We had spent Christmas week with relatives in California, and were returning home to the Phoenix area, a four-day drive in our RV. Four hours from home, on a twisty, long, steep downgrade, we came around a curve to see something large and black across the road. My husband stood on the brakes, but it was not enough. We plowed through what was (as we found out later) the bottom view of an overturned trailer, and into the pickup truck beyond it, before coming to a stop. It was a multi-vehicle pileup, with no emergency vehicles present.
When we stopped I was sitting with the passenger side widow in my lap, a heap of glass, and the frame of the door next to me was twisted. I called 911. My husband tried to get the door open, to no effect. Several people tried from the outside---no effect. Eventually three people got us out through a window, using a ladder. We sat on chairs beside the road (chairs that were in our towed car, because we had just bought them at Costco)—while the driver of an 18 wheeler on its way from Washington to Tucson took charge. Meanwhile a vehicle pulling a horse trailer was added to the mess. (It turned out that the horses were OK.)
After a while my husband climbed back in the window and salvaged our most important belongings: our computers and medications, and a few other items, and handed them out the window to someone, who later remarked to me that “He’s spryer than he looks.”
It was a long time before emergency vehicles showed up, because they were coming from the two closest towns, 40 miles away in two different directions. We were so scattered along the roadway that I hadn’t realized that anyone was hurt---but a man was loaded into an ambulance, and later word came back that he had died. They said he’d been thrown from his vehicle. I think it was the car pulling the trailer that had turned over, but I’m not sure. That was the tragic part of the whole experience. His daughter was there, and I could hear her crying in the distance, but I never saw her.
We were there for about three hours. Eventually all the vehicles were towed away, including our RV, which needed a special large tow truck. My husband had detached our towed car, which was fine, and finally they let us go, to get home at 11:00 PM.
Now I’m coming to the reason why I’m writing this story: if I had not been wearing a seatbelt, I’d have been catapulted out through that front window and immediately run over by our own vehicle. I’d be dead. Instead all I have are some aches and pains and a few tiny glass cuts, like pinpricks. My husband might have survived without a seatbelt, because he was holding the steering wheel---or maybe not. He has no damage at all.
I assume most of you wear your seatbelts habitually. (I wear mine in my own driveway!) But if any of you don’t, PLEASE take this to heart. A seatbelt can save your life. It’s not just a slogan, it’s true.
