True story of a highway accident in Mpumalanga

A friend of mine was involved in a terrible car accident a few weeks ago. She managed to recall everything that happened and documented it all below… Quite a hectic story…

We left about a week and four days ago on our usual countrywide trip…which…as usual i wasnt looking forward to..anyhoo…we covered all the stores in Jozi and had to make our way up to Nelspruit to do the stores there..had about a week left to go before we got home…

My mom was driving, i was parking off in the back seat watching season 2 of prison break..thanks to the cool media player sean got me and thanks to sean organising season 2 of prison break…(bless his soul…) Oh, and for those of you who are wondering…ITS BRILLIANT..anyway, thats besides the point…

We were overtaking a truck and there was a massive pothole the other side of the road we were about to hit (yep, welcome to Mpumalanga roads..shocking) and which probably would’ve caused a blow out. My mom reacted by swerving off the road and hitting the dirt (very narrow road with no yellow lines), she corrected and carried on trying to overtake but the truck was putting its foot down and we almost hit the front, lost control of the car and at about 90-100kph flew off the road and off the embankment…

Lucky me, i remember every second in that car..cant even explain what it felt like..we hit the ground and the car flipped 3/4 times before landing on the roof..when the car had stopped i had to say i was shocked to be alive…it was so vicious. I knew my mom was ok coz she started screaming is everyone ok…then i heard my dad…sound like he was in serious pain…

I undid my seat belt and slid down, crawled out the window and walked around the car, my dad was trying to pull himself out, his face was covered in blood..i pulled him out and helped my mom around the car (she was getting out the time i got around to her side again)…

They were both pretty out of it, neither of them remember much of what happened. Couldnt find my bag or cell phone or anything…someone shouted down, “are you ok” (the truck driver never stopped btw). I told them to call an ambulance. Then i got hold of my dads phone and phoned my brother - it went to voice mail! He phoned back pronto and i told him what happened. Soon the police were there and the towing guys.

Well….for all of you whove heard about the terrible things that happen at accident scenes in SA, it didnt happen to us..maybe because we were near a small town (near Origstad and Lydenburg), the one guy Koos was amazing..

I was walking around in shock i guess, trying to find everything…found my mom and my bags and cellphones..Koos told me to sit down as i could be injured…he was really great.

I spoke to the investigating officer who was also so patient and kind, really great. The one thing i’ll never forget is a lady walking by, obviously lived somewhere in the bush as we were in the middle of nowhere, she called down to me asking if we would like some water, it was incredibly hot so i said yes.. then she disappeared for ages and as she’d disappeared she reappeared with this beautiful glass bowl full of ice and water and a another glass…I gave my folks some water until the ambulance arrived and said i mustnt in case they had to operate. Before i knew it the glass jug was gone and i swung around to look for the lady, saw her far away already and shouted to her…with all my heart i thanked her…she smiled and was gone..what an act of kindness..its something i’ll never forget.

So my folks were taken to the hospital (that ride was something else i tell you…1.5 hours to the medi-clinic in nelspruit, it was hot and they were both in pain)…

I only had a cut hand so i filled in all the hospital papers and they took my folks off to be xrayed..then eventually they looked at me and had me xrayed.

Believe it or not, no broken bones or anything, my dad just has a fractured sinus bone..but everything else is just superficial bruising etc…feel like we’ve been smacked around a bit but we’ll live. The car…as you can see from the pictures is totalled. We were in a BMW X5, i believe if we were in any other car we wouldnt have survived. All 8 airbags came out and the internal structure of the car stayed in tact.

Re the pics…if you see in one of the photos (from my cellphone), we landed near a telephone pole…so lucky we missed it!