I was on I5 northbound in Portland, just before crossing the river, as your coming down the hill there’s a ton of water on the road, a couple cars are hydroplaning but holding steady. I’m in the right lane when I see traffic slowing down so I pop on my hazards and slow down to a near stop. As I reach the traffic I see a car on the shoulder with a group of 3 people standing around it, traffic is too heavy for me to get over and there’s no EMS on sight so I pull fully onto the shoulder and get out. The three people around the car say they witnessed the accident and stopped to check on the driver, who’s still in the driver’s seat and making some pain “whimpers”. Cars are still zipping by way too close so I go and grab my parking cones as there the most accessible. There not very reflective and sure enough I hear a loud pop and look over to see one of them get hit. I go and grab my reflective triangles, there much more visible and I put them out much further back at a much gentler angle. You ever walk out into traffic, standing in the middle of a lane waiving a reflective triangle over your head as cars hydroplane towards you at 60+ mph, if your an adrenaline junky without a fear of death, it’s kinda fun.
Now that I have the scene secured I shift my focus to the wounded driver. As I’m walking over the other three on the scene tells me they’ve called EMS and have to go catch a flight so they leave me alone with her. She’s whimpering and holding her head up with a pillow which tells me her neck is injured so I tell her to try not to move. She tells me she’s experiencing a lot of pain in her back so I ask if she can feel her legs to which she tells me she can. At this point with only a 3 hour first aid training course under my belt there’s nothing more I can do so I just sit and talk to her until EMS arrive. When they arrive I pass on the info she’s given me and they ask me if I could stay and leave my reflective triangles out. I go collect the cone that had been nocked a good 100 or 200 feet down the highway (luckily it ended up on the shoulder) and get in my truck to get out of the rain and stay out of EMS’s way. They load her up and someone tells me we’re good to go so a firefighter and I collect my reflective triangles and remaining parking cone, then a cop comes up and says he’ll block traffic so I can get rolling. I toot my horn, back up a couple feet so my trailer doesn’t hit the ambulance, and roll to the other side of Portland just in time to make my appointment.
In my nearly a year of OTR driving this is the second accident I’ve helped out with and first accident where someone was injured. As I mentioned I only took a short first aid/CPR/AID course as a prerequisite for my last job and it’s about to expire soon. Even then, it’s not really enough training to really be able to help, especially if she had had life threatening injuries. My little 3 hour class taught me the basics of performing CPR on an adult but not kids or babies. If her heart was stopped when strapped into a drivers seat I don’t know if I could perform CPR on someone sitting up or if I should risk permanent paralyzation and lay her down. Should I have risked the safety of my rig to make a physical barrier so we didn’t get hit by traffic? (I doubt dispatch would have been happy if I did) When I have more free time I’ll definitely look into taking a more in-depth first aid course and maybe talk to my dispatcher about getting some voluntary courses for our drivers.
Have any of you ended up in similar situations? What happened? Also, what’s your thoughts on company sponsored accident first aid training?
