Reflection: Thinking About Car Crashes

After graduating from college in 1991 I worked as a newspaper reporter in Southern California. Often the newspaper's sole reporter I covered a variety of beats. Looking back on the work, though, the stories I remember the best are the ones I covered as a police reporter. On that beat you see the best and worst of people - well, more often the latter - and are left with memories, some good and some bad. You can figure out which type this is.

It was a soccer ball. Lying about 10 feet away was one sole soccer cleat.

Officer Cryer came up behind me and explained, "It was a soccer team. They were on their way to a game." They were from Redlands, a town we didn't cover. By the time I got there they had removed the body, thank God. I heard crying behind me and I was dreading what I had to do next - talk to witnesses, which in this case were passenger in the van.

It was a simple story really: another car accident on a highway where there was at least one fatal a week.

It had become a scary pattern - I drive from Riverside to Hemet on Saturday and when I see the road blocked, I ignored the blocks and drive to the inevitable accident. Sometimes it was a fatal crash, sometimes not. We always wrote a story.

This time it bothered me because I had been thinking about my days on the youth soccer team as I was driving in. I shocked myself later when I realized I hadn't lost my appetite so much that I missed lunch.

I was becoming desensitized and I didn't like that one bit.

Later in the day there was another accident. I went to check it out. It was only a few hundred yards from the other one. It didn't look too bad at first. A motorcyclist lost control but while he looked shook up there wasn't much blood. I was starting to wonder if the editor would even want a story on this one.

"Looks pretty bad, don't it," the police chief said. I don't know,. I started to say.

"You don't see it, do you," he said. He walked me closer and pointed.

The bottom of the man's leg.

It was sticking out of his pants. The leg was at a 45 degree angle or so from the rest of the leg. I gagged and turned gray.

The chief laughed.

There goes my appetite.

Not too desensitized, after all, I guess. Thank God for that.

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