La Muerte (Death)

I’m fairly certain I saw a dead body.  I’m also fairly certain I just witnessed an accident that resulted in death for the driver. 

The first occurred two weeks ago while we were driving home from the little mountain town where we celebrated the 200^th anniversary of “El Grito” (the yell… for Mexican independence).  On the side of a two-lane highway (one each way) with no shoulder was a man sprawled out on the ground.  A handful of local and state police had gathered and were looking down at him.  No one was attempting to revive him or wake him, nor did anyone seem to be in a hurry.  The rope connecting the man to his donkey was still affixed to his hand, and the donkey appeared to be just as concerned as the police officers.  The dominant theory (our theory… no, we did not stop and talk to the police) was that maybe he was grazed by a car while trying to lead his donkey along the edge of the highway and that the driver probably made the right decision by continuing along as if it never happened. 

Every morning I teach a class at a business on the outskirts of town.  It’s a 30 minute drive out and can be as much as an hour to get home in traffic.  Yes, I’m in the car more than in the classroom.  The highway has a 2 to 3 foot barrier down the center which, as I learned yesterday, can also act as a ramp.  I’m not sure if the driver lost control of his vehicle because of a distraction or for reasons unavoidable, but the sound of an oncoming cargo truck (not a semi, but a helluva lot bigger than a pickup) smacking against the center barrier got my attention -- hell, he must have been just 20 feet away from me – and then I watched a scene from Die Hard in my rearview mirror as the truck sailed into the air, traversing the barrier and doing a half turn, landing top-down in oncoming traffic and proceeding to flip and roll, seemingly in slow motion due to the size of the vehicle, sparks flying.  It did not come to rest until it had been virtually disassembled—wheels, axles, bumper, cargo bay, etc were all strewn across the highway. 

For everyone but the driver, luck intervened in two ways:

1)      Had it happened 1.5 seconds earlier I would have been underneath that rubble.

2)      That particular stretch of highway, in my direction (where the truck landed), is usually completely jammed; it takes me about 20 minutes to drive about 2 miles.  However, for whatever reason yesterday was a holiday for the public sector (and, as always, only the public sector).  The truck flipped and spun across 3 lanes of traffic and as far as I know it did not touch a single oncoming car.  On these days you realize exactly how many people feed their families with a government paycheck (I’m not sure how the proportion of government employees compares to that of the US, but the keyword is employees--there’s no doubt that the US government is infinitely more likely to pay its citizens to do absolutely nothing). 

You may ask “But what makes you so sure the driver was killed?”… it’s about a  10% chance that any given person is wearing a seatbelt down here, despite recent seatbelt laws.  The fact that he was driving a truck means that he was probably male and over 35, which, to my best estimate, reduces that probability to about 1%.