Buckle up for safety! No, seriously, buckle up.

I’m lying in bed writing this feeling achy with a couple really sore muscles in my neck and left shoulder, but otherwise in pretty good shape. The Ford Explorer I was driving on Friday night didn’t fare quite so well.

I went to “Bad Movie Night” at a friend’s house (for the record, don’t waste your time watching “Troll 2”) and was driving home, looking forward to my warm, snuggly bed. The weather conditions at the time, however, were not conducive to driving. There was wet snow coming down from the sky, gusting wind and the temperature had dropped a few degrees below freezing. Very not conducive.

There were some people who were creeping along in the right lane of 35E southbound, but I figure I’ve got a stable vehicle and I’m confident in my mad driving skillz, so I was cruising along at the speed limit (70 mph). At one point, though, I hit a patch of ice and started twisting a little bit. I kept the wheels forward and they caught again after a split second, but that brief moment of lack of control was unnerving.

I think it was the wind that made me slow down to 60—SUVs aren’t known for being aerodynamic, so if they get hit in the side with a gust of wind, it will push them in that direction. That’s usually easily correctable, but not when you’re on another patch of ice. No, at that point, you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature and she wasn’t feeling terrible merciful at about midnight last night.

I was heading south on 35E and had just passed the exit ramp going down to Hwy 42. You’re driving into a lot of open space at that point, so there’s nothing to block gusts of wind that come at you from an angle on the driver’s side. I was moving along in the left lane, then the wind hit and pushed the front of the Explorer to the right. The wind stopped pushing; the Explorer didn’t stop turning.

That spot on 35E had become sheer ice. I kept the front wheels pointed down the road like before, but they didn’t catch this time. I kept spinning for a full 180 degrees, then rolled off the side of the road and down the embankment.

That in itself doesn’t sound that bad if you haven’t seen the sharp angle of the slope there, but when you combine that with the exit ramp going down to 42… it was dark, but the police officer thought I might have rolled over five times. (I didn’t have my glasses on and wasn’t counting on the way down, so I can’t confirm or deny that.)

[Addendum: I drove to the ramp with my parents and took some pictures of the slope. It looked like I was just short of four full rotations and slid for a little bit at the bottom. I’ll post pictures in another entry in case people don’t want to see it. Because I’m sensitive like that. Sometimes.]

I can confirm that while the vehicle was spinning on the road, it was scary, especially when I knew where my momentum was taking me. While it was rolling… it was a little too surreal to be scary. Maybe it’s because I’ve spun out before, but taking a tumble like that was a very new and very unpleasant experience for me.

A few things worth noting: I was wearing my seatbelt, so I stayed in my seat the whole time. I was driving a Ford Explorer—an SUV—so there was enough space above and to the sides that I didn’t smack my head against anything. Of course, that meant my head was free to thrash around the whole time, but that was probably better than the alternative.

When I finally stopped at the bottom, the Explorer was resting on the passenger side. That’s when my glasses fell off. They stayed on during the roll, then I felt them come off. That was doubly confirmed because I reached up with my right arm and felt them on the roof of the car. I tried to grab them, slowly close my hand around the stem, but they slipped down as soon as I made contact.

That was one of more surreal moments during the whole experience, too. When that happened, I didn’t think about rolling down the embankment. No, at that moment, I was pissed about reacting too slowly and not being able to grab my glasses before they fell.

I heard some voices outside of the vehicle really quickly, asking if I was okay. I told them yeah, just gimme a minute. I needed to orient myself a little bit, unbuckle my seatbelt, then stand up. I saw two guys standing there who reached out, grabbed underneath each arm, then tried to help me out. I wasn’t going anywhere the way they were pulling—I basically had to go up the width of the vehicle to get out—but I managed to step on the passenger-side headrest and push myself up that way (earning me a brief flash of pain since it was with the surgically repaired knee, of course).

