There's a car accident in front of my house right now!

[Interrobang]

I just heard "crunchbang!" and when I looked outside, there were two cars on the lawn of the house kitty-corner across the intersection from mine. Interestingly, both were facing the road. (How *do* these accidents happen?) It must be a pretty bad one, because there's a tow truck, two police cars, two fire vehicles, and an ambulance attending. It looked like a fender-bender from here (across the road, one house down, and two storeys up), but if it weren't serious, all the rescue vehicles except for one of the police cars would have decamped by now.

I hope everyone involved is all right...

This is the second car accident I've almost seen happen right out my front window as I sit here on the computer. I guess that's what I get for living on a busy street, although I've lived on this street before and never saw an accident there. The cross-street is one-way, would that have anything to do with it?

[kayleybeth]

1. yikes

Hope everyone is all right.

[Interrobang]

3. Most of the flashing lights are gone now...

But there's still two police cars there, and two cops out talking to what appears to be the tow truck operator, but it's on this side of the street, so I can't see very well (my porch roof is in the way). I guess it's almost mopped up, although one of the cars is still on the lawn, just like it was.

[NJCher]

2. a weird one I saw

Six people sitting in a station wagon on the inside of a fence of a school. The front of the wagon was up against a tree and the rear up against the fence.

OK, so how did they get inside the fence? They didn't drive, as there was a huge expanse of lawn which obviously had not been crossed. Furthermore, from that angle, it would have been difficult to get in between the tree and the fence.

And how did their station wagon hood end up with its nose to the tree without banging into it?

I later read about it in the newspaper and it was apparently a freak accident. I figured I must have been the first person to have seen them. People in this town were talking about that one for weeks.


Cher

[Cleita]

4. Maybe you need to start bugging the city for stop lights

if the street is that busy. I lived on a corner like that once and there were only stop signs across a very busy main street. There were accidents almost weekly. One of the neighbors went door to door with a petition to give to the city for stop lights after a child was killed in one of the accidents. They finally caved in, giving us the stop lights, after much badgering and complaining. The frequency of the accidents immediately went way down after they were installed.

[Interrobang]

6. No need. There already are traffic lights.

There are traffic lights at that intersection already, and at the next intersections both north and south (it's a N-S street). The one-way street runs E-W. I can't for the life of me figure out why this intersection in particular is tricky. Probably it was someone (as usual) running a red light. The problem seems epidemic in London.

[LastTime2BeFree]

5. I bet you didn't know this fact...

Some bored kids have been known to dump gallons of used motor oil on intersections and then hide and wait with videos to film the mayhem.

The only reason this has not been on the news is because it's so easy to do and the "powers that be" won't let the cat out of the bag.

[Interrobang]

7. Well, I doubt it.

First of all, the street's clean. Secondly, if some young thugs were going to do such a thing (no reported cases of such a thing here in Canada, BTW, and the media situation's...different...to say the least), I think they'd probably have more sense than to do it in an intersection that's *a block away from City Police Headquarters*!!

[TreasonousBastard]

8. Had one last night, too...

about 4 AM.

"Screeeeeeech!" "BANG!"

My corner gets a couple a year. There's a stop sign people just blow by on a regular basis. Most of the time, they make it.

Might as well start an SUV rant here. One problem is that there are often trucks, SUVs, and other large creatures of the highway parked on the corners. Sightlines are pretty bad at this corner anyway, and having large steel objects in the way makes it worse.

[kayleybeth]

9. We see

a couple of accidents a year on our corner, too. Very quiet residential area (not a busy throughway), but we live in the bend of a fairly tricky curve. Had a couple of cars almost end up in our front yard (the ditch stopped them). Luckily no one has been seriously hurt as yet.

[0rganism]

10. When my wife and I were house shopping...

we checked this place out on a busy street. (It was near Powell on SE 39th st., for those of us familiar with Portland) It was pretty big, almost classy, had a homemade alarm system, nice thick walls and door, and a big workshop in the backyard, all well-within our price range.

So we were looking out the window at the 4-lane 39th st., wondering if the traffic would annoy us, and if the street would be generally unsafe, when we hear this WHAM as a car runs up on the curb, nails a stop sign, and goes flying ass-over-elbows past the window. We took that as a portent of things to come, and went elsewhere.

[Interrobang]

11. Holy cow!

There's a giant flatbed-truck style tow truck out there right now (4:25 AM), and they're winching that car off the barristers' lawn. I guess they couldn't get it with the ordinary style tow truck. The thing is blocking almost the whole intersection, at the diagonal like that.