Yesterday I was returning from a business trip to Haifa with a co-worker. On highway 65 by Um El-Fahm, we stopped at a red light behind an army transport truck. We were speaking with Ana via the car’s speaker phone, and at last notice, there was a white 4×4 behind me stopped.
Suddenly, I heard the noise of a collision, and then registered the jolt that indicated we were the ones hit. It was a very strong impact, and we were thrown forward. The timeline slowed, but clearly it was fractions of a second later when there was a secondary impact from us hitting the army truck.
Silence.
I looked over at my co-worker and saw no signs of trauma. He confirmed he was ok. Good. Moderate volumes of white acrid smoke started to vent into the cabin from the engine compartment. Bad. I gave him a sharp order to get out, and fast. At the same time, I tried my door which turned out to be jammed and would not open. In hindsight, it perhaps may have made more sense to climb over the center console after my co-worker succeeded, but at the time he was not out yet and my first thought was to get out and help him from outside.
I’ve carried the CMC Res*Q*Me on my keychain for the better part of the last year, but always laughed when I was asked if I’d tested it. That’s the thing about safety produts - you often never get to test them until you need it, and when you need it, it had better work. It worked. My door window shattered and I stuck my legs out first and followed with my upper body. I would later discover that I’d suffered small cuts to my right wrist and had some small pieces of glass stuck in my throat area.
We both escaped the car and I checked him out by the side of the road. He was ok, but I instructed on refraining from excessive movement. I had a witness pull my rescue pack out of the trunk via the back seat (the trunk door no longer functioned) so that I could put a trauma bandate on my wrist and stop the bleeding.
The police officer told me that the police would take care of the tow, so we went with the ambulance to the hostpital in Hadera. Due to the loss of mobility in my wrist, the docs x-rayd it. No fracture, but some nasty swelling. My co-worker had a sternum & spinal x-ray done, and was also clean.
Not bad at all given the condition of the car.
I got home close to midnight, cleaned up the blood and went to sleep.
[tags]israel, afula, accident, collision, cmc, hospital[/tags]
