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Friend's son was in a serious car accident

Sho'Nuff

Sho'Nuff

Diamond Member
I just found out that the son of one of my friends was recently in a serious car accident. Apparently his son and two friends were traveling at a high rate of speed on one of New Hampshire's many windy back roads when the driver misjudged a curve. As a result, their vehicle left the roadway and flipped many times. All three passengers were ejected, including my friend's son. Two of the passengers were killed, and my friend's son was left unconscious with several life threatening injuries, including a severe brain injury. He was transported by helicopter to Boston Medical Center. While the doctors have successfully managed the pressure in his skull (for the time being), he has not regained consciousness and is not showing neurological response to stimuli. Even if he does manage to pull through and wake up, the doctors believe that he will suffer significant lasting effects due to the extent of the injury to his brain.

That said, please send good thoughts and/or prayers (to whatever higher power you might believe in) to my friend. As a father of two I cannot fathom what he must be feeling right now.

Also - hug and cherish your loved ones. They could be gone in an instant.

Update 03/03/2016
Things are not going well for my friend's son. Docs are struggling to keep his intercranial pressures down. They are trying a lot of different things but he had a tough night. Still unconscious and heavily sedated.

Update 03/07/2016 - Not good. 3 of the 4 docs taking care of my friend's son say he is brain dead. One disagrees based on a "slight" pupillary response to light. My friend is facing what is probably the hardest decision a father can face. I.e, when to let his son go.

Update 03/10/2016

I am sad to report that my coworkers son passed away this morning. Despite valiant efforts by many fine doctors, his injuries were just too severe.

F*ck.
 
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That is horrible. :'(

I knew two guys in high school who were drag racing down a major street in my home town, a van pulled out in front of them and both cars hit the van. Thankfully nobody was killed but neither of the two guys I knew were wearing seatbelts and they were ejected from the car and suffered severe head injuries. The guy driving the van and the other guy racing were both wearing their seatbelts and they were OK.

Not sure why anyone wouldn't wear a seatbelt while riding in or operating an automobile.
 
JulesMaximus said:
That is horrible. :'(

I knew two guys in high school who were drag racing down a major street in my home town, a van pulled out in front of them and both cars hit the van. Thankfully nobody was killed but neither of the two guys I knew were wearing seatbelts and they were ejected from the car and suffered severe head injuries. The guy driving the van and the other guy racing were both wearing their seatbelts and they were OK.

Not sure why anyone wouldn't wear a seatbelt while riding in or operating an automobile.
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The police reports are silent with regard to whether the passengers were or were not wearing seat belts. From the pics of the vehicle, it is plausible that they were wearing them and were ejected nonetheless. From my time as an EMT, I can say with authority that a seat belt will not prevent ejection from a vehicle in all instances, particularly when a vehicle rolls over at high speed.
 
This sucks. Be supportive to your friend. This is the time they need you the most. I know someone who lost their son to an accident with a semi and it was the most devastating thing Ive ever witnessed on a personal level.
 
One of my best friends lost his 14 year old son a few years ago. He was hiking up in the Rockies at high altitude and suffered high altitude sickness and died. No drugs or alcohol were involved. He went to sleep and never woke up. My friend wasn't even there, his son was hiking with his ex-wife and her husband and his family.

It was unbelievable the amount of grief he went through and is still going through. Unless you've gone through it there is just no way to imagine it. Even having children of your own and being so close to it there is still no way to know that level of grief. And if you don't have children you have no clue.

Hope I never have to experience grief like that... :'(

Only thing you can do is be there for your friend.
 
I'm so sorry to hear this. As someone who nearly (and should have) died from a Traumatic Brain Injury, head injuries tug at my heart. Be there for them. :/
 
We just had a similar situation near where I live with a friend of one of my son's friends dying. None of the cars occupants were wearing seatbelts and alcohol and high speed were seen as the cause of the accident with one occupant being thrown from the car.
 
Any males (particularly males) who reach 25 are typically survivors and should feel damn grateful about it rather than confuse it for competence. I can recall a half-dozen separate times that I did or participated in some damn foolish or reckless thing that easily could have gone wrong and resulted in disaster, including driving too fast.

One involved losing control of a car, fish tailing back and forth several times, actually going off the road into and then back out of a ditch, ending in a complete 180 facing the opposite direction on the shoulder. Minimal damage to the car but everyone in the car had a sense of what had just been avoided by grace/chance/luck/whatever and there was this long awkward pause and looking at each other in disbelief before the uncomfortable giggling started.
 
Sho'Nuff said:
Also - hug and cherish your loved ones. They could be gone in an instant.
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My grandma's neighbors were literally around for 90 years. Went around a corner on a mountain pass one day & got into a head-on collision with a passing semi. Poof, gone in an instant, after nearly a century in the house next door. You just never know.

