WORK STORIES, PART I ***NOT FOR THE WEAK STOMACHED***

As I was traveling to Los Angeles this morning to investigate a cargo fire which occurred back on December 11th, I came across 2 accidents; one had just occurred on the northbound I-5 north of Beach Blvd and the other southbound I-5 at Indiana.

The first one I came across was around 10:15 am at Beach Blvd. As I diverted traffic from the number one lane a set out a flare pattern, As I walked up to the involved parties (3 involved vehicles) and saw a 7 or 8 year-old boy who sitting on the road leaned up against the center divider. I asked if anyone was hurt and one of the parties told me that the boy had a laceration under his eye. I walked over to him and saw a little blood under his eye and told him that I’d be right back. After gloving up and grabbing the first aid kit, I walked back to the boy and noticed that half of his left eyeball was protruding through his swollen eyelid. Unfortunately, I don’t think the boy was wearing his seatbelt.

The second accident occurred at about 10:50 am on the southbound side of the I-5 at Indiana. While I was traveling northbound I-5, I saw a large black dog run out from the west side of the freeway (from Indiana) right into freeway traffic. Two things went through my head. One, please someone hit the dog, and two, don’t panic stop and swerve to avoid hitting the dog. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals, however, when vehicle’s are traveling at freeway speeds (70-80 MPH), a lot of things can go wrong, which in this case did.

As the dog cleared the #4 and #3 lanes, the car in the #2 lane slammed on its brakes and swerved into the #1 lane, pinning in a vehicle into the center median, followed by a chain reaction crash that involved cars in all four lanes to bottleneck the freeway and causing a truck to slam into the center divider and into several other vehicles already involved in the crash.

I only bring up these two incidents for two reasons. One- always wear a seatbelt. I myself have always hated wearing them. Even after 2 seatbelt tickets I still had trouble wearing them until a year and a half ago. And two- although we all love animals, a dog will not total your car or kill you. The speeding vehicles coming up behind you that are operated by driver’s not paying attention to the road who will slam into your stopped vehicle on the freeway will kill you.

That’s my pearl of wisdom for now.