How are you prepared for accidents ?

[Cd]

My sister was coming home from a late night out on her birthday.
Around 3:45 A.M coming around a corner, she arrived seconds after a collision between a pickup truck and two cars.

The truck ran through an intersection and slammed into two cars side by side.
The young woman was drunk ( wow ...what a surprise ! and was doing 80+ MPH )

She hit with such force that she killed the girl driving, by going through the car.

( The drunk got a broken wrist. )

When my sister ran to the car, the girl was dead and upside down hanging out of the car. My sister has been trained as a vet tech. and did her best to move the dead girl, not knowing yet if the girl was alive. She then moved the passengers ( one of which became hostile and refused to sit down - later to die from blood loss )

As fate would have it, she was riding with an Iraq war vet that had been trained in situations like this, as well as another vet.

She remained calm and did a great job in this situation, where ordinary people would have passed out or thrown up, though she was quite shaken by it all.

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Ok, so now the question : How have all of you prepared yourself for situations like this, and what kind of advice would you give for preparing oneself for something like this ?

Take a CPR class, carry blankets in the car , first aid kit ...I have a first aid kit that i carry in the car, but it just consists of band-aids and such.

A lot of you guys put a lot of miles on your cars and surely you have come across situations like this.
Just wondering what advice you can give.

Stay safe everyone . Life is precious.

[euromodder]

We get CPR training at work - and the "best CPR practices" seem to change about every other year.
Pretty confusing. I've never had the same instructions twice ...

Our (mandatory !) first aid kit in a car is pretty useless for severe accidents.
The most useful is the tourniquet ... which I hear you're no longer supposed to use (pressing down on wounds instead).


If you're not trained in emergency medical aid, don't try to provide it as you can't.
Call professional help ASAP and signal / secure the crash site as best as you can.

Moving driver and passengers will likely increase their injuries, so unless a car is on fire or sinking, or they face any other immediate certainty of dying, leave them where they are.

[JasonG]

From my work I also received "Plant first responder" training.
Unfortunately I have had to use some of it.

If you keep nothing else, a small bag with rubber gloves, a anti-rebreather mask and a few large maxi-pads are the best trauma kit you can fit in a glove box.

EM, are you still getting your head wrapped around the "no breaths" CPR ? My instincts from the past make me want to breathe.

[FXSTi]

Jason,

I too want to breathe, it was drilled into me in so many CPR classes over the years.

Unless they are in immediate danger, never move an accident victim, leave that to the pros.

[Cd]

So at what point should you intervene ? In my sisters case, she tried to get one of the persons out of the wreck to find if others were trapped and bleeding. She was panicked and terrified that there had been someone else in the car, so she tried to convince the hostile individual to sit in the curb.
This person had a punctured lung and apparently later died ( there are now two crosses at the accident scene. )
I can just imagine someone trying to sue her now.
With everyone in the US so sue happy, Its no wonder so many accidents get passed by, versus people stopping to render aid.

[JasonG]

With her training and her companions, you sis acted correctly.
The key is knowing your level of ability and staying within it.

Side note/
Why do the drunks always walk away.
Wifes best friend left 3 kids and hubby (kids were asleep in back seat), drunk had a broken nose and doesn't remember a thing.

[Fat Charlie]

Step 1. Immediately call it in, giving accurate information calmly. The sooner a real crew gets there with real equipment, the better.
Step 2. Deal with the fire, car hanging over the cliff, whatever.
Step 3. Deal with blood loss and treat for shock.

Remember that there's nothing wrong with throwing up, and don't feel bad about not having a fully stocked ambulance (or even anything at all useful) in your trunk.

[larrybuck]

The first aid tips seem to update almost as often as fuel price changes.

Unless you KNOW you are qualified, the 911 cell phone is still the safest bet.

It would be so easy to be sued by moving someone in a case where they shouldn't be.

Cars rarely blow up like in the movies.

If you are in the tullies, and the response time is going to be 20/30minutes, some things might change.

Trying to stop bleeding, and blankets for shock might be a good stopping place!

Several years ago when I did a 7PM to 5AM courier job running a 200 mile plus route

to small towns, and all the rural inbetween; I would see every once in a while; a wrecked vehicle off in between trees, or in a ditch, out in the tullies. My heart was always in my mouth when I stopped to see if people were still in them, but thankfully
for my emotional state, all were older ones, already attended to, and everybody long gone.


A fresh one I will never forget happened years ago.

I was living in some apartments at the time next to a 45 mph road.

At about 9:30 at night, I heard a V8 car getting it on...sounding like going 80mph by.

Then I heard a VERY long intense brake/tire lockup that seemed to last forever; then intense crash sounds.

I ran by the side of the road about a 1/2 mile to see what was going on.

The car had hit bushes, and a hedge, and had rolled, pretty well crumpled up to the point I couldn't even tell what kind of car it was. It was stopped right in the middle of someones front yard.

I arrived just as the people who lived there were coming out the front door to look.

There was not anybody in the car!!! Then I got spooked!!!

During my run down there, at about the 3/4ths mark, a person was walking on the other side of that road going the direction I was running FROM!!!

When I saw that person I remarked at how loud the wreck had been. That person
just said yeah; it was loud, and kept on walking away.

HE got OUT fast! A couple of tires on the upside down car were still turning when I
got there!

Must have been a stolen car joyride!!!

Etched in the memory forever!!!