Speeding and the Art of the Near Death Experience...

Travelling home this weekend from Moscow and watching my beloved Vandals get their ass handed to them (one more time), I was starting to nod off in the back seat of the car as the girls chatted away up front and my friend and I sat in back.

It had been a long night of me drawing the short straw and sleeping on the floor in the hotel room and although several cups of coffee were ingested at breakfast, my eyes were just getting too heavy from the monotony of the 3 hours we had already travelled through country I had seen far too many times on my treks between home and school. It had also been a good day - good friends and pleasant conversation.

As we neared the north side of Riggins, ID, the cars in the long procession of southern Idaho residents making the same journey were bunched up into small groups. Recently there was a land slide on Hwy 95 a few miles north of Riggins and we had waited quite a while as the automated flagger/stop light let small segments of the caravan through the one-lane passage. We had waited our turn and had zoomed off trying to regain a little bit of time.

That's when I closed my eyes. I couldn't have had them closed more than a few minutes when excitement started to rise in the car and my friend exclaimed that a car had gone off the road in front of us. I zipped up to alertness trying to see what everyone else had just witnessed and missed the whole thing. Our car was still speeding south and as we came up on the event, I finally saw the first glimpses of what had happened.

This section of Hwy 95 follows the Salmon River in the canyon created millennia ago by the water's passage. The highway department had done a good job carving out a fairly wide road and in recent years had increased the speed limit to 65 mph which made following this road not all that bad. The road twists and turns following the course of the river for dozens of miles with decent stretches for passing lanes and the occasional turn out for the traveller to enjoy a small break and look at the beauty of the landscape.

The road is nestled right up against the steep hillside that is typically vertical walls of basalt rocks laid down from ancient volcanic eruptions. On the other side is the wide river with a variable drop in elevation from the road of anywhere from 10 to 50 feet. The river is also floated by salmon fishermen and whitewater rafting guides as the season permits. The water is cold and move rather quickly. In the spring run off I've seen whole trees floating down with the power of the current.

Traffic can sometimes been a pain since Hwy 95 is the only north-south route in the state. Following the far western edge of the state and nearly traversing the entire length. So trucks and cars of all types need to use this road to get anywhere upstate. And, because the road is relatively wide, it's easy to want to go fast and take (unnecessary) risks and pass vehicles that may not be up to your travel expectations of speeds. I know that I had done it a thousand times before in my irresponsible youth.

As our car approached the scene and as several other fellow travellers did as well, we hit the brakes and pulled over to the one of those scenic turn outs designed into the roadway. I looked down and realized that a small pickup truck was on its cab - upside down in the water. The car hadn't come to a complete stop as my friend and I hopped out and rushed over the embankment to see if we could help.

My first thoughts were that I was going to see death. The truck has sped off the roadway at considerable speed and had flipped at least a couple of times and came to a rest on a very small beach. The cab was in the water, but barely.

As I barrelled down the embankment over the large basalt rocks and across the sand, a young man was standing there and a young woman was on her hands and knees crawling out of the window. I ran down to her and helped her stand and moved her up to the beach away from the vehicle since it was still making noise from the immediacy of the accident.

The vehicle was smashed. It as an older Ford Ranger 2WD pickup. Small, regular cab with a small four cylinder engine - I have owned two of them myself over the years. The cab where the two were previously sitting was compressed down so far that I couldn't imagine where their upper bodies would have been able to physically fit. All glass was shattered and there were no airbags. Their cargo and luggage was strewn all over the small beach. Colorful neon paper was floating around in the eddy of the river from a ream of paper that exploded. Two spare tires bobbed in the waves and their bags were strewn all over. The tonneau cover to the bed of the pickup was flown away and sunk in the water of the river.

My friend and I looked them over and asked if anything was wrong. There was no apparent serious injury with either of them other than being shaken up from the trauma. The boy had a few scratches and the girl had a small cut on her hand and complained that her neck was sore. The boy had lost his shoe.

I looked again at the truck and looked back at them - they should have been dead. We asked if they were wearing seat belts and the boy said no (the girl had hers on). No airbags in the truck - nothing. No injuries.

As more people came down, we performed some basic first aid for the girls cuts as we waited for help to arrive. There was no cell phone coverage in that area so someone had to drive into Riggins to summon the authorities and the ambulance. All arrived in about 15 minutes. The girl wanted to know the status of her stuff and their bags had laptop computers in them. We pulled them out and the water had annihilated them. She started to cry and we told her that she was lucky to be alive and it was just a damned computer.

Come to find out they were students at LCSC in Lewiston headed back up to school from a family visit. There were driving north and the boy was driving her pickup. He had tried to pass a car with a young family and the truck didn't have enough guts to go quick enough. He had gotten even with the car to be passed when an oncoming car came up and he slammed on the brakes. As coincidence, there was a scenic turn out they pushed left to dodge the oncoming car. His speed was too great and even with the tires locked up, he plowed off the pavement and over the embankment about 15 feet up from the water level. The truck veered off to the left and over the edge hitting on the passenger's side front quarter panel and flipping up into the air to come to rest on it's top on the beach.

The couple who they were trying to pass had also stopped to help. They were a young married couple with a 2 month old child in the car. If the boy had steered into them, he would have put that young family into the rocks of the cliff.

The emergency crews checked them over and took her by ambulance to Grangeville where the hospital was. The boy hitched a ride with their friends who were also travelling with them in a separate car and saw it happen at a distance.

My friend and I helped to pick up the mess and lug their belongings up to the other vehicle. The medical crew placed her in a immobilized neck device and onto a back board just in case she had any neck damage. I helped carry her up the embankment and into the ambulance.

For all intents and purposes, the couple should have been killed or at least seriously injured. I still can't picture how they "fit" into the wreckage in such a way that they only had minor scrapes and cuts.

Or that out of all places on the river to go in, this spot had a nice soft sandy beach to land onto and an eddy that didn't whisk them away downstream only to die from drowning. It was a perfect combination of circumstances that let them survive this accident and it struck me as odd.

Maybe there are angels that help a situation. I don't know. I can tell you the most compelling thing was how fellow humans stop what they're doing to help another who needs help. All without requiring any thanks or recognition and then leaving to go on their way when the work was done.