Responders’ humanity minimizes mayhem in an 11-vehicle mashup
Wednesday at 6 p.m., while we were waiting in a long line at a traffic light on busy State Road 436 in Casselberry, an out-ofcontrol driver crashed his car into our lane, damaging 11 vehicles.
We were first in line at the stoplight, waiting patiently in our little Kia Soul, when behind us, a white Dodge Ram 1500 pickup lurched forward, striking us amid sounds of screeching tires and flying shards of twisted metal and glass. The white pickup had taken the brunt of the impact of the smaller red pickup behind it.
The red pickup was crushed like an accordion between the white pickup and a gray Honda CRV before the Honda had been forced violently through the crepe myrtles on the median to end up a smoldering wreck facing oncoming traffic.
The five of us in the first three vehicles were OK. The Honda driver, however, lay fearfully still in the front seat. Eight more cars with varying damage were strewn behind these cars and many of their occupants seemed to be in worse shape.
Within minutes of this mayhem, we were encircled by emergency vehicles — police, fire and ambulance. When we got out of our Kia, shocked and trembling, we looked behind us. The injured, some in their cars, some lying on the ground, were surrounded by helpful citizens and first responders giving expert medical aid.
We stopped to hug one young man who was sobbing as he looked at his father’s crushed truck, bought just two weeks before. Without health insurance, he was concerned about being transported to a hospital. In all, seven people, who just happened to be stopped at a traffic light in Casselberry at 6 p.m., had to be transported by ambulance. Firefighters and emergency medical technicians asked us multiple times if we were OK. We were.
But we later learned the outof-control driver had died that evening.
Police officers took our drivers license, registration and insurance information. A little more than an hour later, the injured were in hospitals, the damaged vehicles were towed away, and the roadway was swept clean. A young Casselberry police officer handed us a 40-inch-long crash report, somehow printed on the spot, detailing all 11 drivers, with their exact order in the traffic lane, each with vehicle and insurance information. Then he respectfully sent us on our way.
What a humbling, unifying experience this was for a group of innocent victims of circumstance from differing economic and racial backgrounds. The shock we shared and our common fears for health and financial losses were made less traumatic by the responding emergency workers salaried by local tax dollars. We heard no one complain or grumble about government overreach or unfair taxation as we all suddenly needed the quick and efficient assistance available only from the trained first responders provided by our common government.
Like Wednesday’s accident, health care in our country is a multiple car wreck affecting all our lives but with no humanitarian help in sight. From our conservative friends comes constant carping about the evils of government, forced taxation and the diabolical socialist intent of Obamacare — which was, ironically, originally based on a Republican, market-based idea.
Why, in the richest country on Earth, are we having this healthcare debate? No one is asking us to contribute money through taxation to allow anyone to buy luxuries. True humanitarians are asking that we all contribute to government so that everyone will have equal access to basic compassionate care — including health care — something a few of us thankfully experienced firsthand on a busy highway in Casselberry.