Originally posted by Photog Cowboi:
What is the worst accident anyone has seen and how has it affected you?
I'll bite - for my own reasons...
It wasn't the worst accident I've responded to, or the first (though it was early in my 'career'). Still, it's one that's always stuck with me.
Three A.M. on a Wednesday. I was sleeping soundly when the telephone jumped up and slapped me. The cigarette-stained voice on the other end wanted me to 'roll on a bad 10-50', and I began the time-honored process without rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
The drive across town was uneventful, though my half-conscious mind did marvel at how all the angry stoplights flashed a friendly yellow. What was usually a congested boulevard was an empty strip and I made it to the scene in record time.
Early summer fog added to the dreamy feel of the night, and as I parked on the side of the road and grabbed my gear, I was probably still sleep-walking. Up ahead a lone state trooper's car idled by an accordioned Datsun B-210. Across the road, an eighteen-wheeler sat halfway in a ditch, it's silhouetted driver wiping his brow behind the wheel .
Suddenly, a tall figure in a smokey-the-bear hat stepped into my vision. I t took me a second to realize it was the state-trooper, one who either knew me , or at least pretended to.
"Hey boss-man! Ain't you got nothin' better to do?"
Though his face was hidden beneath his hat-brim, the voice was friendly, and he escorted me toward the wrecked car like the host of some late-night garden party.
"You must a been waitin' in the bushes ya got here so fast..."
I was only half-listening as I powered up my camera and flipped various switches. When I turned my sleepy attention back to the trooper, he was lifting his enormous flashlight, and motioning me up to the window of the crumpled car.
"Don't know if he didn't see the truck, or was just trying to get past it..."
With that, the man in the official hat switched on his flashlight, and ripped every shred of rest from my sleepy brain.
The flashlight's beam danced around the car's interior and my mind's eye took in every detail.
There was no gore, only a young driver slumped around the steering wheel in sudden eternity. He was dressed in a fast-food uniform, and the coffee he'd been sipping on the way to work was puddled up in the floorboard. Next to him on the seat, a worn case full of cassette tapes sat in silence. An air-freshener exactly like the one on my news unit hung from a cigarette lighter that had lit its last Marlboro.
I backed away from the car after only a few seconds, my mind now painfully awake and racing with grim scenarios. Trying not to expose my shock to the trooper, I played it cool and got a quick sound-bite. After a few cursory shots of the wreckage, I crawled into my news car and turned back toward home. But for once, I took my time, for rushing seemed to disrespect the newly dead. Though it was a straight, flat route back to the house, I held the steering wheel in a sweaty driver's-ed regulation grip.
I've seen alot of trauma since then, but the scene of that poor soul's final commute has always held a special place in my memory. It must have been the fast-food uniform, the spilled coffee and the air freshener that did it; inconsequential personal items that forced me to relate to the crash victim. Whatever did it, I learned an important lesson that sweltery summer morning: No matter how callous, how flippant, how tough we all pretend to be when covering sudden deaths, the people we point our cameras at are real, and not all that far removed from ourselves. It's something we should all remember, even when we want desperately to forget it.
I know I can't.