Dangerous Curve

I live on a dangerous curve.

It's a right angle with a steep bank and a downhill grade. We also learned that it is a "compound curve" meaning it has two radii, one smaller than the other. It amounts to a setup to fling unsuspecting cars off the road.

They tell people to slow down to 25 mph, but people rarely do. I've seen so many accidents around this curve over the years that I don't pay attention anymore.

One time a truck that the police were chasing crashed here. It was spike stripped, tires blown out, and lost control and ended up on its side in our neighbor's yard. The man jumped out, like someone coming out of a tank hatch, and tried to run away into the woods. He almost made it, but fell down off the bank of our pond and was caught and dragged off by the police. My brother and I got to watch out the window as we were sitting there watching TV. Sort of like America's Most Wanted in our back yard.

Another time, I was working in the garden and heard tires squealing and looked up in time to see a yellow Corvette hit a tree head on. My first reaction was that whoever was in the car would be pretty scrambled and in dire need of medical attention, so I went inside first and called an ambulance. I came up to the car and a friend in another car had stopped next to him. I told them that I had called 911, and they were in the friend's car and out of there in no time. I suspected that they were drunk, and I wondered if there was anything incriminating in the car. The police showed up at that point, and they told me later that the man was found drunk at his house.

The most interesting crasher was a big burly tattooed biker looking guy. He managed to miss all the trees by the road and go about 100 yards down a hill before he found a tree worthy of hitting. He was so drunk, he wasn't sure what was going on. They couldn't communicate with him, so they assumed that he was hurt and strapped him to a back board. When he started fighting it, they put him in restraints. He was carried to an ambulance handcuffed and strapped down and shouting obscenities at the EMTs and police.

One night, I was watching TV with my cousins and brother. The cousins were visiting from out of town and it was winter time and cold out. A couple of drunk kids came around the curve, went off the road and took out our gas meter and utility pole. The power didn't go out immediately, but the electrical transformer that was on the pole was thrown into a tree next to the pole. The gas was coming out of the busted pipe sticking up out of the ground with a loud hiss, and 20' away, the tranformer was wedged in a tree, sparking like mad. To make matters worst, the kids had flattened all of their tires and were spinning on their hubs on the gravel drive, spewing out sparks. The feared explosion never happened, but we did get to watch all the excitement for about 3 hours. By 9 am the next morning, everything but cable TV was restored.

Most recently, we had a death on the curve. We were out of town and found out about it later. A lady spun out and hit a tree right on her drivers side door. She lived through the crash and was medevaced by helicopter from a field 5 doors down. She died about a week later after lapsing into a coma.

After that, they put a guard rail up. Kinda like locking the barn door after the horse already escaped.