Car Accident LeMarchant Rd St. John's, NL July 1995

LeMarchant Rd St. John's, NL July 1995

 

I have safety incident that happened to me when I was 15 years old.  It occurred when I was delivering newspapers The Telegram.  It was a bright sunny day in July about 10 AM on a Saturday.  I had been doing this job every day for 5 years.  My pattern was to complete delivery on one side of the street and then the other.  On Saturday my routine was to also collect money from all my subscribers.  People are not always at home at Saturday morning so I don't always catch them every week.  There was one particular house that owned me for 3 weeks.  He had returned home after being out for breakfast with his wife.  He spotted me on the other side of the street and yellowed out to me.  You can come over and collect your money.  I walked across the street to collect the money.  I looked both ways to make sure there were no cars coming. I however was not crossing at cross walk.  The nearest cross walk was pretty far away. I was yielding to on coming tracking.  However I did have time to react to a car leaving a gas station.  He was not looking at the road while he was turning.  He was an old driver and says that he was looking at a house on the corner when he was turning.  This accident could have been prevented if driver was paying more attention to the road. He drove out of the parking lot and hit me straight away.  As I lay on the ground he did not know what had happened.  He was driving away but stopped because he could hear me crying out in pain.     

 

While I was lying on the ground there was a nurse that happened to be in the area that came to help me.  She asked me if I was thirsty and I said yes.  I chugged down a cola she gave me.  I was brought to the hospital with an ambulance.  I found out that I received a broken leg.  This required surgery but they could not proceed with this right away.  This was because you have to wait after eating if you are going to get surgery or anesthetic. I spent the summer in a full leg cast and hand to go through rehabilitation.  The driver was old and decided to quit driving a short time later.  He felt bad for what had happened.

 

 

 

There were various things that could have been done to prevent this accident. First the driver needed to pay more attention to the roadway and not being distracted by other things.  When I was crossing the street could have used a safer area such as a cross walk.  You should not give an injured person food or drink if you don't know the full extent of their injury.