Black Ice and a Roll of the Dice

“Did you see that”. “No, what!” Alison just witnessed a car in the eastbound lane wiping out into the middle of the Okanagan Connector in southern interior British Columbia. I looked over my shoulder and saw a dark shape that filled her description. Golf travel was very far away in my mind at this juncture. “You better call 911”.

I dialled Emergency and desperately tried to give the dispatcher a sense of direction for their ambulance to reach this accident as we were on a snowy mountain pass and signs were not abundant. My words were jumbled as I tried to reach deep into my retrieval cues to remember the last green sign I had seen leading up to this accident. She asked me specific questions that I only vaguely answered. Time seemed to accelerate and slow down simultaneously in a fuzzy world. We both remembered something about being 65 kms from Merritt as we travelled west. Yes, we were close to this (I think) as we drew closer to another sign ahead.

While speaking with the operator, I saw another car totally upended on the side of a hill in the east bound lane. A man was dressed brightly in the appropriate yellow clothing to let others know that a person was there in need of help and probably extremely cold. You see, this was Christmas Eve day and we were on our way to visit family in North Vancouver and then over to Vancouver Island. Santa Claus was offering different types of presents on this fretful day. A stressful and lousy situation was going to get even worse.

And just as I had hung up the phone, feeling like I provided aid to those in desperate need, another unusual sight flashed about a 100 yards ahead of us—a vehicle heading in the opposite direction careened through the highway median. At first I thought it was a truck and thought Holy Crap! Snow scattered high in the air as I peered at the sight and the vehicle did a complete rollover and ended up on its side on the right hand lane on our side. Not good at all.

This surreal sight had us slowing down to help but with a large tractor trailer behind us we braced for things that move extremely quickly in time of fate. Fortunately the tractor trailer saw everything too and pulled over. Amazingly, the mother, father and baby boy miraculously survived unscathed. The truck driver climbed the sideways vehicle and wrenched the door open. Vehicles passed by us while a police officer stopped on the other side to check the situation. She mentioned that she had to go to the other people I had called in just a few minutes ago. An ambulance soon appeared and asked if the family were alright and whether they had hit their heads. Incredibly, the parents and child had no head injuries and felt fine outside of shot nerves.

The woman came into our car with hands shaking after Alison corralled the baby for warmth in our car right after the accident. The father was rattled but all reflected that they were now safe and were very thankful. Then with another Murphy’s Law twist, a further accident occurred just across the way and that car wiped out into a hill and sat upside down. It was surreal. We wondered if that had been there before. It had not. Another victim of the black ice warily opened their door and escaped. Wow, four accidents in a matter of minutes. British Columbia’s new tourism campaign Wild Within certainly applied in this stretch of the province.

For all those who have driven this stretch from Kelowna to Vancouver during wintertime it is often a roll of the dice. Weather can change quickly and driving conditions can become tricky at best. In speaking with the shakey mother, she said up until then that conditions were good on the roads. We still had over 3 and a half hours to contemplate our own fate. Would we have Lady Luck on our side?

We arrived safely and in one piece outside of stress and in need of a sizeable drink. I must say that the wine we drank on Christmas Eve tasted even better. That fortunate family gained an incredible mulligan.