Crash Course
by Ian Alexander
Late one night in February 2000, Andy Swinburnson, 25, almost died in a four-car collision while driving north from Portland, Ore.
"It just happened so quick it was freaky," Swinburnson said.
Passing an RV north of Mount Vernon, Swinburnson drifted too far to the
left, hit the rumble strip and ricocheted off the guardrail. Swerving
back into his lane he overcorrected and lost control. Shearing off the
end of the RV in the right lane he bounced back into the left lane and
slid across the grass median into the southbound lane. He came to a stop
when he hit a southbound car, sending it off the road in a shower of sparks.
"When I started going across the median, I saw lights coming the other way," Swinburnson said. "I just thought I was going to die."
He was not hurt, only numb from the car’s airbags. His only thought was to get off of the road.
"I was standing in the southbound lane and a semitruck was coming," Swinburnson said.
He ran to the side of the road just as the truck driver slammed on his brakes and plowed through his car. The semi never stopped. No one was hurt in the accident, but damages totaled nearly $30,000.
Accidents claim lives, cause emotional stress and trauma, cost millions of dollars and threaten ground water. Every year drivers are forced to spend hours on I-5, waiting for the wreckage to be cleared and for traffic to get back up to speed as people slow down to ogle the damage.
Doug Pierce, head of environment and operations management at the Washington State Department of Transportation, said car accidents are a drain on Washington’s resources.
"It happens four to six times a year where there’s a major accident on the interstate that closes it," Pierce said. "The loss of commerce, loss of health, people missing work … is huge, costing millions of dollars."
Washington State Trooper Lance Ramsay said during his eight years of work in Seattle he found impatient drivers cause the most accidents.
"Down in Seattle everyone follows too close," Ramsay said, "but you’ll find that anywhere; you’ll see that in Bellingham, you’ll see that in Marysville."
Ramsay also said road construction is a main cause for road rage and driver impatience. He said congestion resulting from construction provokes drivers to drive in irresponsible ways, such as on the shoulder of the highway.
"Drivers just have to realize, ‘I’m going to sit in it’ or take another route," Ramsay said.
Bellingham Police Traffic Officer Lewis Leake said training is a huge factor in preparing for accident responses. Leake said training and experience has helped him control his emotions when responding to an accident.
"After 25 years of knowing what’s involved, I go out there knowing what I’ve got to do," Leake said.
He also said he constantly preps himself mentally when he responds to an accident.
"When conducting an investigation you have to focus on collecting
evidence and analyzing the collision," Leake said.
"You have to keep your emotions at bay."
While the causes and effects of car accidents on humans are easy to pinpoint, the environmental effects that follow are harder to find.
Wayne Elson, an environmental protection specialist for the Environmental Protection Agency, said air pollution from accidents is difficult to trace.
"Air pollution agents put together air pollution control plans for an urban area, I doubt car fires or things like that are even considered," Elson said. "A vehicle accident may or may not show up."
Elson said he thinks that although the environmental impacts of an accident might be hard to trace, eventually they will create problems.
Generally, the federal government doesn’t have authority to clean
up truck oil spills. In Washington state, however, statutes allow the
federal government to respond to any spills affecting groundwater, said
Chris Field, an Environmental
Protection Agency emergency response programmer for Washington, Idaho,
Oregon and Alaska.
Field said when spills do happen the responsible party pays for the clean up. His team is called in when people responsible for an accident are slow to clean up a spill.
"The state likes us there to be ‘the gorilla in the closet,’" Field said. "The responsible party is more likely to act with the threat of federal on-scene coordinators to take over."
Along with cleaning up spills on the highway, officials must clear the cars involved off the roadway.
Pierce said in 2002 the Washington state government spent $1 million to buy more highway incident response trucks to speed accident response on the freeways.
Pierce said the WSDOT and state patrol try to remove disabled vehicles off the road as quickly as possible.
"If it’s an expensive or a cheap car, we’ll just shove it off to the side of the road," Pierce said. "Mobility and keeping the people moving, that’s the important thing."
After an accident, many cars are left twisted heaps of metal. Teams clear the cars from accident scenes and take the cars to junkyards to be stripped and recycled.
Don Johnson, manager of Gundie’s Auto and Truck Wrecking in Bellingham, said Gundie’s has 2,500 cars in its yard. He said the cars usually stay no more than one year on the lot while they are stripped of all reusable and recyclable parts, which Gundie’s sells to insurance companies and auto body shops.
"For instance, if the car has rear damage, we sell the front clip, the tires and any other undamaged parts," Johnson said.
After the car is stripped of all reusable parts, the body is crushed and shipped to Tacoma.
"We have a crusher and we send (the crushed cars) to General Metals in Tacoma and they shred it and the metal is recycled and sold," Johnson said.
Despite the damage and trauma they cause, accidents might have one positive result.
"I hate driving through that specific spot; I always get in the right lane," Swinburnson said. "It’s amazing how little you have to do on the road to get in a real bad accident; I didn’t realize that."
Swinburnson said he views his driving abilities and cars differently after his accident.
"I respect it (a car) a lot more," Swinburnson said. "I don’t worry about being a couple minutes late somewhere."
