Point of View #2
Yesterday I described the wreck as I remembered it. Nat had a much better vantage point. She reminded me that we were on the east side of Highway 6 in the westbound far left lane. I said people were eastbound by mistake. Nat also has a better order of events. I wish she would contribute it to either her blog or this one. I'm not sure why, but it feels important to get things straight. I only remember a crunch and seeing the wheels of the belly-up Dodge go by through someone else's window.
Isn't that always the case? Cops say it happens every time. Every person on the scene has a slightly different story describing the same event. I remember psychology class where we read studies of people in a classroom all surprised by a person walking in and steeling something off the professor's desk. The descriptions given of what happened very from person to person. Then they find out it was all an experiment. The would be robber walks in and a video is produced. Every one in the class goes over what they say happened and what really happened. Many people are surprised how wrong they were. Sometimes people still don't believe the video.
This makes me want to put a pod on top of the car with a bunch of video cameras aimed in all directions and a recording device somewhere. I have a buddy who does surveillance camera work. I bet he could rig something up that would black-box the data in some stout way that would survive a crash. Store things like speed and possibly GPS kind of data as well. That might be a whole new market. I imagine armored car companies to law enforcement would be interested in that kind of thing.
Today at work, every ten minutes, a vehicle slammed on it's breaks in the busy intersection five floors down. It makes me wonder how many near misses there are right outside my window. I've seen the aftermath of a couple from my perch. When will we have autonomous cars?