A death (literally) too close to home

Last updated on: March 12, 2015 at 8:00 pm by Jane the Actuary

A death (literally) too close to home 2015-03-12T20:00:19-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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This, from the local news yesterday: “Arlington Heights woman dies from crash injuries.”

The story: mere blocks from my home, a 16-year-old, on his or her way to school, hit a 57 year old woman out walking her dog, and she subsequently died from her injuries. Terrible news.

Checks are being done on the speed and they’re pulling the phone records, to see if the teen was on the phone or texting at the time. In any case, this was the first school day after daylight savings time, so this may have been the first time the teen had driven to school in the dark, or at any rate the first time since October. Based on the time given, the kid wasn’t late for school, so would have had no objective reason to feel it necessary to speed.

The particular intersection? On the south side of the street the driver was on is a large park, where it’s quite popular for dog-walkers to circle around once or twice. Based on a check on her address, her house was to the south of the park, so it’s not obvious why she would have been crossing the street there. There isn’t a stop sign at that intersection, so it’s not as simple as “the kid blew the stop sign,” which makes it harder to imagine what combination of inattention on the driver and the pedestrian’s part (do you really step out onto the street if there’s a car coming?) caused this.

Yes, that last sentence makes it sound as if I’m blaming the victim. I really don’t mean it to be, but yet, in a way, bad as this sounds, part of me would like to hear that she had dashed out in to the street unexpectedly, or that some other mitigating factor meant that it wasn’t really the kid’s fault — even though it’s far more likely that it was, due to texting or just plan inexperience.

(Update: my husband suggested that she might have been not crossing but walking in the street due to puddles on the sidewalk, as we did on a walk around that park a couple days ago, since the melting snow had created quite a number of puddles on the sidewalk.)

Because (though I knew neither the woman nor the teen) that could have been my son. Or could be my son — a year and a half from now when he gets his license — on his way home from band practice.

And as devastating as this is for the victim’s family, it’s just as unfathomable for me to be in that teen’s shoes: to know that you killed someone, not intentionally, but still, it was you behind the wheel — and you can never, ever undo that.

We’re headed to my parents in a couple weeks. (Most recent backstory here.) It’s been nearly a year since the fall that started all the trouble, the rehab, the confusion, the brain surgery. And my mom’s updates are discouraging; mentally and physically, he still has significant ongoing problems — and he’s only 76. But the thing is: the fall was his own fault, and not just in a “you should have been more careful” sort of way (but no, I’m not going to share the particulars); this wasn’t just ordinary consequence-of-aging sort of fall.

And again — no one can undo this. And I think the fact that this was already on my mind when I read about this accident, means it hits me differently emotionally.

[update: for what it’s worth, my husband pointed me to a prior article with more details: she was indeed crossing the street, with headphones on, and she was in the middle of the street when she was hit.]

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