My condolences to your friend's family. Life is scary sometimes 🙁
 
tcsenter said:
Any males (particularly males) who reach 25 are typically survivors and should feel damn grateful about it rather than confuse it for competence. I can recall a half-dozen separate times that I did or participated in some damn foolish or reckless thing that easily could have gone wrong and resulted in disaster, including driving too fast.

One involved losing control of a car, fish tailing back and forth several times, actually going off the road into and then back out of a ditch, ending in a complete 180 facing the opposite direction on the shoulder. Minimal damage to the car but everyone in the car had a sense of what had just been avoided by grace/chance/luck/whatever and there was this long awkward pause and looking at each other in disbelief before the uncomfortable giggling started.
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I had the same experience, only I was alone in the car. Everything was the same, car had a baseball sized dent in the rear valance from kissing a bridge abutment as it slid to a stop. Nothing but sheer luck between us and the end of us. 🙁
OP, I hope your friend's son has some of that good fortune now.
 
I just read an article in the local NH paper about accident eerily similar to your post and then remembered we are local to one another. So sorry to hear about your friend's son and his friends.
 
tcsenter said:
Any males (particularly males) who reach 25 are typically survivors and should feel damn grateful about it rather than confuse it for competence. I can recall a half-dozen separate times that I did or participated in some damn foolish or reckless thing that easily could have gone wrong and resulted in disaster, including driving too fast.

One involved losing control of a car, fish tailing back and forth several times, actually going off the road into and then back out of a ditch, ending in a complete 180 facing the opposite direction on the shoulder. Minimal damage to the car but everyone in the car had a sense of what had just been avoided by grace/chance/luck/whatever and there was this long awkward pause and looking at each other in disbelief before the uncomfortable giggling started.
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skyking said:
I had the same experience, only I was alone in the car. Everything was the same, car had a baseball sized dent in the rear valance from kissing a bridge abutment as it slid to a stop. Nothing but sheer luck between us and the end of us. 🙁
OP, I hope your friend's son has some of that good fortune now.
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Been there once or twice.

It is a miracle that so many men survive from age 15-25.

Around 25 or so when some rational adult thinking resumed I was very grateful that I:
1. Never owned an overpowered automobile (thanks Mom and Dad)
2. Lived
 
JulesMaximus said:
One of my best friends lost his 14 year old son a few years ago. He was hiking up in the Rockies at high altitude and suffered high altitude sickness and died. No drugs or alcohol were involved. He went to sleep and never woke up. My friend wasn't even there, his son was hiking with his ex-wife and her husband and his family.

It was unbelievable the amount of grief he went through and is still going through. Unless you've gone through it there is just no way to imagine it. Even having children of your own and being so close to it there is still no way to know that level of grief. And if you don't have children you have no clue.

Hope I never have to experience grief like that... :'(

Only thing you can do is be there for your friend.
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I have definitely thought a number of times about the 'if anything happens to my sons'... and it scares the crap out of me every time I think about it.

Hoping the best for your friends OP.
 
JulesMaximus said:
It was unbelievable the amount of grief he went through and is still going through. Unless you've gone through it there is just no way to imagine it. Even having children of your own and being so close to it there is still no way to know that level of grief. And if you don't have children you have no clue.

Hope I never have to experience grief like that... :'(

Only thing you can do is be there for your friend.
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Well said. The love you feel toward your children is totally different than anyone else. I'll pray for your friend, his son and the families of those lost.

I didn't need a reminder to hug my family, but I'll give them an extra squeeze. We are all at risk every day.
 
That's one of my biggest worries as a parent. I know some of the stupid things I did when I was younger that I'm lucky to have lived through. I hope my son is smarter. Best of luck to your friend and his kid, and the other families involved, I can't imagine how hard that has to be. 🙁
 
SlowSpyder said:
That's one of my biggest worries as a parent. I know some of the stupid things I did when I was younger that I'm lucky to have lived through. I hope my son is smarter. 🙁
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Only reason I bring it up is because I so often see people making crass judgy comments about young persons getting killed or seriously injured doing shit that is not unlike the things I know they did when they were younger. Something happens to many people when they get older, they get really selective recollections that allow them to feel superior to the younger generation.
 
Update in op 🙁

Is it weird for me to be so personally affected by this? I have been completely off since hearing about the accident last week. I'm not obsessing over the incident (or at least I do not think I am), but it is definitely affecting my ability to work, concentrate, etc. I noticed all last week that I was intentionally putting off work on projects that involve my friend's clients, because when i would start on (or even think about) them I would start thinking about his son's plight. Those thoughts would then lead to a profound feeling of sadness, at which time I would find any excuse to stop working on that project and/or find something else to work on.

I just can't help but think that my buddy is living every parent's worst nightmare.
 
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