That got me up high enough that they were able to drag me the rest of the way out of the car. They stuck around to make sure I was okay, then left as soon as a police officer got there. I managed to thank one of them as he was walking away, but they pretty much just disappeared. I doubt they’re reading this, but just in case: Thank you for pulling me out of my car.

The officer walked down to where I was, asked how I was feeling and I told him that… basically, it was one muscle on each side of my neck. On the left side, it’s the long one that stretches from my neck down to my shoulder; the right one is just a spot right below the skull. It turns out I got a little scuff mark on my right knee, too, but that could have been from hitting it against the steering wheel, dragging it a little when those guys pulled me out… I dunno.

Regardless, that’s all. No cuts or scratches, no blood stains, no bones jutting out of the skin. Just a couple sore muscles from thrashing around during the roll. Like I said before, the Explorer didn’t fare quite as well. I knew the windshield was heavily fractured and the driver’s side window was gone—I was peeking in to look for my glasses and checking out CDs lying on the… well, technically not the floor, but the bottom. The police officer shined his flashlight down there for me, but no dice.

[After taking pictures of the embankment, I got some pictures of the Explorer at the lot where it got towed, which will also be posted in that next entry.]

The lack of injury is in large part due to the seatbelt. If I hadn’t been wearing that, I would have been rolling around in random directions with my head and body bouncing off various parts of the Explorer for multiple rotations. (Translation: I’d be severely injured, possibly crippled, potentially dead.) Another reason is the design of the vehicle. The widest part is in the middle of the car doors, then it slopes up. By landing on the roof and pushing that down, it would blow the side windows outward instead of into the vehicle. (A hard collision on the side would have been an entirely different story.)

So after talking to the officer for a minute or two, I called home and told Dad what happened and where I was. He had been in bed for just a few minutes, but even if they’re really groggy, when you tell somebody about rolling your car down a slope like that, they probably wake up pretty quick. He said he’d get dressed, then head out to the exit ramp right away.

A couple minutes after that, the police officer invited me into the back of his vehicle so we could warm up. Like I was saying before, it was below freezing and that wind was raw. The vehicle, on the other hand, was nice and toasty. He asked me a couple questions to check for head trauma—name, address, what’s the date, etc. (If you don’t remember your name and address, you’re in bad shape.) I said that it was the 12th or 13th, but I’m embarrassed to report that it took me a couple seconds to remember that we’re in the middle of March.

While sitting there, my neck had started to stiffen up even more, so he said when the ambulance arrived, I should take a ride to the hospital where they could check for something more severe that might be causing the sore muscles. “Checking for whiplash and stuff, I understand.” And I nodded. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have nodded and turned my head as much as I did—it earned me a brief reprimand from the police officer before I left.

As I was getting into the ambulance, I started to call home to let them know I was being taken to the hospital, then figured that whoever was on scene would be able to tell them (Ridges Hospital was less than a mile away—it’s just north of the Hwy 42 exit and overlooks 35E, so they’d probably know which one I was at). I hung up, put my phone in my pocket, let them put a foam collar around my neck to brace my head, then strap me down to the gurney for our trip.

7 Replies to “Buckle up for safety! No, seriously, buckle up.”

  1. Wow, Shawn– I’m so glad to hear you’re okay. Chalk up a great counter-example to the seatbelt naysayers out there.

    How well do you see without your glasses?

    1. Bad enough that I can’t legally drive without them. When I offer to let people try them on, they usually look through them for a brief moment, blurt out “Whoa!”, then hand them back to me.

      1. Sounds about as bad as my vision, then. I’ve had similar, dizzy responses to people trying my lenses on 🙂 One of the things I’m always afraid of is losing my glasses in a situation where I really need them– like a car accident, or being attacked, or whatnot. That sounds like it would make a bad situation even suckier 🙁

  2. Oh my.. so glad you are okay.. roads were awful!.. it was a long ride home for me too but I drove slowly and arrived safely. I was wondering if you were driving or sleeping over in CG that night. Yeah for seatbelts!!!

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