This is by far the scariest experience I've ever had on the road and very people know about it. When I was underage, someone regularly gave me driving lessons. I was basically set until I reached licensing age for my license at that point and intended to learn manual by then. One evening, while driving back from an event, I ended up behind a trail of stagnant cars not very far from my home at the time. The licensed adult driver resumed the driving position and we first predicted that it was a roadblock, then a minor accident. As we got closer to people shrieking and crying, screaming and collapsing in tears, it grew darker. Many of the people were dressed in suits and dresses so my first thought was that it was a wedding accident.
Long story short, the victims were 5 young boys going to their prom. They sped around the corner and were crushed by a MAC truck speeding towards them with an alleged sleeping driver behind the wheel. All five boys died on the scene, though not all died immediately. (Driver had not a scratch on him) Our car reached almost parallel to theirs as we were stopped and told to wait for the victims to be cut out of the car as the relevant authorities were ready. The bodies were dragged out right in front of us to a neighboring yard just feet away from my passenger side window as guts fell out trailing behind them and I could see at least one chest rising and sinking too deep, too quickly and blood continued pooling around some of the bodies even after they were laid out. There were spotlights aimed at the car so the authorities could see clearly so we saw the last ones to be taken out skewered by the engine and other car parts before they were cut free. We were soon told to proceed driving as someone came out with white sheets and began covering the bodies, which immediately became soaked in blood.
I did not have a phone so I did not receive any of the texts or frantic calls to my relatives' phones that night. The next morning I was informed that a good friend who also happened to be a relative was trying to get in contact with me. The 5 boys were 5 closely related family members that lived right next to each other. She grew up with them all living with her or right next door. She was also there that night, not very far behind the MAC truck and heard the bang. Her brother had internal bleeding and died, choking on his own blood in front of her. She and her entire family were distraught and things were never quite the same. At the funeral, the faces were stitched up as best as possible but the bodies were completely sunken and in place of the normal mass of the bodies were flowers to make up the space. There was so much damage that all of the insides were removed and some of them could not be stitched together properly due to the extent of the damage. I'll end it there but the whole experience was terrible, and unspeakably worse for the close family and friends of the incident.
I did not get behind the wheel of a car again until a few years ago when someone forced me to try again. It ended quite poorly and abruptly with me having a panic attack and I tried one official driving class last year and ran out of the car shaking at the end. Progress nonetheless, but that entire experience is why I'm very uppity about car safety and still do not drive.
