Late Wednesday night, I happened to glance at the digital dial on the radio in my vehicle. It was just before midnight. I was driving on the 401 eastbound, heading home. I left the studio later than I usually do. I don’t know what it was that made me glance down at the time. Maybe it was the fact that I was at that stretch of the express lanes of the highway later than I usually was. When I looked up, all I could see in front of me was a sea of red tail-lights coming on. I eased down on my brakes and pulled into the right-hand lane. When the vehicle came to a stop it would not move again until two hours later.
You probably heard the news the next morning concerning the details of the multiple vehicle accident on the 401 late the night before. I was about five or six transport truck-lengths away from it. It was terrible. Words can’t describe what I felt when I was told what had happened up ahead. There was a transport beside me in the centre lane, a few cars ahead of me and a whole line of cars and trucks behind me as far as I could see in my rear-view mirrors. For the next fifteen to twenty minutes, I watched emergency vehicles converging on the scene from all directions. Police cruisers, ambulances, fire trucks, a special EMS ambulance bus with paramedics and other rescue vehicles passed us in the collector lanes as well as on both shoulders of the express lanes. I was running low on fuel and just knew that I should turn the vehicle off and call my wife on the cellphone to let her know I wouldn’t be home anytime soon. She always worries about me being on the road as much as I am. For a number of years I did not have a cellphone in the car with me. It was through her urging that I finally broke down and got one. That night it came in handy as I tried to explain what had obviously happened just in front of me.
Drivers began getting out of their vehicles and began to mingle in between the cars. I stepped out of my vehicle careful to ensure the traffic was not going to begin to move. It was a strange sensation to be out in the middle of the express lanes of one of the busiest highways in this country. People who run into trouble will pull their cars over onto the shoulders of the highway to wait for help. They will usually stay in their cars until help arrives. It is extremely dangerous to attempt to get out of your car with so much traffic speeding by. I didn’t stand outside of my vehicle for long. Some of the drivers around me began to walk up to where the accident occurred. Upon their return, I leaned out of my driver’s side window and overheard snippets of conversation concerning how serious the accident was. It wasn’t until much later, while listening to the news on the radio, that I heard exactly what had happened.
I struck up a conversation with the transport truck driver beside me. He was out to stretch his legs. I learned he was from Montreal and was on his way with a load that needed to be there by 6 a.m. He told me he didn’t think he would be moving for hours yet. We talked about the high price of diesel fuel and I shared some memories with him of the city I once called home. Out of all these strangers around me, I happened to meet someone I shared something in common with. Truthfully, though, it did little to ease my concerns for what was going on just up ahead.
In all my years of driving this was one of the most serious situations I found myself in. I have been in a few car accidents myself over the many years I’ve been behind the wheel and, thankfully, they were minor in comparison to what had just happened in front of me. The worst accident I was in was the time when I was hit from behind by a drunk driver. One of my early blogs back in December described that accident. I was struck from behind and forced into a busy intersection. Fortunately, it was late at night and the oncoming traffic was light. I was hit by a train the first winter I drove a car. I was sixteen at the time and it was my first car. Fortunately, the train was going very slow. I wasn’t going much faster, but it was at a level crossing with no gates and no flashing lights, and the train had emerged from behind a building. With the heater on full, my noisy windshield wipers going and the windows rolled up, I didn’t hear the horn. The engine lifted the front end of my car up in the air. There was some damage to my car and not a scratch on the engine. There were no cellphones in those days, so the railroad police drove me home. You can imagine what my parents must have thought when they were awoken to me calling out to them, as I walked through the front door, that I had been hit by a train. Fortunately, I walked away from that accident, too. This time, I was trapped on a section of highway with no exit ramps in sight with so many other drivers. By the tone of the conversations around me, you could tell that we all sensed how grave the situation was ahead of us.
I was lucky. I was able to call my wife and tell her I was okay, that I wasn’t involved in the accident itself. I would imagine other phone calls were being made by emergency personnel to other families. I know I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of those calls. My thoughts and concerns go out to the families of those who were involved in the accident that night.
We heard the highway was going to be closed for hours. An accident reconstruction team arrived due to the seriousness of the situation. I watched some drivers and their passengers milling about, looking into vehicles that had been left locked up while their drivers were somewhere up ahead. I rolled up my windows, made sure the seat belt was secure, locked the doors and sat back to wait.
Sometime later, I saw a car up ahead trying to back up and maneuver its way onto the shoulder to head in the opposite direction. You can imagine what was going through my mind at that moment. I thought that one driver had finally had enough of being stuck, and decided drive the shoulder back to the last exit into the collector lanes. With the number of emergency vehicles that had used that same shoulder to get to the scene of the accident, I began to imagine the worst. It was then that I saw a familiar uniform. One of the police officers on the scene was directing the driver. It was then I realized the police were trying to find a way to get the cars, SUVs and small trucks out. One by one, we were all led around the parked transport trucks and onto the shoulder. We proceeded slowly past the big rigs that would not be able to move for some time. As I drove against what is the normal flow of traffic, I saw how the police had cleared out the stopped traffic behind me. We drove down the somewhat empty lanes around parked transports, and pointed to a transfer lane into the collectors. Even though I knew I wasn’t going to come into contact with a vehicle speeding in the opposite direction, it was surreal driving westbound in the eastbound express lanes. Just before turning onto the transfer lanes, I rolled down my window and thanked one of the OPP officers who was directing the line of traffic into the collector lanes.
I wanted to write this blog to commend all the emergency responders who were on the scene that night. I can’t imagine what they must go through when they come upon an accident like the one they were called to.
10 seconds… That’s what I figured as I passed the accident scene in the express lanes. Car parts were strewn everywhere. Had I sped up just a bit earlier that night, touched the gas pedal, passed one or two trucks, left work a little earlier….
10 seconds.. The time it takes to pour a cup of coffee, to make a cellphone call and connect, to tell someone you love them and to hear their reply, and how fast your life can change…
10 seconds… That’s how close I was to being involved in an accident. I wanted to share this experience with you to also serve as a reminder that we must never take our eyes off the road ahead. The cellphone call can wait.
On my drive in the next night, I was a little more careful and wary of what was going on around me. I decided that if someone was anxious to pass, I would let him. I wasn’t in a rush. If the cellphone rang, I decided that I might let it go unanswered. I don’t know how many people around me on the highway late at night are thinking the same things, but I’m sure that some of those who were stuck for hours behind that horrific accident the other night are doing the same thing. The others beside me, who were also 10 seconds away…
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Don Jackson
