the bright moon is our heart

i arose on the late side this morning (and to the swell news of the us-england match), and about 15 minutes into my morning browsing i heard screeching tires. i looked to my right and saw the moment of impact on a two-car collision. i don’t really know how it happened, the angles didn’t really make any sort of reasonable sense. they were not at an intersection, yet they managed to become perpendicular to the direction of traffic. in any event.

the passenger side door of one car and the driver side door of the other were wedged together to the point that i was worried someone might be trapped. i watched to see the expressions of the people in the cars. no one was screaming, but a child was crying out of fear. the child had been in the backseat on the side that was not struck.i didn’t watch it to see something gruesome, i watched it for two reasons. 

1. i was concerned someone was hurt, so i wanted to check the outcome.
2. i’ve never seen a collision from the beginning in korea, so i wanted to see how it would transpire.

within 2 minutes there were 5 different tow trucks on the scene. i’m guessing they all have scanners of some kind. all the truck drivers sat in their trucks, waiting to become useful. (here i must reiterate that there were 2 cars and FIVE tow trucks.) no one was shouting, but everyone seemed pretty ticked off to be involved in a collision, especially one with so much body damage to both cars (silver. i noticed today that 95% of cars in korea are white black or silver. i haven’t seen a single bright red car anywhere.) 

the next people to arrive were the police, in two cars, 15 minutes later. they didn’t seem to be doing much. meanwhile, i kept wondering who was going to clean up all the debris in the other lanes that would probably mess someone’s tires up if they hit it just right. 5 minutes after that, 2 ambulances and a fire truck appeared. they pulled all sorts of strange u-turns. about 5 minutes later, they realized they weren’t needed so they left, lights still going. still 5 tow trucks.

i expected one of the two trucks to start towing pretty early on so that the cars weren’t wedged together anymore but towing didn’t start until 35 minutes into the situation. and even then, it was the CAR that moved, not the truck. why didn’t the cars drive out of the way to traffic if the car was still running? i was miffed at this but then i figured they wanted to leave all of the evidence in place to plead their cases to the police.

this is when i stopped paying attention as both of my points of interest had been mostly addressed. in total it took an hour for the whole thing to end. three tow trucks were used because one of them didn’t have the right equipment to tow or something? so another one stepped in. good thing he had parked at the scene. 

no one was hurt, and the debris was eventually broomed up by the third tow truck driver who, while waiting for cars to pass, was having a pretty jovial conversation with one of the drivers. 

so in summary.

• these little cars do fall apart when they collide.
• tow trucks are as little as the cars and none of them had platforms. 
• the fastest responders were the tow trucks and the slowest were the ambulances.

i tend to praise japan and korea for their efficiency, but i think when the roads are slick they are as good as richmond on a snowy day. (i.e. no good at all)