup/trailer combination to just go crazy. The trailer swung way out to the right then way out to the left while all this time pulling hard on the pickup until the driver totally lost it. The entire rig finally rolled over to the right and left the road.
Again I watched all of this just feet away as it occurred. It took just a few seconds to happen. Maybe less than 5 seconds from the blow out to the point where the rig was rolling violently off the right side of the road and down the ditch toward the creak bed we were traveling over. I was slamming on my brakes to stop before I became part of the accident. I was able to get stopped and off the road directly in front of where this pickup came to rest upside down on its roof slammed up against a fence.
I shoved my vehicle into park, slung open the door and ran as fast as I could down to this pickup. I just knew I was not going to like what I saw inside the cab. This was a typical farm pickup with a fuel tank in the bed of the pickup full of diesel fuel (and it was spewing diesel out everywhere). There were hand tools flung everywhere from some toolbox and various debris that a few seconds prior to this were in the bed of the truck. The truck was still in gear with the engine running at full bore. The accelerator was stuck wide open.
While I was running down to the truck I was trying to figure out quickly in my mind how I was going to deal with getting this guy out as quickly as possible. I just knew this guy was in serious trouble. Really, I was thinking the worst as it just didn't look like anyone would be able to survive what I just witnessed. At this point there may have been 20-30 seconds that passed since the blow out.
With all of this occurring in the span of 30 seconds or so and because of the extremely violent destruction of this crash, I was convinced I was going to be the first one to reach a fatal accident victim. I had the most incredible shock as I finally reached the driver's side door to the pickup cab. The pickup was upside down, motor running wide open and diesel fuel spewing out everywhere. Just as I was reaching down to see if I could pry open the door the farmer came blasting out of the busted side window of the driver's side door. He crawled out as fast as he could with eyes as wide as serving platters. Not only had he survived what I was sure had killed him, he didn't even seem to have a scratch on him.
Well, here is the point of my telling this story. He came blasting out of that cab in literally seconds from the time the pickup stopped moving. His system had pumped so much adrenalin through his body I truly think he would have been able to run a 3 minute mile at that time. I kid you not, I would say he was out of that pickup in less than 10 seconds from when it came to rest.
I don't know how fast I will be able to react to a life or death situation but if I react anything the way this guy did I think I will be moving pretty dog gone fast.
Ok, sorry for the long winded non-aviation story but I thought it somewhat pertinent to the discussion.
