High Speed Impact of Race Car Into Tree: As We Watched It Happen

Working on an ambulance for the past 15 years, I have seen the results of many accidents and incidents, a few bad ones, but never observed them as they occurred.  That is until yesterday.

A car traveling like a race car through the neighborhood in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.  Kids (my kids, nieces and nephews) playing on the sidewalk near the street, cars parked in the street out front with relatives getting into them, and along comes the race car, again!  The second time since I arrived, potentially the fourth time in total total.  Each time you could hear it coming.

With the sound much like the Indy 500, the driver races at top speed past the house, skids and slides in the street two houses down, and proceeds to spin around in the street, smoking the tires with his engine blarring.  Off like a bullet, the driver skids again, spins 180 degrees, and continues.  Spinning once again, he continues to race the engine, spin the tires, pour off smoke and screams away.  All with the kids standing less than fifty to a hundred feet away, to as close as the width of the street away as he approaches the house.

As the race car attempts to speed away, crossing past the kids, the relatives getting into their car parked in front, and all the neighbors watching what he was doing, the tires grab and instantly the car lurches out of control and into a large tree, causing instant destruction of the car.  Right across the street (twenty or so feet) from my kids in the front yard and the parked cars in front of the house.

Expecting the driver to be impacted, we were all amazed when the driver crawled out of what was left of his Camaro race car, head bleeding, and ran through the backyard where he proceeded to run through the woods along the highway.  State and local police, along with their tracking dog… never caught him.

To see it live, up close and personal was surreal.