deathAnyone Survived That".
At about the same moment I saw brake lights in front of me as we approached an overpass on Northbound I-81 near Roanoke, VA. (mm 170.1) It was snowing, the road wet, but above freezing as I saw that I was about the 12th vehicle and 3rd truck to pull to a stop. Plow drivers from the southbound lane vaulted the guardrail and ran towards a truck that looked as if it had hit the right guardrail and jackknifed. Others stayed in the cars while I donned a jacket, gloves, and grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran towards the wreckage. 
(after the excitement - a fireman, finished putting down absorbant back by the guardrail, goes to check the truck as traffic begins to move past)
The roadway under my feet was slick like ice, but it glistened with deisel fuel - did he fall asleep and go off the road, or did he have a leak in the fuel pump and lose traction on his own fuel spill?
My re-creation :
From the looks of it as I approached, he hit the guard rail 40 feet before the overpass and his right tire went up over the rail. At 65mph those steel i-beams that guard rails are mounted on can do enormous damage. They clearly, as he slid over them one by one, ripped out the right front fender, bumper, suspension, the wheel, and some engine parts. Then, his tractor pointed up slightly as it rode the rail at 60mph, hit the concrete pillar supporting the bridge. The direct impact was with the underside of his rig, totally demolishing the frame and twisting it completely upward and breaking the tie rod. It acted as a left uppercut, and the tractor flipped upward and hard to the left as is rebounded off the cement pillar at 50mph putting him into a left jack-knife. This, however, exposed the full front of the trailer to the same cement post. At that speed, the first post crumpled the right front corner of the trailer pinching the metal and concrete causing the aluminum trailer to rip in half like torn tin foil, from the left lower side, up the left side to the front top, across the top and down the right side, peeling it open like a can. It bounced off the first pillar and struck the second which stopped it dead in its spot. The tractor, still attached to the trailer by a king-pin connection, then reeled up in the air and to the right, like a dog who gets his leash pulled back harshly. The people in the white car probably soiled themselves thinking they were about to have a truck land on top of them when at the last minute it reared up in the air and pirouetted 180 degrees in the other direction. It broke loose of the trailer and spun around, it's twisted frame causing it to lean at a 45 degree angle to the left (remember, the impact on the front right twisted the frame upward on that corner). And the final flurry before the silence, was the thousands of boxes of tee shirts flying out of the torn trailer, still doing 60 mph even thought everything else had stopped. The boxes pounded the rig and the little white car creating a snowdrift effect that blocked the entire roadway.
A passerby was climbing up the passenger side of the twisted rig trying without luck to open the door, deisel fuel was everywhere and stench was enough to make me cough. I waded through the debris and around the back of the rig. I saw a group standing by the driver's door not doing anything and I thought the worst as I approached them and asked about the driver - "is he inside?" 2 guys walked away and the others didn't know what to do. "Yeah, he's inside but he can't move".
Well that was encouraging! They didn't say he was dead! I stepped into the engine compartment and used my sleeve to wipe the fuel off the windshield and peer inside. The guy, mid-30s, was standing, trying to balance himself on the side of the drivers seat which was, of course, perpindicular to the ground. I couldn't tell if his lower legs were trapped under the seat or between the pedals or not and screamed at him though the windshield : "are you alright? can you move?". He was in total shock. Uncomprehending. Staring at me as if I were some space alien, his head cocked sideways with a curious look on his face.
No cuts, no bleeding. WTF? I yelled a few more times and got him to slowly lift one leg, then the other. He wasn't trapped! I stepped out of the engine compartment and over to the side and got on my knees to look at the drivers door and window. We could smash the glass and he could squirm out, but I have some recent experience with crawling around on broken glass, its not a good idea. The other two men were useless. I ran around to the far side and found a new guy standing next to the passenger door which someone had managed to yank open. He was holding the door up in the air and coaxing the driver to climb up from the drivers side to the passenger side. Had a great idea to cushion the guy with all these tee shirts. The trooper had arrived and did not do much more than shoe on-lookers away and look amazed at the wreckage and amazed at us when we told him the driver was alive, and apparently unhurt. I climbed up the side of the truck and stood in the doorway as the other man held it open and I gave the driver a hand in manuvering up to the passenger side which was pointed at the sky. I talked to him a second and gave him a brief pat down to see if there was any blood or sore spots. He was standing ok so I didn't suspect a compound fracture, but I eased my hands along his legs and arms anyway asking if he felt any pain or discomfort. He just kept saying "how did I get here?". I climbed down and we padded the door frame with shirts, and had him sit on the edge of the passenger seat. Then we extended his legs out the door and slowly pulled him towards us. We tried a fireman's carry but it was too awkward with that door trying to slam down on us and the driver was too out of it to do anything to help. I told him to put his phone away and help us out by pushing the door up. The other driver and I turned our backs to him and reached back to put a hand in each of his armpits, and told him to lean slowly until he was on our backs. He did so and we were able to take a step away from the truck and then stand and lower him to his feet again. We walked alongside him weaving through all the debris and I saw the trooper waving us to come to the car. I took the guy's arm around my neck and walked him to the cruiser and helped him into the seat. He had no idea what had happened and I made sure to tell the trooper that the roadway was slick with deisel BEFORE the impact point, and that either he or another truck may have a broken fuel pump that caused the slick that led to the wreck. The two snowplows had gone south, turned around and were coming up the shoulder followed by a fire truck. They eventually plowed the boxes out of the left lane and traffic moved on after the FD put down absorbant to suck up some of the deisel in the roadway.
THAT MAN, had a guardian angel today, and maybe, it's another example of all of us having a place to be at certain time, for a reason.
