The following recount has content that some readers may find disturbing and upsetting.
Three years ago, my eldest daughter was still doing rhythmic gymnastics. Training finished at 8pm and we would have a 45 minute drive to fetch my other daughter from her artistic gymnastics training. On this particular day it was summer, so it was still full daylight as we left. There is one main, two lane road which leads off the peninsula. It's not a high speed road, with a 60kph limit; approximately 40mph.
As we are traveling along this road, the traffic in front of me gets slower and slower. I check the right hand lane to move over and overtake, but the traffic there has slowed too. There's no obvious reason why. No road works, no breakdowns that I can see and no accident that's causing people to change lanes. Both lanes are just moving slowly.
Puzzled, I scan the road ahead to try and figure out what's happening. Finally I see shattered glass across the road. It spans the entire width of the road, both lanes. Yet still I see no sign of a car wreck. The traffic continues to crawl, then to my right I see a leg...
The top of the thigh is angled towards me, showing bone surrounded by flesh. While part of my mind is trying to convince myself it's a prop that's fallen from a trailer, my eyes are feeding back the information that the flesh is sagging and it's real, not rubber.
I realise that if it is real, then there is more somewhere. Reluctantly my eyes scan back across the road to my left and over what looks like a pile of rags in the gutter. They keep scanning to the left as my brain says “please don't let that be what I think it is.” When I reach the sight of a car on its roof, through a fence in a garden, almost through the window of the building, it sinks in that the heap in the gutter really is what I think it is.
To return to the road my eyes have to pass by the gutter again and I'm closer now. I can't help but notice that he looks like a pile of rags because his clothes have been mostly torn from his body and are cast haphazardly over his crumpled form which is half exposed, face down. Tears well in my eyes at the indignity of his last moments and I start to shake. My 14 year old is in the passenger seat next to me and I want to protect her from this, while realising the futility of it. She has the same view as I do. I say the only useless thing that comes into my head and it's, “don't look.” Amazingly she complies, but it can't be unseen.
My eyes are fixed on the road ahead as we pass what I can't bear to continue to look at. The first flashing blue and red lights approach from the opposite direction. I don't envy them one bit for what they're about to have to deal with.
As we pick up speed and continue our journey, my daughter asks me why all those people were standing around looking down at him.