Dangerous roads revisted

By Kelly Sargent

A year ago Rob wrote a post containing a list of the ten most dangerous accident sites in Iowa, and alerted readers that three of the worst are in Ankeny — which happens to be the town where Rob, Erin and Paul and I live, and moreover, they all intersect with Ankeny Boulevard, and that happens to be my street. And a dangerous street it is!

As material proof, on August 25 there was a horrific accident on that very road right in front of our house.

The crash was literally earth-shaking; our house shook. Paul ran out the front door to discover such widespread destruction that it looked as if either a tornado had come through or a bomb had detonated.

A pickup truck, which according to witnesses was traveling at an extremely high rate of speed, hit a wooden utility pole with enough force that it sheared off the bottom of the pole, leaving the top dangling above attached to the wires. 

The truck carried so much momentum that after removing the lower half of the first utility pole, it continued across McDonald’s parking lot, hitting a parked car on the way, transporting itself and the parked car across the lawn dividing McDonald’s from Taco John’s where the truck crashed into and took down a second utility pole, ran up a guy wire and was suspended in midair. Can you imagine the force it took to do that?

The entire road was yellow-taped and closed from the time it happened at about 8:30 PM until early morning, chockablock with police, EMTs, fire trucks, ambulances, utility vehicles, and more than a hundred on-lookers.

The two people in the truck were killed instantly. Amazing, luckily, the two in the parked car didn’t suffer life-threatening injuries, but as I’m always reminding you, you aren’t really capable of evaluating your own condition in the aftermath of an accident. (Follow this link to a list of precautions.) 

The pickup had been racing with a motorcycle according to the witnesses, and had been going at least 70 in this 35-mile-an-hour zone. 

We all assumed it only teenagers would be so out of control as to literally race down a busy street at 70 miles and hour, but no, they were two adult men, age 41 and 50.

Be careful out there! Wear your seat belts, obey speed limits, keep clear of crazy drivers and use this accident check list if something happens.

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