Strap Them In

You always hear that you should buckle your children in car seats that are properly installed. There are public service announcements all the time about this.

This evening I saw a little girl, no more than two years old I think, who is lucky her mom strapped her in properly to a car seat installed securely in the family mini-van.

Near Chelsea on I-94 today at about 6:10, near the old US 12 exit, I was driving along east-bound wondering if I would make it to the Ann Arbor train station in time to pick up Mister, Lamb, and their mom coming back from a short vacation. I was listening to the radio and not paying too much attention.

Brake lights lit up in front of me, so I started to slow down, starting to wonder what was up. Before I could think too much about that, I could see a huge cloud of dust billow up on the left shoulder. About 100 yards in front of me or so, there was an accident. I drove through the spot of the accident and could see a mini-van on its roof facing east on the left shoulder. For just a moment I wondered about making it to the train station. But I quickly pulled off to the right shoulder, shut down my car, and ran back to the vehicle.

I thought I was fast but there were already people there. Several people were already around the driver, a woman who was conscious and talking. I could see a little blood. I hear somebody say that he was a fireman and a number of people were aware enough to say don't move her. I wasn't needed right there.

A man pulled out his cell phone and he asked me if I knew what exit we were near. After saying no, I looked around and saw the closest exit and yelled over to him that we were by the Old US 12 exit.

That's when I heard someone say that there was a child still in the back of the vehicle. So three of us started pulling on the various doors. I tried the back hatch and it wouldn't budge. One man went to the right and I went to the left. At the left another man was already there but he couldn't get the door open. I grabbed the handle and reached up to release the latch and it opened cleanly. I think maybe the fact that the car was upside down threw the first man off. So I dove in the door looking for the child, crawling toward the back. Then I saw her. She was just a little blonde girl, scared and crying but just dangling there safe in the car seat. The other man who made it inside the car was already getting his hands on her. So I told her, "don't worry sweetie, you're going to be ok. It's ok." I just grabbed the car seat to steady it and make sure that it didn't fall on top of her in case the other man had released the whole seat from the car instead of just the strap holding the little girl in.

The other man pulled her out and I looked around to see if there could possibly be somebody else back there. But she was the only one. When I crawled out somebody else asked me if anybody else was in there. I said, "no." But then I crawled back in to double check. The thought that I could have missed somebody and just said nobody is in there ate at me in the instant I said "no."

The man who pulled the little girl out handed her to a woman who had stopped and she was holding her. The little girl was crying for her mommy. I remembered seeing her sippy cup so went in the back again to get it, hoping a familiar sight would help. She still cried and pointed to the car a couple times. I crouched next to her and asked her for her name. The woman holding her told me. Funny, I can't remember it now. I think it began with an "A". One of those names that is close to a standard name but not quite. I think I told her that she had a pretty name. I told her she was going to be ok and that people were helping her mom right now. I said she was very brave and that more people were coming very fast to help her mom and to help her. That seemed to help. When the sirens could be heard, I told her that those sirens meant people were coming to help. The woman holding the little child picked up on this theme and kept talking to her.

I stood up and looked around. The first officer who had checked on the scene was directing traffic away from the accident. When the first emergency vehicle came up, I waved to them and ran over to tell the personnel getting out that there was one woman injured and her little daughter who appeared uninjured. One asked me if she had been in a child seat and I said, "Yeah, she was dangling upside down in it, but she seemed ok." I did the same when the next emergency vehicle approached and parked.

By then, not many minutes after the accident occurred, the emergency personnel were putting the driver on a stretcher to take her away and getting the little girl's car seat from the wreck and telling her she would go with her mommy.

I walked over to the officer from the Chelsea Police Department to see if he needed anything. That's when I found out the driver had been in the west-bound lane. I had heard one of the people who clustered around the driver tending to her say she said someone cut her off. Then I could see the ruts from the west-bound land leading to the accident site. One man told the officer that he'd been 200 yards behind the driver when he saw her go off the road. The rest of us just saw clouds of dust. Hopefully, before I wandered over, someone else gave a description of the vehicle that cut her off. The officer must have gotten some information since he took contact information from several of the people there. I didn't see anything of use but the inside of the vehicle and I told the emergency people that information. So when the officer said one guy was free to go, the rest of us wandered off too.

I ran back across the freeway in a gap in the traffic and pulled out while a semi slowed down traffic enough for me to pull into the lane. I then checked my various pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out. Everything was there. And it was then that I realized that I had never even taken off my sunglasses. At the time that struck me as odd. I didn't even notice they were on, actually. I don't think more than twenty or twenty-five minutes had elapsed though it seemed like just a moment, really. I emerged with dirty hands and knees and a small cut on my finger tip. Maybe from glass or maybe from tugging on door handles.

The whole scene impressed me. When that accident took place, at least a half dozen people immediately stopped and ran to the scene to help a stranger. When somebody said a child was in the back, three of us rushed over to the vehicle to get the child out. I didn't even stop to think about how old the child was, boy or girl, or whether they might be horribly injured. I momentarily thought that if the vehicle caught fire and that child couldn't get out?  Well it didn't bear thinking about.

The emergency people showed up fast and worked professionally and quickly. That I expect. What really impressed me was the group of civilians who just started doing things. Nobody was directing people. Nobody took charge. But people looked around to see what needed to be done and just started doing something. And this was good enough to work until the pros arrived.

In a very small way, I could see how firemen run into burning buildings. Or up the stairs of the World Trade Center . People just see that somebody needs help and react. Like I said, I'm not comparing what I and a number of strangers did to what happened on 9/11. I'm not. This was a traffic accident. There were no flames. Like I said, it was just a faint hint of the courage that leads people to risk their lives for strangers.

But it is a strength that I think makes us a special people. We didn't wait around for professionals to arrive. Nobody hesitated at all. And at the risk of sounding sexist, that's what men are supposed to do.

And I have to say I commend the mother for strapping her little girl into that seat securely and having the foresight to secure that car seat in the back. When that horrible moment of a car cutting her off happened, forcing her from the road, with her vehicle flipped on its roof as a result, that little girl was shaken and hanging upside down, but with her head safely away from the ceiling below her. And now that I think about it, I think the car was centered in the back so the rolling wouldn�t have battered the child against the side windows. I could be mistaken about that. Honestly, much is a blur and I might have gotten the order of some events a little off. Was the vehicle dark blue? I think so.

And to my niece who just had a beautiful little girl on the Army's birthday (yes, that's how I'll remember Very's birthday), you and Very's dad better make sure that little girl is strapped into a car seat properly installed every time you pull out of the driveway. All I saw today was a scared little girl hanging upside down in a wreck, but safe and sound. A much more gruesome scene could have been in that vehicle.

Strap your little ones in. You never can tell when some idiot will be driving near you.