JANE partied till late on Sunday night.
In fact in was about 2am Monday when she eventually left her friend’s house and drove home. Her alarm clock woke her at 7am, reminding her that her boss had warned her that if she was late for work again she could look for another job.
Too many drinks the night before had left her feeling headachy and sluggish. She took a quick shower and dressed. She couldn’t face any breakfast, but took a couple of Panadol, washed down with a mouthful of vodka; ‘A hair of the dog,’ she thought.
Jane climbed into her car, wondering why the front wheels were in the flower bed. She reversed her car onto Gifford Road, and deciding to avoid the town in case she was picked up by the police, drove off at speed and turned in to Whittels Road.
Jane’s phone was buzzing, telling her she had a text message. She pulled her phone out of her bag and saw her friend had asked her what she thought of the party.
Mrs James was just leaving home in Whittels Road to take her daughter to work in Bridgetown. 18 year old Sarah was doing her nails, as she was driven along the road. Her mother shouted at her, “for goodness sake do your seatbelt up, Sarah.”
Sarah said, “I’m doing my nails, I’ll do it in a minute.”
Jane looked up from her phone, suddenly realizing she was travelling at about 70 kph on the wrong side of the road. Then she saw a car coming towards her around a sharp bend in the road. She dropped her phone and yanked the steering wheel hard to the left to try and avoid hitting the other car.
Mrs James, driving at about 60kph, turned a bend in the road to see a car hurtling towards her on the wrong side of the road. She automatically turned her car to the right to try and avoid a collision.
The cars collided with a combined impact of 130 kilometres an hour. Jane’s head hit the windscreen, causing a gash across her scalp, and her right leg snapped as she braced against the impact.
Mrs James’ head also hit the windscreen, rendering her unconscious for a couple of minutes. Sarah, not wearing a seat belt, was thrown so hard against the windscreen that her head shattered the glass, fracturing her skull, and the jagged glass severed the artery in her neck as she was thrown through the hole the impact had caused.
This was the scenario students from both Bridgetown and Boyup Brook High Schools were faced with when they were taken on the ‘Mystery Tour of Life’ recently.
In the hope that demonstrating the horrors of a traffic accident may help to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries on the road, the Bridgetown RoadWise team arranges an annual program, with assistance from the Police, the Fire and Rescue Brigade, St John Ambulance, actors from Bridgetown Theatre, the Bridgetown Hospital, as well as people who have been affected by extreme trauma and deaths on the roads.
The students are shown films of road crashes and spoken to by the police and people who have lost loved ones or are affected by severe injuries. They are then taken to a simulated accident where they see and hear the anguish of the people involved in an accident, which could have been avoided.
The students followed the ambulance to the hospital, where they saw and heard the results of the collision for Jane – and heard Jane shouting constantly as she realises what she has done, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
But as Mrs James said as she looked at the lifeless, broken body of her daughter, “Sorry is not enough.”