Yesterday Christine and I had a very nice dinner with friend Frank and his new girlfriend before Frank heads off for 12 weeks skiing as a snowboard instructure in Saalbach.
We headed home about 10pm and while we were driving along the autobahn, coming up to our turnoff at Eugendorf, a young man in a golf cabrio came driving past, looking a little on the drunk side (i.e was all over the road). In any case he was taking the same exit as us and could not have been more than 10 seconds ahead of us, and as we took the exit we drove past his car facing the wrong way up to exit.
I immediately realised that there had been an accident, switched on the hazard lights and reversed up the exit to warm coming drivers. While Christine phoned the police, I jumped put and put up our warning tri-angle at the enterance to the actual exit and ran to the car to see if I could do anything to help - the boy scout in me coming through! However, there was no driver in the car. Another young guy who was next on the scene shouted out that he had found the driver, completely thrown out of the car, lying in half a meter snow about 5 meters away.
I was able to ascertain that he was still alive (thank the lord for small miracles) and tried to make him as comfortable as possible until the rescue crew got there. Luckily we had our dog blanket in the car and so I was at least able to keep the falling snow off him. It was fairly apparent, that although he appeared to have suffered no major injury, he was way under the weather and had obviously had one too many (more than likely many to many) Christmas drinks.
Thankfully a off-duty doctor just happened to be passing by and took over caring for the patient, which was off course a very great relief. I could hear the sirens going off at this stage and shortly after the rescue crew arrived - I was really impressed with the speed. It could really not have been more than 10 minutes since Christine had phoned them, and they were there in full force. The police, the ambulance and the firemen. They were able to remove the injured man and get him into the ambulance in no time at all.
At which stage he mentioned that he was not alone and that he wasn't driving. The police and firemen started a big search up and down the exit. However, as we were there really not more than 10 seconds after the accident, I knew there was nobody else - we would have seen him (if he had tried to run away) or found him if he had been lying in the snow. My only suggestion was that he might be under the car, which led to a frenzy of digging and searching but turned up nothing.
Being as though we were not allowed to leave the accident scene I had a closer look at the car. It was a miracle that the poor driver survived the accident and the acceleration out of the car (the soft roof was ripped off) - had there been passenger, judging from the angle and speed at which he had hit the tree, the passenger would not have survided. Additionally the driver had obviously not been wearing his seatbelt and it's a miracle he survived.
After making our statement, the rescue teams thanked us for our quick thinking and notifing them so quickly, and said we could head home. We drove home contemplating had we been 5 minutes earlier, or had we left Frank's 10 minutes later, we would not have been (at the wrong place) here (the right time) when the accident happened.
I'm just glad we were able to help and that the driver was OK.....As a soon-to-be-father, husband, brother, son it is times like this make me realise how fast it can all go by - to all family and friends, have a great festive season but please DRIVE SAFELY. Look after yourself and God bless you!
Next time I hope to be in the wrong place at the right time again!
Well, yesterday Aisha and I went running with a friend in the forest above our house. It has been snowing here constantly since 2 days, which has added nicely to the snow we already have. This is the first time since I have been living here in Austria that we have had a snow covering since the middle of November - and what a covering, it's up to 2m deep in some areas of Salzburg.
Anyway, just wanted to share with you some of the pictures of a wonderful winter landscape and the incredible fun we have by running at the moment. I often wish some of my old training buddies like Dion, Louis, Richard, Karin and others were here to experience it. A 75 minutes deep snow run is like running 2 hours on the beach :)
